1 BLEAK HOUSE
     
   2 by CHARLES DICKENS
     
   3             Preface 
   4          I. In Chancery 
   5         II. In Fashion 
   6        III. A Progress 
   7         IV. Telescopic Philanthropy 
   8          V. A Morning Adventure 
   9         VI. Quite at Home 
  10        VII. The Ghost's Walk 
  11       VIII. Covering a Multitude of Sins 
  12         IX. Signs and Tokens 
  13          X. The Law-Writer 
  14         XI. Our Dear Brother 
  15        XII. On the Watch 
  16       XIII. Esther's Narrative 
  17        XIV. Deportment 
  18         XV. Bell Yard 
  19        XVI. Tom-all-Alone's 
  20       XVII. Esther's Narrative 
  21      XVIII. Lady Dedlock 
  22        XIX. Moving On 
  23         XX. A New Lodger 
  24        XXI. The Smallweed Family 
  25       XXII. Mr. Bucket 
  26      XXIII. Esther's Narrative 
  27       XXIV. An Appeal Case 
  28        XXV. Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All 
  29       XXVI. Sharpshooters 
  30      XXVII. More Old Soldiers Than One 
  31     XXVIII. The Ironmaster 
  32       XXIX. The Young Man 
  33        XXX. Esther's Narrative 
  34       XXXI. Nurse and Patient 
  35      XXXII. The Appointed Time 
  36     XXXIII. Interlopers 
  37      XXXIV. A Turn of the Screw 
  38       XXXV. Esther's Narrative 
  39      XXXVI. Chesney Wold 
  40     XXXVII. Jarndyce and Jarndyce 
  41    XXXVIII. A Struggle 
  42      XXXIX. Attorney and Client 
  43         XL. National and Domestic 
  44        XLI. In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room 
  45       XLII. In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers 
  46      XLIII. Esther's Narrative 
  47       XLIV. The Letter and the Answer 
  48        XLV. In Trust 
  49       XLVI. Stop Him! 
  50      XLVII. Jo's Will 
  51     XLVIII. Closing In 
  52       XLIX. Dutiful Friendship 
  53          L. Esther's Narrative 
  54         LI. Enlightened 
  55        LII. Obstinacy 
  56       LIII. The Track 
  57        LIV. Springing a Mine 
  58         LV. Flight 
  59        LVI. Pursuit 
  60       LVII. Esther's Narrative 
  61      LVIII. A Wintry Day and Night 
  62        LIX. Esther's Narrative 
  63         LX. Perspective 
  64        LXI. A Discovery 
  65       LXII. Another Discovery 
  66      LXIII. Steel and Iron 
  67    LXIV. Esther's Narrative 
  68    LXV. Beginning the World 
  69    LXVI. Down in Lincolnshire 
  70    LXVII. The Close of Esther's Narrative 
     
  71 PREFACE
     
  72 A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a
  73 company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under
  74 any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the
  75 shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought
  76 the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.
  77 There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of
  78 progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the
  79 "parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been
  80 until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means
  81 enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed -- I believe by
  82 Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.
     
  83 This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of
  84 this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to
  85 Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have
  86 originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt
  87 quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
     
  88                      "My nature is subdued
  89    To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
  90    Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!"
     
  91 But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what
  92 has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here
  93 that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of
  94 Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of
  95 Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence,
  96 made public by a disinterested person who was professionally
  97 acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to
  98 end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the
  99 court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from
 100 thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in
 101 which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand
 102 pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no
 103 nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is
 104 another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was
 105 commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than
 106 double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in
 107 costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I
 108 could rain them on these pages, to the shame of -- a parsimonious
 109 public.
     
 110 There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The
 111 possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied
 112 since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite
 113 mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been
 114 abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me
 115 at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous
 116 combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do
 117 not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I
 118 wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There
 119 are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of
 120 the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated
 121 and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona,
 122 otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at
 123 Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The
 124 appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the
 125 appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case. The next most famous
 126 instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in
 127 that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by
 128 France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly
 129 convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher
 130 court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that
 131 she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion
 132 is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts,
 133 and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at
 134 page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of
 135 distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in
 136 more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not
 137 abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable
 138 spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences
 139 are usually received.**
     
 140 In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of
 141 familiar things.
     
 142 1853
     
     
 143 CHAPTER I
     
 144 In Chancery
     
     
 145 London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting
 146 in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in
 147 the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of
 148 the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,
 149 forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn
 150 Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black
 151 drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown
 152 snowflakes -- gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of
 153 the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;
 154 splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one
 155 another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing
 156 their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other
 157 foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke
 158 (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust
 159 of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and
 160 accumulating at compound interest.
     
 161 Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and
 162 meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers
 163 of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
 164 Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping
 165 into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and
 166 hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales
 167 of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient
 168 Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog
 169 in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper,
 170 down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of
 171 his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the
 172 bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog
 173 all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the
 174 misty clouds.
     
 175 Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as
 176 the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman
 177 and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their
 178 time -- as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling
 179 look.
     
 180 The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the
 181 muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction,
 182 appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old
 183 corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn
 184 Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in
 185 his High Court of Chancery.
     
 186 Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire
 187 too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which
 188 this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds
 189 this day in the sight of heaven and earth.
     
 190 On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be
 191 sitting here -- as here he is -- with a foggy glory round his head,
 192 softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a
 193 large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an
 194 interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the
 195 lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an
 196 afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar
 197 ought to be -- as here they are -- mistily engaged in one of the ten
 198 thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on
 199 slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running
 200 their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and
 201 making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On
 202 such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or
 203 three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a
 204 fortune by it, ought to be -- as are they not? -- ranged in a line, in a
 205 long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom
 206 of it) between the registrar's red table and the silk gowns, with
 207 bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits,
 208 issues, references to masters, masters' reports, mountains of costly
 209 nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting
 210 candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it
 211 would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their
 212 colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the
 213 uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in
 214 the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the
 215 drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the
 216 Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it
 217 and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the
 218 Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted
 219 lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every
 220 madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined
 221 suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and
 222 begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to
 223 monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so
 224 exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain
 225 and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its
 226 practitioners who would not give -- who does not often give -- the
 227 warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come
 228 here!"
     
 229 Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon
 230 besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three
 231 counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before
 232 mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown;
 233 and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or
 234 whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning,
 235 for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the
 236 cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The
 237 short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of
 238 the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when
 239 Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on
 240 a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained
 241 sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is
 242 always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting
 243 some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say
 244 she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for
 245 certain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a
 246 reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of
 247 paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in
 248 custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application "to
 249 purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving
 250 executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts
 251 of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is
 252 not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life
 253 are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from
 254 Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at
 255 the close of the day's business and who can by no means be made to
 256 understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence
 257 after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself
 258 in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out "My
 259 Lord!" in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising.
 260 A few lawyers' clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger
 261 on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal
 262 weather a little.
     
 263 Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in
 264 course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it
 265 means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been
 266 observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five
 267 minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the
 268 premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause;
 269 innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people
 270 have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found
 271 themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how
 272 or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the
 273 suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new
 274 rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown
 275 up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the
 276 other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and
 277 grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone
 278 out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere
 279 bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth
 280 perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a
 281 coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags
 282 its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.
     
 283 Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good
 284 that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke
 285 in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out
 286 of it. Every Chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he
 287 was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by
 288 blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee
 289 after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of
 290 fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it
 291 neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said
 292 that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he
 293 observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr.
 294 Blowers" -- a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and
 295 purses.
     
 296 How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched
 297 forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide
 298 question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty
 299 warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many
 300 shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has
 301 copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that
 302 eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. In
 303 trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under
 304 false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never
 305 come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched
 306 suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle,
 307 Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments
 308 until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into
 309 themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause
 310 has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a
 311 distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle,
 312 Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising
 313 themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter
 314 and see what can be done for Drizzle -- who was not well used -- when
 315 Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and
 316 sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the
 317 ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history
 318 from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted
 319 into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad
 320 course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some
 321 off-hand manner never meant to go right.
     
 322 Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the
 323 Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
     
 324 "Mr. Tangle," says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something
 325 restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.
     
 326 "Mlud," says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and
 327 Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous for it -- supposed never to have
 328 read anything else since he left school.
     
 329 "Have you nearly concluded your argument?"
     
 330 "Mlud, no -- variety of points -- feel it my duty tsubmit -- ludship," is
 331 the reply that slides out of Mr. Tangle.
     
 332 "Several members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?" says
 333 the Chancellor with a slight smile.
     
 334 Eighteen of Mr. Tangle's learned friends, each armed with a little
 335 summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a
 336 pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places
 337 of obscurity.
     
 338 "We will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight," says the
 339 Chancellor. For the question at issue is only a question of costs, a
 340 mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come
 341 to a settlement one of these days.
     
 342 The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward
 343 in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, "My lord!" Maces, bags,
 344 and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from
 345 Shropshire.
     
 346 "In reference," proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and
 347 Jarndyce, "to the young girl -- "
     
 348 "Begludship's pardon -- boy," says Mr. Tangle prematurely. "In
 349 reference," proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, "to the
 350 young girl and boy, the two young people" -- Mr. Tangle crushed -- "whom
 351 I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private
 352 room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of
 353 making the order for their residing with their uncle."
     
 354 Mr. Tangle on his legs again. "Begludship's pardon -- dead."
     
 355 "With their" -- Chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the
 356 papers on his desk -- "grandfather."
     
 357 "Begludship's pardon -- victim of rash action -- brains."
     
 358 Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises,
 359 fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, "Will
 360 your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several
 361 times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in
 362 what exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin."
     
 363 Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in
 364 the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog
 365 knows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
     
 366 "I will speak with both the young people," says the Chancellor anew,
 367 "and satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their
 368 cousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take my
 369 seat."
     
 370 The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is
 371 presented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner's conglomeration
 372 but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The man from
 373 Shropshire ventures another remonstrative "My lord!" but the
 374 Chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody
 375 else quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with
 376 heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old
 377 woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up.
 378 If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has
 379 caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a
 380 great funeral pyre -- why so much the better for other parties than the
 381 parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
     
     
     
     
 382 CHAPTER II
     
 383 In Fashion
     
     
 384 It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same
 385 miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we
 386 may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the
 387 world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent
 388 and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange
 389 games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the
 390 knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen
 391 shall begin to turn prodigiously!
     
 392 It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which
 393 has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made
 394 the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a
 395 very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and
 396 true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is
 397 that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine
 398 wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot
 399 see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and
 400 its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.
     
 401 My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days
 402 previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to
 403 stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The
 404 fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians,
 405 and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to
 406 be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in
 407 familiar conversation, her "place" in Lincolnshire. The waters are
 408 out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been
 409 sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile
 410 in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in
 411 it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain.
 412 My Lady Dedlock's place has been extremely dreary. The weather for
 413 many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through,
 414 and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no
 415 crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave
 416 quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in
 417 the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards
 418 the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the
 419 falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is
 420 alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases
 421 on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and
 422 the heavy drops fall -- drip, drip, drip -- upon the broad flagged
 423 pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Walk, all night. On
 424 Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit
 425 breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste
 426 as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is
 427 childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a
 428 keeper's lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed
 429 panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a
 430 woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a
 431 wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of
 432 temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."
     
 433 Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in
 434 Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the
 435 rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures
 436 of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp
 437 walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along
 438 the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come
 439 forth again, the fashionable intelligence -- which, like the fiend, is
 440 omniscient of the past and present, but not the future -- cannot yet
 441 undertake to say.
     
 442 Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier
 443 baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely
 444 more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get
 445 on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on
 446 the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when
 447 not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its
 448 execution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict
 449 conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on
 450 the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather
 451 than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is
 452 an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely
 453 prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
     
 454 Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He
 455 will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet
 456 sixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a
 457 little stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair
 458 and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his
 459 blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious,
 460 stately, most polite on every occasion to my Lady, and holds her
 461 personal attractions in the highest estimation. His gallantry to my
 462 Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little
 463 touch of romantic fancy in him.
     
 464 Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she
 465 had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that
 466 perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had
 467 beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to
 468 portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to
 469 these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has
 470 been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of
 471 the fashionable tree.
     
 472 How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody
 473 knows -- or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having
 474 been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered
 475 HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing,
 476 mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of
 477 fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the
 478 trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be
 479 translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend
 480 without any rapture.
     
 481 She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet
 482 in its autumn. She has a fine face -- originally of a character that
 483 would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into
 484 classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her
 485 figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is
 486 so, but that "the most is made," as the Honourable Bob Stables has
 487 frequently asserted upon oath, "of all her points." The same
 488 authority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in
 489 commendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed
 490 woman in the whole stud.
     
 491 With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up
 492 from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable
 493 intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her
 494 departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks,
 495 after which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town,
 496 upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned
 497 old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the High Court of
 498 Chancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the
 499 Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name
 500 outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror's
 501 trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across
 502 the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the
 503 rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of
 504 it -- fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in -- the old gentleman
 505 is conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady's presence.
     
 506 The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made
 507 good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic
 508 wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of
 509 family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository.
 510 There are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of
 511 parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer
 512 noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of
 513 Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school -- a phrase
 514 generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young -- and
 515 wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One
 516 peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they
 517 silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive
 518 to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses
 519 when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless
 520 but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country
 521 houses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the
 522 fashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and
 523 where half the Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?"
 524 He receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with
 525 the rest of his knowledge.
     
 526 Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is happy to see Mr.
 527 Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is
 528 always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of
 529 tribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind of tribute
 530 in that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general
 531 way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the
 532 legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.
     
 533 Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may
 534 not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in
 535 everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class -- as one
 536 of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes
 537 herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of
 538 ordinary mortals -- seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks
 539 so. Yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to
 540 the manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices,
 541 follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a
 542 calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her
 543 dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new
 544 custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new
 545 dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are
 546 deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects
 547 of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage
 548 her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their
 549 lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience,
 550 lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook
 551 all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet
 552 of the majestic Lilliput. "If you want to address our people, sir,"
 553 say Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers -- meaning by our people Lady
 554 Dedlock and the rest -- "you must remember that you are not dealing
 555 with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest
 556 place, and their weakest place is such a place." "To make this
 557 article go down, gentlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to
 558 their friends the manufacturers, "you must come to us, because we
 559 know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it
 560 fashionable." "If you want to get this print upon the tables of my
 561 high connexion, sir," says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, "or if you
 562 want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,
 563 sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of
 564 my high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for
 565 I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion,
 566 sir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my
 567 finger" -- in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not
 568 exaggerate at all.
     
 569 Therefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the
 570 Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.
     
 571 "My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.
 572 Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
     
 573 "Yes. It has been on again to-day," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, making
 574 one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near the fire,
 575 shading her face with a hand-screen.
     
 576 "It would be useless to ask," says my Lady with the dreariness of the
 577 place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been
 578 done."
     
 579 "Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day," replies
 580 Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
 581 "Nor ever will be," says my Lady.
     
 582 Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It
 583 is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be
 584 sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part
 585 in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a
 586 shadowy impression that for his name -- the name of Dedlock -- to be in a
 587 cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous
 588 accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should
 589 involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of
 590 confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of
 591 other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal
 592 settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole
 593 of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to
 594 any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the
 595 lower classes to rise up somewhere -- like Wat Tyler.
     
 596 "As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr.
 597 Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the
 598 troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any
 599 new proceedings in a cause" -- cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no
 600 more responsibility than necessary -- "and further, as I see you are
 601 going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket."
     
 602 (Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delight of
 603 the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)
     
 604 Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them
 605 on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow, puts on his
 606 spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.
     
 607 "'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce -- '"
     
 608 My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal
 609 horrors as he can.
     
 610 Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower
 611 down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir
 612 Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a
 613 stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging
 614 among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my
 615 Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful,
 616 being priceless but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the
 617 papers on the table -- looks at them nearer -- looks at them nearer
 618 still -- asks impulsively, "Who copied that?"
     
 619 Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her
 620 unusual tone.
     
 621 "Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at him
 622 in her careless way again and toying with her screen.
     
 623 "Not quite. Probably" -- Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks -- "the
 624 legal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was
 625 formed. Why do you ask?"
     
 626 "Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!"
     
 627 Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screens her
 628 face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "Eh? What
 629 do you say?"
     
 630 "I say I am afraid," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily,
 631 "that Lady Dedlock is ill."
     
 632 "Faint," my Lady murmurs with white lips, "only that; but it is like
 633 the faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take me to my
 634 room!"
     
 635 Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet
 636 shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr.
 637 Tulkinghorn to return.
     
 638 "Better now," quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down
 639 and read to him alone. "I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my
 640 Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and she
 641 really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."
     
     
     
     
 642 CHAPTER III
     
 643 A Progress
     
     
 644 I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of
 645 these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can
 646 remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my
 647 doll when we were alone together, "Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you
 648 know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!" And so
 649 she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful
 650 complexion and rosy lips, staring at me -- or not so much at me, I
 651 think, as at nothing -- while I busily stitched away and told her every
 652 one of my secrets.
     
 653 My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared
 654 to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else.
 655 It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me
 656 when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and
 657 say, "Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!"
 658 and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great
 659 chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted. I had always
 660 rather a noticing way -- not a quick way, oh, no! -- a silent way of
 661 noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to
 662 understand it better. I have not by any means a quick understanding.
 663 When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. But
 664 even that may be my vanity.
     
 665 I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance -- like some of the
 666 princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming -- by my
 667 godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good, good
 668 woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning
 669 prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there
 670 were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had
 671 ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel -- but she
 672 never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good
 673 herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown
 674 all her life. I felt so different from her, even making every
 675 allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so
 676 poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained
 677 with her -- no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very
 678 sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and
 679 I used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I
 680 talked it over very often with the dear old doll, but I never loved
 681 my godmother as I ought to have loved her and as I felt I must have
 682 loved her if I had been a better girl.
     
 683 This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally
 684 was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at
 685 ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing
 686 that helped it very much.
     
 687 I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa
 688 either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a
 689 black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama's
 690 grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been
 691 taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than
 692 once approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our
 693 only servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very
 694 good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, "Esther, good
 695 night!" and gone away and left me.
     
 696 Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I
 697 was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther
 698 Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than
 699 I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there
 700 seemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and
 701 besides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much more
 702 than I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the school
 703 (I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my
 704 great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me,
 705 and I never went. I never went out at all.
     
 706 It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other
 707 birthdays -- none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other
 708 birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one
 709 another -- there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy
 710 day at home in the whole year.
     
 711 I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know
 712 it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I
 713 don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My
 714 disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such
 715 a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the
 716 quickness of that birthday.
     
 717 Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table
 718 before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another
 719 sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don't know how
 720 long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the
 721 table at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me,
 722 "It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had had no
 723 birthday, that you had never been born!"
     
 724 I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, "Oh, dear godmother, tell
 725 me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?"
     
 726 "No," she returned. "Ask me no more, child!"
     
 727 "Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear
 728 godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her?
 729 Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault,
 730 dear godmother? No, no, no, don't go away. Oh, speak to me!"
     
 731 I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her
 732 dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while,
 733 "Let me go!" But now she stood still.
     
 734 Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the
 735 midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp
 736 hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew
 737 it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She
 738 raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly
 739 in a cold, low voice -- I see her knitted brow and pointed
 740 finger -- "Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.
 741 The time will come -- and soon enough -- when you will understand this
 742 better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have
 743 forgiven her" -- but her face did not relent -- "the wrong she did to me,
 744 and I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever
 745 know -- than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself,
 746 unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil
 747 anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon
 748 your head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave
 749 all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that
 750 greatest kindness. Now, go!"
     
 751 She checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her -- so frozen
 752 as I was! -- and added this, "Submission, self-denial, diligent work,
 753 are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You
 754 are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born,
 755 like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart."
     
 756 I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek
 757 against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my
 758 bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my
 759 sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's
 760 heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.
     
 761 Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together
 762 afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my
 763 birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could
 764 to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt
 765 guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be
 766 industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some
 767 one, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not
 768 self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very
 769 thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to
 770 my eyes.
     
 771 There! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly.
     
 772 I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more
 773 after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her
 774 house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult
 775 of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than
 776 ever. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in
 777 the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards
 778 her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a
 779 fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very
 780 diligent.
     
 781 One sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books
 782 and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was
 783 gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the
 784 parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found -- which was
 785 very unusual indeed -- a stranger. A portly, important-looking
 786 gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold
 787 watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon
 788 his little finger.
     
 789 "This," said my godmother in an undertone, "is the child." Then she
 790 said in her naturally stern way of speaking, "This is Esther, sir."
     
 791 The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, "Come
 792 here, my dear!" He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my
 793 bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said,
 794 "Ah!" and afterwards "Yes!" And then, taking off his eye-glasses and
 795 folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair,
 796 turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod.
 797 Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!" And I
 798 made him my curtsy and left him.
     
 799 It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen,
 800 when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was
 801 reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock
 802 as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St.
 803 John how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the
 804 dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.
     
 805 "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said
 806 unto them, 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
 807 stone at her!'"
     
 808 I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head,
 809 and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book,
 810 "'Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And
 811 what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'"
     
 812 In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she
 813 fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had
 814 sounded through the house and been heard in the street.
     
 815 She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little
 816 altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so
 817 well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and
 818 in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers
 819 might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her,
 820 asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me
 821 the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was
 822 immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained
 823 unsoftened.
     
 824 On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in
 825 black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs.
 826 Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone
 827 away.
     
 828 "My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge
 829 and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn."
     
 830 I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.
     
 831 "Pray be seated -- here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no
 832 use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you who were acquainted with the
 833 late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her and that
 834 this young lady, now her aunt is dead -- "
     
 835 "My aunt, sir!"
     
 836 "It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to
 837 be gained by it," said Mr. Kenge smoothly, "Aunt in fact, though not
 838 in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs.
 839 Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of -- the -- a -- Jarndyce and
 840 Jarndyce."
     
 841 "Never," said Mrs. Rachael.
     
 842 "Is it possible," pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses,
 843 "that our young friend -- I BEG you won't distress yourself! -- never
 844 heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!"
     
 845 I shook my head, wondering even what it was.
     
 846 "Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?" said Mr. Kenge, looking over his
 847 glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he
 848 were petting something. "Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits
 849 known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce -- the -- a -- in itself a monument of
 850 Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every
 851 contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known
 852 in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause
 853 that could not exist out of this free and great country. I should
 854 say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs.
 855 Rachael" -- I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I appeared
 856 inattentive" -- amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty
 857 THOUSAND POUNDS!" said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair.
     
 858 I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely
 859 unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even
 860 then.
     
 861 "And she really never heard of the cause!" said Mr. Kenge.
 862 "Surprising!"
     
 863 "Miss Barbary, sir," returned Mrs. Rachael, "who is now among the
 864 Seraphim -- "
     
 865 "I hope so, I am sure," said Mr. Kenge politely.
     
 866 " -- Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And
 867 she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more."
     
 868 "Well!" said Mr. Kenge. "Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the
 869 point," addressing me. "Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact
 870 that is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being
 871 deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs.
 872 Rachael -- "
     
 873 "Oh, dear no!" said Mrs. Rachael quickly.
     
 874 "Quite so," assented Mr. Kenge; " -- that Mrs. Rachael should charge
 875 herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won't distress
 876 yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer
 877 which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and
 878 which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the
 879 lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow
 880 that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly
 881 humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself
 882 by any stretch of my professional caution?" said Mr. Kenge, leaning
 883 back in his chair again and looking calmly at us both.
     
 884 He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I
 885 couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great
 886 importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with
 887 obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music
 888 with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much
 889 impressed by him -- even then, before I knew that he formed himself on
 890 the model of a great lord who was his client and that he was
 891 generally called Conversation Kenge.
     
 892 "Mr. Jarndyce," he pursued, "being aware of the -- I would say,
 893 desolate -- position of our young friend, offers to place her at a
 894 first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed,
 895 where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall
 896 be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge
 897 her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased -- shall I
 898 say Providence? -- to call her."
     
 899 My heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his
 900 affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I
 901 tried.
     
 902 "Mr. Jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition beyond expressing his
 903 expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself
 904 from the establishment in question without his knowledge and
 905 concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the
 906 acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she
 907 will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of
 908 virtue and honour, and -- the -- a -- so forth."
     
 909 I was still less able to speak than before.
     
 910 "Now, what does our young friend say?" proceeded Mr. Kenge. "Take
 911 time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!"
     
 912 What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not
 913 repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth
 914 the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could
 915 never relate.
     
 916 This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I
 917 knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all
 918 necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.
     
 919 Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was
 920 not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known
 921 her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough
 922 of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one
 923 cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone
 924 porch -- it was a very frosty day -- I felt so miserable and
 925 self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I
 926 knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!
     
 927 "No, Esther!" she returned. "It is your misfortune!"
     
 928 The coach was at the little lawn-gate -- we had not come out until we
 929 heard the wheels -- and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She
 930 went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the
 931 door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the
 932 window through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the
 933 little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old
 934 hearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first
 935 thing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost
 936 and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her
 937 own shawl and quietly laid her -- I am half ashamed to tell it -- in the
 938 garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no
 939 companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.
     
 940 When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the
 941 straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high
 942 window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of
 943 spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow, and
 944 the sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like
 945 metal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There
 946 was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked
 947 very large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the
 948 other window and took no notice of me.
     
 949 I thought of my dead godmother, of the night when I read to her, of
 950 her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place
 951 I was going to, of the people I should find there, and what they
 952 would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the
 953 coach gave me a terrible start.
     
 954 It said, "What the de-vil are you crying for?"
     
 955 I was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a
 956 whisper, "Me, sir?" For of course I knew it must have been the
 957 gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking
 958 out of his window.
     
 959 "Yes, you," he said, turning round.
     
 960 "I didn't know I was crying, sir," I faltered.
     
 961 "But you are!" said the gentleman. "Look here!" He came quite
 962 opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his
 963 large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed
 964 me that it was wet.
     
 965 "There! Now you know you are," he said. "Don't you?"
     
 966 "Yes, sir," I said.
     
 967 "And what are you crying for?" said the gentleman, "Don't you want to
 968 go there?"
     
 969 "Where, sir?"
     
 970 "Where? Why, wherever you are going," said the gentleman.
     
 971 "I am very glad to go there, sir," I answered.
     
 972 "Well, then! Look glad!" said the gentleman.
     
 973 I thought he was very strange, or at least that what I could see of
 974 him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face
 975 was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of
 976 his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not
 977 afraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying
 978 because of my godmother's death and because of Mrs. Rachael's not
 979 being sorry to part with me.
     
 980 "Confound Mrs. Rachael!" said the gentleman. "Let her fly away in a
 981 high wind on a broomstick!"
     
 982 I began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the
 983 greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes,
 984 although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and
 985 calling Mrs. Rachael names.
     
 986 After a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to
 987 me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into
 988 a deep pocket in the side.
     
 989 "Now, look here!" he said. "In this paper," which was nicely folded,
 990 "is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money -- sugar on
 991 the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here's a little
 992 pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And
 993 what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie!
 994 Now let's see you eat 'em."
     
 995 "Thank you, sir," I replied; "thank you very much indeed, but I hope
 996 you won't be offended -- they are too rich for me."
     
 997 "Floored again!" said the gentleman, which I didn't at all
 998 understand, and threw them both out of window.
     
 999 He did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a
1000 little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and
1001 to be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by
1002 his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it
1003 afterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and
1004 half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on,
1005 he passed out of my mind.
     
1006 When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and
1007 said, "Miss Donny."
     
1008 "No, ma'am, Esther Summerson."
     
1009 "That is quite right," said the lady, "Miss Donny."
     
1010 I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged
1011 Miss Donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her
1012 request. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put
1013 outside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid,
1014 and I got inside and were driven away.
     
1015 "Everything is ready for you, Esther," said Miss Donny, "and the
1016 scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with
1017 the wishes of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce."
     
1018 "Of -- did you say, ma'am?"
     
1019 "Of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce," said Miss Donny.
     
1020 I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too
1021 severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.
     
1022 "Do you know my -- guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, ma'am?" I asked after a good
1023 deal of hesitation.
     
1024 "Not personally, Esther," said Miss Donny; "merely through his
1025 solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior
1026 gentleman, Mr. Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods
1027 quite majestic!"
     
1028 I felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our
1029 speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover
1030 myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the
1031 uncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny's
1032 house) that afternoon!
     
1033 But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of
1034 Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while
1035 and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my
1036 godmother's. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than
1037 Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the
1038 clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment.
     
1039 We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It
1040 was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my
1041 qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in
1042 everything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in
1043 helping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other
1044 respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made
1045 in my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more,
1046 and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of
1047 doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a
1048 new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so
1049 sure -- indeed I don't know why -- to make a friend of me that all
1050 new-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I
1051 am sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my
1052 birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to
1053 do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed,
1054 indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so
1055 much.
     
1056 I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face
1057 there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better
1058 if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so
1059 many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful
1060 with them from New Year's Day to Christmas.
     
1061 In those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday
1062 time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had
1063 taken Miss Donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to
1064 Mr. Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval
1065 I had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer
1066 acknowledging its receipt and saying, "We note the contents thereof,
1067 which shall be duly communicated to our client." After that I
1068 sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my
1069 accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a
1070 similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same
1071 answer in the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy
1072 in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Kenge's.
     
1073 It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about
1074 myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my
1075 little body will soon fall into the background now.
     
1076 Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had
1077 passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a
1078 looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when,
1079 one November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.
     
     
1080    Old Square, Lincoln's Inn
     
1081    Madam,
     
1082    Jarndyce and Jarndyce
     
1083    Our clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house,
1084    under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this
1085    cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn,
1086    directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your
1087    serces in the afsd capacity.
     
1088    We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr
1089    eight o'clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next,
1090    to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of
1091    our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as
1092    above.
     
1093    We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,
     
1094    Kenge and Carboy
     
1095    Miss Esther Summerson
     
     
1096 Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused
1097 in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was
1098 so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my
1099 orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful
1100 natures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would
1101 have had them less sorry -- I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it,
1102 and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble
1103 regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking
1104 while it was full of rapture.
     
1105 The letter gave me only five days' notice of my removal. When every
1106 minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in
1107 those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took
1108 me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and
1109 when some cried, "Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my
1110 bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!" and when others
1111 asked me only to write their names, "With Esther's love," and when
1112 they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me
1113 weeping and cried, "What shall we do when dear, dear Esther's gone!"
1114 and when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had
1115 all been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a
1116 heart I had!
     
1117 And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the
1118 least among them, and when the maids said, "Bless you, miss, wherever
1119 you go!" and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had
1120 hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to
1121 give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the
1122 light of his eyes -- indeed the old man said so! -- what a heart I had
1123 then!
     
1124 And could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little
1125 school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving
1126 their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady
1127 whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited
1128 (who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring
1129 for nothing but calling out, "Good-bye, Esther. May you be very
1130 happy!" -- could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by
1131 myself and said "Oh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!" many times
1132 over!
     
1133 But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I
1134 was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course,
1135 I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying
1136 very often, "Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!" I
1137 cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was
1138 longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my
1139 eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London.
     
1140 I was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off,
1141 and when we really were there, that we should never get there.
1142 However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and
1143 particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into
1144 us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began
1145 to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey.
1146 Very soon afterwards we stopped.
     
1147 A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from
1148 the pavement and said, "I am from Kenge and Carboy's, miss, of
1149 Lincoln's Inn."
     
1150 "If you please, sir," said I.
     
1151 He was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after
1152 superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was
1153 a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown
1154 smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen.
     
1155 "Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular."
     
1156 I had never heard of such a thing.
     
1157 "A fog, miss," said the young gentleman.
     
1158 "Oh, indeed!" said I.
     
1159 We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever
1160 were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of
1161 confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we
1162 passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through
1163 a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there
1164 was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance
1165 to a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some
1166 cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window.
     
1167 This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentleman showed me through an
1168 outer office into Mr. Kenge's room -- there was no one in it -- and
1169 politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my
1170 attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side
1171 of the chimney-piece.
     
1172 "In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the
1173 journey, as you're going before the Chancellor. Not that it's
1174 requisite, I am sure," said the young gentleman civilly.
     
1175 "Going before the Chancellor?" I said, startled for a moment.
     
1176 "Only a matter of form, miss," returned the young gentleman. "Mr.
1177 Kenge is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake
1178 of some refreshment" -- there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a
1179 small table -- "and look over the paper," which the young gentleman
1180 gave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me.
     
1181 Everything was so strange -- the stranger from its being night in the
1182 day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and
1183 cold -- that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what
1184 they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it
1185 was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep
1186 at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the
1187 room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables,
1188 and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most
1189 inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for
1190 themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the
1191 fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on
1192 flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers -- until the young
1193 gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair -- for two hours.
     
1194 At last Mr. Kenge came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to
1195 see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. "As you are going
1196 to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor's
1197 private room, Miss Summerson," he said, "we thought it well that you
1198 should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord
1199 Chancellor, I dare say?"
     
1200 "No, sir," I said, "I don't think I shall," really not seeing on
1201 consideration why I should be.
     
1202 So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a
1203 colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage,
1204 into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young
1205 gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was
1206 interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen,
1207 talking.
     
1208 They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with
1209 the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich
1210 golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent,
1211 trusting face!
     
1212 "Miss Ada," said Mr. Kenge, "this is Miss Summerson."
     
1213 She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended,
1214 but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short,
1215 she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few
1216 minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the
1217 fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be.
     
1218 What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could
1219 confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging
1220 to me!
     
1221 The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name
1222 Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and
1223 a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we
1224 sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a
1225 light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if
1226 quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were
1227 both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had
1228 never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the
1229 first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we
1230 talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its
1231 red eyes at us -- as Richard said -- like a drowsy old Chancery lion.
     
1232 We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag
1233 wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a
1234 drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel
1235 in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that
1236 the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a
1237 bustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had
1238 risen and his lordship was in the next room.
     
1239 The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and
1240 requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next
1241 room, Mr. Kenge first, with my darling -- it is so natural to me now
1242 that I can't help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and
1243 sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship,
1244 whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another
1245 chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was
1246 both courtly and kind.
     
1247 The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship's
1248 table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the
1249 leaves.
     
1250 "Miss Clare," said the Lord Chancellor. "Miss Ada Clare?"
     
1251 Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near
1252 him. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see
1253 in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young
1254 creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord
1255 High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the
1256 love and pride of parents.
     
1257 "The Jarndyce in question," said the Lord Chancellor, still turning
1258 over leaves, "is Jarndyce of Bleak House."
     
1259 "Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
     
1260 "A dreary name," said the Lord Chancellor.
     
1261 "But not a dreary place at present, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
     
1262 "And Bleak House," said his lordship, "is in -- "
     
1263 "Hertfordshire, my lord."
     
1264 "Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?" said his lordship.
     
1265 "He is not, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
     
1266 A pause.
     
1267 "Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?" said the Lord Chancellor,
1268 glancing towards him.
     
1269 Richard bowed and stepped forward.
     
1270 "Hum!" said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.
     
1271 "Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," Mr. Kenge observed in a low
1272 voice, "if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable
1273 companion for -- "
     
1274 "For Mr. Richard Carstone?" I thought (but I am not quite sure) I
1275 heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile.
     
1276 "For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson."
     
1277 His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy
1278 very graciously.
     
1279 "Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?"
     
1280 "No, my lord."
     
1281 Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His
1282 lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or
1283 thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again
1284 until we were going away.
     
1285 Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the
1286 door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can't help
1287 it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a
1288 little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had
1289 well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she
1290 would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why
1291 she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and
1292 then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone, not seated,
1293 but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if
1294 he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to
1295 the candour of a boy.
     
1296 "Very well!" said his lordship aloud. "I shall make the order. Mr.
1297 Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge," and this
1298 was when he looked at me, "a very good companion for the young lady,
1299 and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the
1300 circumstances admit."
     
1301 He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to
1302 him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost
1303 no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.
     
1304 When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go
1305 back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the
1306 Lord Chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.
     
1307 "Well!" said Richard Carstone. "THAT'S over! And where do we go next,
1308 Miss Summerson?"
     
1309 "Don't you know?" I said.
     
1310 "Not in the least," said he.
     
1311 "And don't YOU know, my love?" I asked Ada.
     
1312 "No!" said she. "Don't you?"
     
1313 "Not at all!" said I.
     
1314 We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the
1315 children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed
1316 bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us
1317 with an air of great ceremony.
     
1318 "Oh!" said she. "The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to
1319 have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty
1320 when they find themselves in this place, and don't know what's to
1321 come of it."
     
1322 "Mad!" whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.
     
1323 "Right! Mad, young gentleman," she returned so quickly that he was
1324 quite abashed. "I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,"
1325 curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. "I had youth
1326 and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of
1327 the three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court
1328 regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
1329 Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in
1330 the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray
1331 accept my blessing."
     
1332 As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady,
1333 that we were much obliged to her.
     
1334 "Ye-es!" she said mincingly. "I imagine so. And here is Conversation
1335 Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?"
     
1336 "Quite well, quite well! Now don't be troublesome, that's a good
1337 soul!" said Mr. Kenge, leading the way back.
     
1338 "By no means," said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me.
1339 "Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both -- which is
1340 not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
1341 Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!"
     
1342 She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but
1343 we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still
1344 with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, "Youth. And
1345 hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray
1346 accept my blessing!"
     
     
     
     
1347 CHAPTER IV
     
1348 Telescopic Philanthropy
     
     
1349 We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his
1350 room, at Mrs. Jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said he took it
1351 for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was.
     
1352 "I really don't, sir," I returned. "Perhaps Mr. Carstone -- or Miss
1353 Clare -- "
     
1354 But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. "In-deed! Mrs.
1355 Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and
1356 casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs.
1357 Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of
1358 character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted
1359 herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times
1360 and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the
1361 subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the
1362 coffee berry -- AND the natives -- and the happy settlement, on the banks
1363 of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr.
1364 Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely
1365 to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists,
1366 has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby."
     
1367 Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.
     
1368 "And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard.
     
1369 "Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is -- a -- I don't know that I can
1370 describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of
1371 Mrs. Jellyby."
     
1372 "A nonentity, sir?" said Richard with a droll look.
     
1373 "I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge gravely. "I can't say that,
1374 indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my
1375 knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very
1376 superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged -- merged -- in the more
1377 shining qualities of his wife." Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that
1378 as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and
1379 tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already,
1380 Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would
1381 be at Mrs. Jellyby's to convey us out of town early in the forenoon
1382 of to-morrow.
     
1383 He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in.
1384 Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss
1385 Summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been "sent round."
1386 Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting
1387 to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
     
1388 "Then it only remains," said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for
1389 me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the
1390 arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss
1391 Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the
1392 (glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr.
1393 Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all
1394 concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there."
     
1395 "Where IS 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs.
     
1396 "No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies Inn, you know."
     
1397 "I can't say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am
1398 strange in London."
     
1399 "Only round the corner," said Mr. Guppy. "We just twist up Chancery
1400 Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes' time,
1401 as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain't
1402 it, miss?" He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
     
1403 "The fog is very dense indeed!" said I.
     
1404 "Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," said Mr. Guppy, putting
1405 up the steps. "On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss,
1406 judging from your appearance."
     
1407 I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at
1408 myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the
1409 box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and
1410 the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our
1411 destination -- a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to
1412 hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people,
1413 principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped,
1414 which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription
1415 JELLYBY.
     
1416 "Don't be frightened!" said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the
1417 coach-window. "One of the young Jellybys been and got his head
1418 through the area railings!"
     
1419 "Oh, poor child," said I; "let me out, if you please!"
     
1420 "Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up
1421 to something," said Mr. Guppy.
     
1422 I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little
1423 unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and
1424 crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a
1425 milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were
1426 endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression
1427 that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after
1428 pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head,
1429 I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could
1430 follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to
1431 push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and
1432 beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I
1433 had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down
1434 through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last
1435 he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to
1436 beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
     
1437 Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in
1438 pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I
1439 don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore
1440 supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised
1441 when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and
1442 going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me,
1443 announced us as, "Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!" We passed
1444 several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid
1445 treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby's presence,
1446 one of the poor little things fell downstairs -- down a whole flight
1447 (as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
     
1448 Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we
1449 could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head
1450 recorded its passage with a bump on every stair -- Richard afterwards
1451 said he counted seven, besides one for the landing -- received us with
1452 perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of
1453 from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious
1454 habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if -- I am quoting Richard
1455 again -- they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
     
1456 "I am very glad indeed," said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, "to
1457 have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr.
1458 Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of
1459 indifference to me."
     
1460 We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where
1461 there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair
1462 but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The
1463 shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair
1464 when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we
1465 could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back
1466 and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of
1467 stay-lace -- like a summer-house.
     
1468 The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great
1469 writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only
1470 very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that
1471 with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we
1472 followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the
1473 back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
     
1474 But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking
1475 though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting
1476 the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was
1477 in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet,
1478 which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden
1479 down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her,
1480 from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right
1481 place.
     
1482 "You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great
1483 office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste
1484 strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing
1485 in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), "you find me,
1486 my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African
1487 project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in
1488 correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals
1489 anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am
1490 happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have
1491 from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating
1492 coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank
1493 of the Niger."
     
1494 As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very
1495 gratifying.
     
1496 "It IS gratifying," said Mrs. Jellyby. "It involves the devotion of
1497 all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it
1498 succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know,
1499 Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts
1500 to Africa."
     
1501 This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I
1502 was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate -- 
     
1503 "The finest climate in the world!" said Mrs. Jellyby.
     
1504 "Indeed, ma'am?"
     
1505 "Certainly. With precaution," said Mrs. Jellyby. "You may go into
1506 Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into
1507 Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with
1508 Africa."
     
1509 I said, "No doubt." I meant as to Holborn.
     
1510 "If you would like," said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers
1511 towards us, "to look over some remarks on that head, and on the
1512 general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I
1513 finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my
1514 amanuensis -- "
     
1515 The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to
1516 our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
     
1517 " -- I shall then have finished for the present," proceeded Mrs.
1518 Jellyby with a sweet smile, "though my work is never done. Where are
1519 you, Caddy?"
     
1520 "'Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs -- '" said Caddy.
     
1521 "'And begs,'" said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, "'to inform him, in
1522 reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project -- ' No,
1523 Peepy! Not on my account!"
     
1524 Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen
1525 downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting
1526 himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his
1527 wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity
1528 most -- the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the
1529 serene composure with which she said everything, "Go along, you
1530 naughty Peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
     
1531 However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I
1532 interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor
1533 Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very
1534 much astonished at it and at Ada's kissing him, but soon fell fast
1535 asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he
1536 was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in
1537 detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the
1538 momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all
1539 other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so
1540 little about it.
     
1541 "Six o'clock!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "And our dinner hour is nominally
1542 (for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss
1543 Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps?
1544 You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad
1545 child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!"
     
1546 I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at
1547 all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada
1548 and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They
1549 were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window
1550 was fastened up with a fork.
     
1551 "You would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said Miss Jellyby,
1552 looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
     
1553 "If it is not being troublesome," said we.
     
1554 "Oh, it's not the trouble," returned Miss Jellyby; "the question is,
1555 if there IS any."
     
1556 The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell
1557 that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half
1558 crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss
1559 Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water,
1560 but they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
     
1561 We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to
1562 get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up
1563 to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my
1564 bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of
1565 noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the
1566 doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my
1567 lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and
1568 though the handle of Ada's went round and round with the greatest
1569 smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door.
1570 Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be
1571 very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red
1572 Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as
1573 mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of
1574 the wolf.
     
1575 When we went downstairs we found a mug with "A Present from Tunbridge
1576 Wells" on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick,
1577 and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage
1578 blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door
1579 with Mrs. Jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that
1580 degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the
1581 windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the
1582 same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so
1583 employed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Richard told us
1584 that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found
1585 the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they
1586 made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
     
1587 Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.
1588 Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient
1589 in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine
1590 cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an
1591 excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was
1592 almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and
1593 dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never
1594 moved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen
1595 in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and
1596 skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will
1597 between them.
     
1598 All through dinner -- which was long, in consequence of such accidents
1599 as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the
1600 handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in
1601 the chin -- Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She
1602 told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and
1603 the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by
1604 her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters
1605 were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies'
1606 meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people
1607 excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives;
1608 others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from
1609 the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and
1610 undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
     
1611 I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in
1612 spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or
1613 bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed
1614 passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively
1615 interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might
1616 have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left
1617 the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of
1618 his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Jellyby;
1619 and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs
1620 for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who
1621 came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also
1622 informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby
1623 with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and matter.
     
1624 This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about
1625 Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to
1626 teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export
1627 trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, "I believe
1628 now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and
1629 fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have
1630 you not?" or, "If my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you
1631 once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one
1632 post-office at one time?" -- always repeating Mrs. Jellyby's answer to
1633 us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in
1634 a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low
1635 spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when
1636 alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind,
1637 but had always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without
1638 saying anything.
     
1639 Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee
1640 all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She
1641 also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to
1642 be -- if I understood it -- the brotherhood of humanity, and gave
1643 utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an
1644 auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the
1645 other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the
1646 drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and
1647 told them in whispers "Puss in Boots" and I don't know what else
1648 until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed.
1649 As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs,
1650 where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst
1651 of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
     
1652 After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in
1653 coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at
1654 last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that
1655 Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I
1656 was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher
1657 pretensions.
     
1658 It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to
1659 bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking
1660 coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
     
1661 "What a strange house!" said Ada when we got upstairs. "How curious
1662 of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
     
1663 "My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I want to understand it,
1664 and I can't understand it at all."
     
1665 "What?" asked Ada with her pretty smile.
     
1666 "All this, my dear," said I. "It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to
1667 take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives -- and
1668 yet -- Peepy and the housekeeping!"
     
1669 Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the
1670 fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her
1671 heart. "You are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so
1672 cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a
1673 home out of even this house."
     
1674 My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised
1675 herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she
1676 made so much of me!
     
1677 "May I ask you a question?" said I when we had sat before the fire a
1678 little while.
     
1679 "Five hundred," said Ada.
     
1680 "Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind
1681 describing him to me?"
     
1682 Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such
1683 laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty,
1684 partly at her surprise.
     
1685 "Esther!" she cried.
     
1686 "My dear!"
     
1687 "You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?"
     
1688 "My dear, I never saw him."
     
1689 "And I never saw him!" returned Ada.
     
1690 Well, to be sure!
     
1691 No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she
1692 remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of
1693 him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said
1694 was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her
1695 cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago -- "a plain, honest
1696 letter," Ada said -- proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on
1697 and telling her that "in time it might heal some of the wounds made
1698 by the miserable Chancery suit." She had replied, gratefully
1699 accepting his proposal. Richard had received a similar letter and had
1700 made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Jarndyce once, but only
1701 once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when
1702 they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them,
1703 that he recollected him as "a bluff, rosy fellow." This was the
1704 utmost description Ada could give me.
     
1705 It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained
1706 before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and
1707 wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long
1708 ago. I don't know where my thoughts had wandered when they were
1709 recalled by a tap at the door.
     
1710 I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a
1711 broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in
1712 the other.
     
1713 "Good night!" she said very sulkily.
     
1714 "Good night!" said I.
     
1715 "May I come in?" she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same
1716 sulky way.
     
1717 "Certainly," said I. "Don't wake Miss Clare."
     
1718 She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle
1719 finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over
1720 the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very
1721 gloomy.
     
1722 "I wish Africa was dead!" she said on a sudden.
     
1723 I was going to remonstrate.
     
1724 "I do!" she said "Don't talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and
1725 detest it. It's a beast!"
     
1726 I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her
1727 head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be
1728 cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but
1729 presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed
1730 where Ada lay.
     
1731 "She is very pretty!" she said with the same knitted brow and in the
1732 same uncivil manner.
     
1733 I assented with a smile.
     
1734 "An orphan. Ain't she?"
     
1735 "Yes."
     
1736 "But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and
1737 sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes,
1738 and needlework, and everything?"
     
1739 "No doubt," said I.
     
1740 "I can't," she returned. "I can't do anything hardly, except write.
1741 I'm always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of
1742 yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing
1743 else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very
1744 fine, I dare say!"
     
1745 I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my
1746 chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt
1747 towards her.
     
1748 "It's disgraceful," she said. "You know it is. The whole house is
1749 disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I'M disgraceful. Pa's
1750 miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks -- she's always drinking.
1751 It's a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn't
1752 smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner;
1753 you know it was!"
     
1754 "My dear, I don't know it," said I.
     
1755 "You do," she said very shortly. "You shan't say you don't. You do!"
     
1756 "Oh, my dear!" said I. "If you won't let me speak -- "
     
1757 "You're speaking now. You know you are. Don't tell stories, Miss
1758 Summerson."
     
1759 "My dear," said I, "as long as you won't hear me out -- "
     
1760 "I don't want to hear you out."
     
1761 "Oh, yes, I think you do," said I, "because that would be so very
1762 unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did
1763 not come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt what you tell me, and I
1764 am sorry to hear it."
     
1765 "You needn't make a merit of that," said she.
     
1766 "No, my dear," said I. "That would be very foolish."
     
1767 She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still
1768 with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came
1769 softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving
1770 in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it
1771 better not to speak.
     
1772 "I wish I was dead!" she broke out. "I wish we were all dead. It
1773 would be a great deal better for us."
     
1774 In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her
1775 face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I
1776 comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she
1777 wanted to stay there!
     
1778 "You used to teach girls," she said, "If you could only have taught
1779 me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like
1780 you so much!"
     
1781 I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a
1782 ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold
1783 my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell
1784 asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest
1785 on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and
1786 all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I
1787 was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes
1788 closed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they
1789 became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the
1790 sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading
1791 friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now
1792 it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now
1793 some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I
1794 was no one.
     
1795 The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my
1796 eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon
1797 me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and
1798 cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut
1799 them all.
     
     
     
     
1800 CHAPTER V
     
1801 A Morning Adventure
     
     
1802 Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed
1803 heavy -- I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that
1804 they would have made midsummer sunshine dim -- I was sufficiently
1805 forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and
1806 sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part
1807 of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.
     
1808 "Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a
1809 chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.
1810 As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has
1811 what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the
1812 loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there
1813 isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you
1814 must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to
1815 bed."
     
1816 "I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to
1817 go out."
     
1818 "If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my
1819 things on."
     
1820 Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to
1821 Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that
1822 he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed
1823 again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at
1824 me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never
1825 could again be, so astonished in his life -- looking very miserable
1826 also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep
1827 as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such
1828 a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely
1829 to notice it.
     
1830 What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting
1831 myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found
1832 Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room,
1833 which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick,
1834 throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as
1835 we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so.
1836 Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been
1837 left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over
1838 the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings;
1839 the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out
1840 of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us,
1841 that she had been to see what o'clock it was.
     
1842 But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and
1843 down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see
1844 us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he
1845 took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention
1846 that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I
1847 really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told
1848 me so.
     
1849 "Where would you wish to go?" she asked.
     
1850 "Anywhere, my dear," I replied.
     
1851 "Anywhere's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
     
1852 "Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.
     
1853 She then walked me on very fast.
     
1854 "I don't care!" she said. "Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I
1855 say I don't care -- but if he was to come to our house with his great,
1856 shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as
1857 Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he
1858 and Ma make of themselves!"
     
1859 "My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the
1860 vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. "Your duty as a child -- "
     
1861 "Oh! Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty
1862 as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then
1863 let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their
1864 affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I
1865 shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!"
     
1866 She walked me on faster yet.
     
1867 "But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and
1868 I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any
1869 stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma
1870 talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the
1871 patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and
1872 contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!"
     
1873 I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young
1874 gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the
1875 disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada
1876 coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run
1877 a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked
1878 moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and
1879 varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and
1880 fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy
1881 preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping
1882 out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly
1883 groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
     
1884 "So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.
1885 "We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to
1886 our place of meeting yesterday, and -- by the Great Seal, here's the
1887 old lady again!"
     
1888 Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and
1889 smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, "The wards
1890 in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"
     
1891 "You are out early, ma'am," said I as she curtsied to me.
     
1892 "Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It's
1893 retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,"
1894 said the old lady mincingly. "The business of the day requires a
1895 great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to
1896 follow."
     
1897 "Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm
1898 tighter through her own.
     
1899 The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for
1900 herself directly.
     
1901 "A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend
1902 court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing
1903 another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the old lady,
1904 recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low
1905 curtsy.
     
1906 Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,
1907 good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the
1908 suit.
     
1909 "Ha!" said the old lady. "She does not expect a judgment? She will
1910 still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of
1911 Lincoln's Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the
1912 summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater
1913 part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long
1914 vacation exceedingly long, don't you?"
     
1915 We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
     
1916 "When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more
1917 flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's
1918 court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth
1919 seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see
1920 my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and
1921 beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a
1922 visit from either."
     
1923 She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned
1924 Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and
1925 looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and
1926 all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she
1927 continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our
1928 strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling
1929 condescension, that she lived close by.
     
1930 It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we
1931 had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she
1932 was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady
1933 stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some
1934 courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said,
1935 "This is my lodging. Pray walk up!"
     
1936 She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND
1937 BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE
1938 STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill
1939 at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In
1940 another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF
1941 BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.
1942 In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything
1943 seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the
1944 window were quantities of dirty bottles -- blacking bottles, medicine
1945 bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine
1946 bottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the
1947 shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal
1948 neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and
1949 disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles.
1950 There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the
1951 door, labelled "Law Books, all at 9d." Some of the inscriptions I
1952 have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen
1953 in Kenge and Carboy's office and the letters I had so long received
1954 from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having
1955 nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a
1956 respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to
1957 execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr.
1958 Krook, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red,
1959 hanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old
1960 crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared
1961 law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which
1962 there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once
1963 belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices. The
1964 litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged
1965 wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might
1966 have been counsellors' bands and gowns torn up. One had only to
1967 fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking
1968 in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very
1969 clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
     
1970 As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides
1971 by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a couple
1972 of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern
1973 that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in
1974 the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was
1975 short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between
1976 his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth
1977 as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so
1978 frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin
1979 that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of
1980 snow.
     
1981 "Hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door. "Have you anything to
1982 sell?"
     
1983 We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been
1984 trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her
1985 pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the pleasure
1986 of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for
1987 time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so
1988 fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would
1989 walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her
1990 harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired,
1991 that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to
1992 comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when
1993 the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, "Aye, aye! Please
1994 her! It won't take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the
1995 shop if t'other door's out of order!" we all went in, stimulated by
1996 Richard's laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.
     
1997 "My landlord, Krook," said the little old lady, condescending to him
1998 from her lofty station as she presented him to us. "He is called
1999 among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the
2000 Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh,
2001 I assure you he is very odd!"
     
2002 She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with
2003 her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse
2004 him, "For he is a little -- you know -- M!" said the old lady with great
2005 stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.
     
2006 "It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern, "that
2007 they call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why
2008 do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?"
     
2009 "I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard rather carelessly.
     
2010 "You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they -- Hi!
2011 Here's lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but
2012 none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!"
     
2013 "That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving of
2014 his having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand. "You
2015 can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty."
     
2016 The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my
2017 attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably
2018 beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the
2019 little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said
2020 she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook
2021 shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.
     
2022 "You see, I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the
2023 lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY
2024 know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's
2025 why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many
2026 old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust
2027 and must and cobwebs. And all's fish that comes to my net. And I
2028 can't abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my
2029 neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to
2030 have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on
2031 about me. That's the way I've got the ill name of Chancery. I don't
2032 mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day,
2033 when he sits in the Inn. He don't notice me, but I notice him.
2034 There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi,
2035 Lady Jane!"
     
2036 A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder
2037 and startled us all.
     
2038 "Hi! Show 'em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!" said her master.
     
2039 The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish
2040 claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.
     
2041 "She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old man.
2042 "I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was
2043 offered to me. It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn't
2044 have it stripped off! THAT warn't like Chancery practice though, says
2045 you!"
     
2046 He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in
2047 the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his
2048 hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him
2049 before passing out, "That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are
2050 tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare
2051 myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the
2052 wards in Jarndyce."
     
2053 "Jarndyce!" said the old man with a start.
     
2054 "Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook," returned his lodger.
     
2055 "Hi!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and
2056 with a wider stare than before. "Think of it!"
     
2057 He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that
2058 Richard said, "Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about
2059 the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other
2060 Chancellor!"
     
2061 "Yes," said the old man abstractedly. "Sure! YOUR name now will be -- "
     
2062 "Richard Carstone."
     
2063 "Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his
2064 forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a
2065 separate finger. "Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of
2066 Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."
     
2067 "He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!" said
2068 Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
     
2069 "Aye!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. "Yes!
2070 Tom Jarndyce -- you'll excuse me, being related; but he was never known
2071 about court by any other name, and was as well known there as -- she is
2072 now," nodding slightly at his lodger. "Tom Jarndyce was often in
2073 here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause
2074 was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling
2075 'em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. 'For,' says he, 'it's
2076 being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow
2077 fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by
2078 drops; it's going mad by grains.' He was as near making away with
2079 himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be."
     
2080 We listened with horror.
     
2081 "He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an
2082 imaginary track along the shop, "on the day he did it -- the whole
2083 neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a
2084 certainty sooner or later -- he come in at the door that day, and
2085 walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and
2086 asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch
2087 him a pint of wine. 'For,' says he, 'Krook, I am much depressed; my
2088 cause is on again, and I think I'm nearer judgment than I ever was.'
2089 I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him to go to the
2090 tavern over the way there, t'other side my lane (I mean Chancery
2091 Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him,
2092 comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company
2093 with him. I hadn't hardly got back here when I heard a shot go
2094 echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out -- neighbours
2095 ran out -- twenty of us cried at once, 'Tom Jarndyce!'"
     
2096 The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern,
2097 blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.
     
2098 "We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure,
2099 how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the
2100 cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of
2101 'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they
2102 hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they
2103 had -- Oh, dear me! -- nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of
2104 it by any chance!"
     
2105 Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less
2106 pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no
2107 party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock
2108 to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the
2109 minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another
2110 uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor
2111 half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise,
2112 she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way
2113 upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior
2114 creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was
2115 "a little M, you know!"
     
2116 She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which
2117 she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her
2118 principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there.
2119 She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the
2120 moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the
2121 scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from
2122 books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and
2123 some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, "containing documents," as
2124 she informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and
2125 I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a
2126 shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so
2127 forth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in
2128 her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had
2129 understood before.
     
2130 "Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the
2131 greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very
2132 much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I
2133 am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of
2134 attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my
2135 days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights
2136 long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course,
2137 unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate.
2138 I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on
2139 a superior footing. At present, I don't mind confessing to the wards
2140 in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult
2141 to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have
2142 felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse
2143 the introduction of such mean topics."
     
2144 She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and
2145 called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some
2146 containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and
2147 goldfinches -- I should think at least twenty.
     
2148 "I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object
2149 that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of
2150 restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es!
2151 They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so
2152 short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the
2153 whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know,
2154 whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be
2155 free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"
     
2156 Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a
2157 reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no
2158 one but herself was present.
     
2159 "Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure
2160 you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or
2161 Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and
2162 senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"
     
2163 Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took the
2164 opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the
2165 chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine
2166 the birds.
     
2167 "I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for
2168 (you'll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that
2169 they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my
2170 mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I'll tell
2171 you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they
2172 shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth," a smile and
2173 curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile and curtsy.
2174 "There! We'll let in the full light."
     
2175 The birds began to stir and chirp.
     
2176 "I cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady -- the room
2177 was close, and would have been the better for it -- "because the cat
2178 you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She
2179 crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have
2180 discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is
2181 sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In
2182 consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly
2183 and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat,
2184 but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her
2185 from the door."
     
2186 Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was
2187 half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to
2188 an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly
2189 took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the
2190 table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On
2191 our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she
2192 opened the door to attend us downstairs.
     
2193 "With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I
2194 should be there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he
2195 might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he
2196 WILL mention it the first thing this morning."
     
2197 She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the
2198 whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had
2199 bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a
2200 little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous
2201 stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door
2202 there.
     
2203 "The only other lodger," she now whispered in explanation, "a
2204 law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to
2205 the devil. I don't know what he can have done with the money. Hush!"
     
2206 She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,
2207 and repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe as though even the
2208 sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.
     
2209 Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it
2210 on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of
2211 waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working
2212 hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece
2213 of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or
2214 bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.
     
2215 Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone
2216 by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and
2217 chalked the letter J upon the wall -- in a very curious manner,
2218 beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was
2219 a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any
2220 clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's office would have made.
     
2221 "Can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance.
     
2222 "Surely," said I. "It's very plain."
     
2223 "What is it?"
     
2224 "J."
     
2225 With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out
2226 and turned an "a" in its place (not a capital letter this time), and
2227 said, "What's that?"
     
2228 I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter "r," and
2229 asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in
2230 the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the
2231 letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the
2232 wall together.
     
2233 "What does that spell?" he asked me.
     
2234 When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same
2235 rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters
2236 forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also
2237 read; and he laughed again.
     
2238 "Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk. "I have a turn for
2239 copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor
2240 write."
     
2241 He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if
2242 I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite
2243 relieved by Richard's appearing at the door and saying, "Miss
2244 Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.
2245 Don't be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!"
     
2246 I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my
2247 friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave
2248 us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of
2249 yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada
2250 and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back
2251 and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles,
2252 looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail
2253 sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather.
     
2254 "Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard with a
2255 sigh. "Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery!"
     
2256 "It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned Ada.
2257 "I am grieved that I should be the enemy -- as I suppose I am -- of a
2258 great number of relations and others, and that they should be my
2259 enemies -- as I suppose they are -- and that we should all be ruining one
2260 another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and
2261 discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right
2262 somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to
2263 find out through all these years where it is."
     
2264 "Ah, cousin!" said Richard. "Strange, indeed! All this wasteful,
2265 wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court
2266 yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of
2267 the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both
2268 together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were
2269 neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could
2270 possibly be either. But at all events, Ada -- I may call you Ada?"
     
2271 "Of course you may, cousin Richard."
     
2272 "At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on US.
2273 We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman,
2274 and it can't divide us now!"
     
2275 "Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada gently.
     
2276 Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. I
2277 smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very
2278 pleasantly.
     
2279 In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in the
2280 course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast
2281 straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs.
2282 Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she
2283 presented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly
2284 occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a heavy
2285 correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her
2286 (she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled about, and
2287 notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were
2288 perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an hour
2289 and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The
2290 equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both his absence and
2291 his restoration to the family circle surprised us all.
     
2292 She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was
2293 fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At
2294 one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our
2295 luggage. Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good
2296 friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me
2297 in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps;
2298 Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of
2299 separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate
2300 market in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the
2301 barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered
2302 over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts.
     
     
     
     
2303 CHAPTER VI
     
2304 Quite at Home
     
     
2305 The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went
2306 westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air,
2307 wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy
2308 of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the
2309 pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured
2310 flowers. By and by we began to leave the wonderful city and to
2311 proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a
2312 pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country
2313 road again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers' waggons,
2314 scents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields,
2315 and hedge-rows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before
2316 us and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train
2317 of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding
2318 bells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have
2319 sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around.
     
2320 "The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,"
2321 said Richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What's
2322 the matter?"
     
2323 We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as
2324 the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except
2325 when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a
2326 little shower of bell-ringing.
     
2327 "Our postilion is looking after the waggoner," said Richard, "and the
2328 waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!" The waggoner was
2329 at our coach-door. "Why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added
2330 Richard, looking closely at the man. "He has got your name, Ada, in
2331 his hat!"
     
2332 He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three
2333 small notes -- one addressed to Ada, one to Richard, one to me. These
2334 the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name
2335 aloud first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he
2336 briefly answered, "Master, sir, if you please"; and putting on his
2337 hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened
2338 his music, and went melodiously away.
     
2339 "Is that Mr. Jarndyce's waggon?" said Richard, calling to our
2340 post-boy.
     
2341 "Yes, sir," he replied. "Going to London."
     
2342 We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other and
2343 contained these words in a solid, plain hand.
     
     
2344    I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and
2345    without constraint on either side. I therefore have to
2346    propose that we meet as old friends and take the past for
2347    granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me
2348    certainly, and so my love to you.
     
2349    John Jarndyce
     
     
2350 I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my
2351 companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one
2352 who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so
2353 many years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude
2354 lying too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how
2355 I could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very
2356 difficult indeed.
     
2357 The notes revived in Richard and Ada a general impression that they
2358 both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their
2359 cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he
2360 performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the
2361 most singular expedients and evasions or would even run away. Ada
2362 dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very
2363 little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity
2364 and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see
2365 her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by
2366 the back gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse
2367 led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us
2368 all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did by any
2369 chance diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and
2370 wondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there,
2371 and whether we should see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after
2372 a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him.
2373 All of which we wondered about, over and over again.
     
2374 The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was
2375 generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked
2376 it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got
2377 to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as
2378 they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a
2379 long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the
2380 carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that the
2381 short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came
2382 to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.
     
2383 By that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Richard
2384 confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to
2385 feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me,
2386 whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and
2387 frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the
2388 town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had
2389 for a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was
2390 looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard
2391 holding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon the
2392 open country and the starlight night for our destination. There was a
2393 light sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver,
2394 pointing to it with his whip and crying, "That's Bleak House!" put
2395 his horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill
2396 though it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our
2397 heads like spray from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light,
2398 presently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned
2399 into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was beaming
2400 brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned
2401 house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep
2402 leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the
2403 sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of
2404 some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking
2405 and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our
2406 own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.
     
2407 "Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see
2408 you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!"
     
2409 The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable
2410 voice had one of his arms round Ada's waist and the other round mine,
2411 and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall
2412 into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he
2413 kissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side
2414 on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been
2415 at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.
     
2416 "Now, Rick!" said he. "I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is
2417 as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home.
2418 Warm yourself!"
     
2419 Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect
2420 and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that
2421 rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce's suddenly
2422 disappearing), "You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to
2423 you!" laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire.
     
2424 "And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my
2425 dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.
     
2426 While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say
2427 with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick
2428 face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered
2429 iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was
2430 upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to
2431 us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that
2432 I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his
2433 manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman
2434 in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to
2435 Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my
2436 life as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and
2437 appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I
2438 thought we had lost him.
     
2439 However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me
2440 what I thought of Mrs. Jellyby.
     
2441 "She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir," I said.
     
2442 "Nobly!" returned Mr. Jarndyce. "But you answer like Ada." Whom I had
2443 not heard. "You all think something else, I see."
     
2444 "We rather thought," said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who
2445 entreated me with their eyes to speak, "that perhaps she was a little
2446 unmindful of her home."
     
2447 "Floored!" cried Mr. Jarndyce.
     
2448 I was rather alarmed again.
     
2449 "Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent
2450 you there on purpose."
     
2451 "We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin
2452 with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are
2453 overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted
2454 for them."
     
2455 "The little Jellybys," said Richard, coming to my relief, "are
2456 really -- I can't help expressing myself strongly, sir -- in a devil of a
2457 state."
     
2458 "She means well," said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. "The wind's in the
2459 east."
     
2460 "It was in the north, sir, as we came down," observed Richard.
     
2461 "My dear Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, "I'll take an
2462 oath it's either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of
2463 an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in
2464 the east."
     
2465 "Rheumatism, sir?" said Richard.
     
2466 "I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell -- I
2467 had my doubts about 'em -- are in a -- oh, Lord, yes, it's easterly!"
2468 said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
2469 He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering
2470 these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing
2471 his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so
2472 whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with
2473 him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an
2474 arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was
2475 leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again.
     
2476 "Those little Jellybys. Couldn't you -- didn't you -- now, if it had
2477 rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of
2478 that sort!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
2479 "Oh, cousin -- " Ada hastily began.
     
2480 "Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is
2481 better."
     
2482 "Then, cousin John -- " Ada laughingly began again.
     
2483 "Ha, ha! Very good indeed!" said Mr. Jarndyce with great enjoyment.
2484 "Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?"
     
2485 "It did better than that. It rained Esther."
     
2486 "Aye?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "What did Esther do?"
     
2487 "Why, cousin John," said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and
2488 shaking her head at me across him -- for I wanted her to be
2489 quiet -- "Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed
2490 them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them
2491 quiet, bought them keepsakes" -- My dear girl! I had only gone out with
2492 Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse! -- "and,
2493 cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and
2494 was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won't be
2495 contradicted, Esther dear! You know, you know, it's true!"
     
2496 The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John and kissed me,
2497 and then looking up in his face, boldly said, "At all events, cousin
2498 John, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me." I felt
2499 as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn't.
     
2500 "Where did you say the wind was, Rick?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
     
2501 "In the north as we came down, sir."
     
2502 "You are right. There's no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come,
2503 girls, come and see your home!"
     
2504 It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and
2505 down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more
2506 rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is
2507 a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you
2508 find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice
2509 windows and green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we
2510 entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that had
2511 more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a chimney
2512 (there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure
2513 white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was
2514 blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming
2515 little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was
2516 henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went up three
2517 steps into Ada's bedroom, which had a fine broad window commanding a
2518 beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath
2519 the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a
2520 spring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of
2521 this room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best
2522 rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of
2523 shallow steps with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its
2524 length, down into the hall. But if instead of going out at Ada's door
2525 you came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had
2526 entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an
2527 unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages,
2528 with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu
2529 chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in
2530 every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage,
2531 and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From
2532 these you came on Richard's room, which was part library, part
2533 sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound
2534 of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval
2535 of passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year
2536 round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture
2537 standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath
2538 gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into
2539 another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could
2540 hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told
2541 to "Hold up" and "Get over," as they slipped about very much on the
2542 uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every
2543 room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by
2544 half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back
2545 there or had ever got out of it.
     
2546 The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as
2547 pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers -- in chintz
2548 and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff
2549 courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool
2550 for greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room
2551 was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of
2552 surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real
2553 trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with
2554 gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of
2555 preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room
2556 there were oval engravings of the months -- ladies haymaking in short
2557 waists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged
2558 noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October.
2559 Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but
2560 were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of
2561 mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young
2562 bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As
2563 substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a
2564 complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty;
2565 and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an
2566 alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and
2567 tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles
2568 on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They
2569 agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the
2570 whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a
2571 drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of
2572 rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows,
2573 softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the
2574 starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its
2575 hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with
2576 the face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and
2577 just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything
2578 we heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House.
     
2579 "I am glad you like it," said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us
2580 round again to Ada's sitting-room. "It makes no pretensions, but it
2581 is a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such
2582 bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner.
2583 There's no one here but the finest creature upon earth -- a child."
     
2584 "More children, Esther!" said Ada.
     
2585 "I don't mean literally a child," pursued Mr. Jarndyce; "not a child
2586 in years. He is grown up -- he is at least as old as I am -- but in
2587 simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless
2588 inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child."
     
2589 We felt that he must be very interesting.
     
2590 "He knows Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Jarndyce. "He is a musical man, an
2591 amateur, but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an
2592 amateur, but might have been a professional. He is a man of
2593 attainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in
2594 his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his
2595 family; but he don't care -- he's a child!"
     
2596 "Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired
2597 Richard.
     
2598 "Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But
2599 he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to
2600 look after HIM. He is a child, you know!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
2601 "And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired
2602 Richard.
     
2603 "Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance
2604 suddenly falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are
2605 not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have
2606 tumbled up somehow or other. The wind's getting round again, I am
2607 afraid. I feel it rather!"
     
2608 Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.
     
2609 "It IS exposed," said Mr. Jarndyce. "No doubt that's the cause. Bleak
2610 House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!"
     
2611 Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a
2612 few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid
2613 (not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not
2614 seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it,
2615 all labelled.
     
2616 "For you, miss, if you please," said she.
     
2617 "For me?" said I.
     
2618 "The housekeeping keys, miss."
     
2619 I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her
2620 own part, "I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss.
2621 Miss Summerson, if I don't deceive myself?"
     
2622 "Yes," said I. "That is my name."
     
2623 "The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the
2624 cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning,
2625 I was to show you the presses and things they belong to."
     
2626 I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone,
2627 stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust.
2628 Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I
2629 showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been
2630 insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be
2631 sure, that it was the dear girl's kindness, but I liked to be so
2632 pleasantly cheated.
     
2633 When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was
2634 standing before the fire telling Richard how fond he used to be, in
2635 his school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature with a
2636 rather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there
2637 was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and
2638 spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was
2639 fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr.
2640 Jarndyce and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked
2641 younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a
2642 damaged young man than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an
2643 easy negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair
2644 carelessly disposed, and his neckkerchief loose and flowing, as I
2645 have seen artists paint their own portraits) which I could not
2646 separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some
2647 unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like
2648 the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the
2649 usual road of years, cares, and experiences.
     
2650 I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole had been educated
2651 for the medical profession and had once lived, in his professional
2652 capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however,
2653 that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and
2654 measures and had never known anything about them (except that they
2655 disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the
2656 requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for
2657 detail. And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to
2658 bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found
2659 lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making
2660 fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. The prince, at last,
2661 objecting to this, "in which," said Mr. Skimpole, in the frankest
2662 manner, "he was perfectly right," the engagement terminated, and Mr.
2663 Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) "nothing to live
2664 upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with
2665 rosy cheeks." His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good
2666 friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several
2667 openings in life, but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of
2668 the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he had no idea of
2669 time, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which
2670 he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and
2671 never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and
2672 here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of
2673 making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond
2674 of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. THAT wasn't
2675 much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music,
2676 mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of
2677 Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a
2678 mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to
2679 the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue
2680 coats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after
2681 glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only -- let
2682 Harold Skimpole live!"
     
2683 All this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the
2684 utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious
2685 candour -- speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair,
2686 as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had
2687 his singularities but still had his claims too, which were the
2688 general business of the community and must not be slighted. He was
2689 quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time in
2690 endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had
2691 thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far
2692 from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was
2693 free of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so
2694 very clear about it himself.
     
2695 "I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole in the same light way.
2696 "Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent
2697 house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it and
2698 alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient
2699 possession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility.
2700 My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. We
2701 have been mentioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a
2702 strong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself
2703 into objects with surprising ardour! I don't regret that I have not a
2704 strong will and an immense power of business detail to throw myself
2705 into objects with surprising ardour. I can admire her without envy. I
2706 can sympathize with the objects. I can dream of them. I can lie down
2707 on the grass -- in fine weather -- and float along an African river,
2708 embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence and
2709 sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I
2710 were there. I don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but
2711 it's all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven's sake,
2712 having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the
2713 world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to
2714 let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other,
2715 like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!"
     
2716 It was plain enough that Mr. Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the
2717 adjuration. Mr. Skimpole's general position there would have rendered
2718 it so without the addition of what he presently said.
     
2719 "It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr.
2720 Skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I
2721 envy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel
2722 in myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as
2723 if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportunity of
2724 enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I
2725 can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of
2726 increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a
2727 benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting
2728 me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for
2729 details and worldly affairs when it leads to such pleasant
2730 consequences? I don't regret it therefore."
     
2731 Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what
2732 they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce
2733 than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether
2734 it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was
2735 probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should
2736 so desire to escape the gratitude of others.
     
2737 We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging
2738 qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the
2739 first time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be
2740 so exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were
2741 naturally pleased, for similar reasons, and considered it no common
2742 privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The
2743 more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with
2744 his fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way
2745 of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, "I am
2746 a child, you know! You are designing people compared with me" (he
2747 really made me consider myself in that light) "but I am gay and
2748 innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!" the effect was
2749 absolutely dazzling.
     
2750 He was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for
2751 what was beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that
2752 alone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea and Ada was
2753 touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to
2754 her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and
2755 sat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved
2756 him.
     
2757 "She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those
2758 blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer
2759 morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call
2760 such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an
2761 orphan. She is the child of the universe."
     
2762 Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us with his hands behind him
2763 and an attentive smile upon his face.
     
2764 "The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I
2765 am afraid."
     
2766 "Oh! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly.
     
2767 "I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
2768 "Well!" cried Mr. Skimpole. "You know the world (which in your sense
2769 is the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your
2770 way. But if I had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no
2771 brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be
2772 strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no
2773 spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change
2774 should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed
2775 near it!"
     
2776 Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been
2777 really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment,
2778 glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a
2779 benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again,
2780 which has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they
2781 were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by
2782 the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending
2783 down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by
2784 strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady
2785 fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the
2786 notes so softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the
2787 distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future
2788 and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present seemed
2789 expressed in the whole picture.
     
2790 But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I
2791 recall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast
2792 in respect of meaning and intention between the silent look directed
2793 that way and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though
2794 Mr. Jarndyce's glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on
2795 me, I felt as if in that moment he confided to me -- and knew that he
2796 confided to me and that I received the confidence -- his hope that Ada
2797 and Richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship.
     
2798 Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was
2799 a composer -- had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it -- and
2800 played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little
2801 concert, in which Richard -- who was enthralled by Ada's singing and
2802 told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were
2803 written -- and Mr. Jarndyce, and I were the audience. After a little
2804 while I missed first Mr. Skimpole and afterwards Richard, and while I
2805 was thinking how could Richard stay away so long and lose so much,
2806 the maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, "If
2807 you please, miss, could you spare a minute?"
     
2808 When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her
2809 hands, "Oh, if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come
2810 upstairs to Mr. Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!"
     
2811 "Took?" said I.
     
2812 "Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.
     
2813 I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but
2814 of course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and
2815 collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to
2816 consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove
2817 to be a fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where,
2818 to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched
2819 upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before
2820 the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great
2821 embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat,
2822 with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was
2823 wiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief.
     
2824 "Miss Summerson," said Richard hurriedly, "I am glad you are come.
2825 You will be able to advise us. Our friend Mr. Skimpole -- don't be
2826 alarmed! -- is arrested for debt."
     
2827 "And really, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mr. Skimpole with his
2828 agreeable candour, "I never was in a situation in which that
2829 excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which
2830 anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter
2831 of an hour in your society, was more needed."
     
2832 The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave
2833 such a very loud snort that he startled me.
     
2834 "Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr. Skimpole.
     
2835 "My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I
2836 don't know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were
2837 mentioned."
     
2838 "It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," observed
2839 the stranger. "That's wot it is."
     
2840 "And it sounds -- somehow it sounds," said Mr. Skimpole, "like a small
2841 sum?"
     
2842 The strange man said nothing but made another snort. It was such a
2843 powerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.
     
2844 "Mr. Skimpole," said Richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my
2845 cousin Jarndyce because he has lately -- I think, sir, I understood you
2846 that you had lately -- "
     
2847 "Oh, yes!" returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. "Though I forgot how much
2848 it was and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again, but I
2849 have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help,
2850 that I would rather," and he looked at Richard and me, "develop
2851 generosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower."
     
2852 "What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?" said Richard,
2853 aside.
     
2854 I ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen
2855 if the money were not produced.
     
2856 "Jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into
2857 his hat, which was on the floor at his feet. "Or Coavinses."
     
2858 "May I ask, sir, what is -- "
     
2859 "Coavinses?" said the strange man. "A 'ouse."
     
2860 Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular
2861 thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Skimpole's.
2862 He observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I may
2863 venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had
2864 entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.
     
2865 "I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that
2866 being parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large
2867 amount of property, Mr. Richard or his beautiful cousin, or both,
2868 could sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of
2869 undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don't know what the business name
2870 of it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their
2871 power that would settle this?"
     
2872 "Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
     
2873 "Really?" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who is
2874 no judge of these things!"
     
2875 "Odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on
2876 it!"
     
2877 "Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole
2878 gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on
2879 the fly-leaf of a book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can
2880 separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from
2881 the pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private
2882 life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal
2883 of poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious."
     
2884 The stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in
2885 acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he
2886 did not express to me.
     
2887 "Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr. Richard," said Mr.
2888 Skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his
2889 drawing with his head on one side, "here you see me utterly incapable
2890 of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free.
2891 The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold
2892 Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"
     
2893 "My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard in a whisper, "I have ten
2894 pounds that I received from Mr. Kenge. I must try what that will do."
     
2895 I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my
2896 quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that
2897 some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any
2898 relation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep
2899 some little money by me that I might not be quite penniless. I told
2900 Richard of my having this little store and having no present need of
2901 it, and I asked him delicately to inform Mr. Skimpole, while I should
2902 be gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his
2903 debt.
     
2904 When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand and seemed quite
2905 touched. Not on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing
2906 and extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal
2907 considerations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our
2908 happiness alone affected him. Richard, begging me, for the greater
2909 grace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with Coavinses (as
2910 Mr. Skimpole now jocularly called him), I counted out the money and
2911 received the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr.
2912 Skimpole.
     
2913 His compliments were so delicately administered that I blushed less
2914 than I might have done and settled with the stranger in the white
2915 coat without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and
2916 shortly said, "Well, then, I'll wish you a good evening, miss.
     
2917 "My friend," said Mr. Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire
2918 after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like
2919 to ask you something, without offence."
     
2920 I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"
     
2921 "Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this
2922 errand?" said Mr. Skimpole.
     
2923 "Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea-time," said Coavinses.
     
2924 "It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"
     
2925 "Not a bit," said Coavinses. "I know'd if you wos missed to-day, you
2926 wouldn't be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds."
     
2927 "But when you came down here," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "it was a fine
2928 day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and
2929 shadows were passing across the fields, the birds were singing."
     
2930 "Nobody said they warn't, in MY hearing," returned Coavinses.
     
2931 "No," observed Mr. Skimpole. "But what did you think upon the road?"
     
2932 "Wot do you mean?" growled Coavinses with an appearance of strong
2933 resentment. "Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to get
2934 for it without thinking. Thinking!" (with profound contempt).
     
2935 "Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "to
2936 this effect: 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine, loves to
2937 hear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows,
2938 loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature's great
2939 cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold
2940 Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only
2941 birthright!' You thought nothing to that effect?"
     
2942 "I -- certainly -- did -- NOT," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly
2943 renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give
2944 adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each
2945 word, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have
2946 dislocated his neck.
     
2947 "Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of
2948 business!" said Mr. Skimpole thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend.
2949 Good night."
     
2950 As our absence had been long enough already to seem strange
2951 downstairs, I returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by the
2952 fireside talking to her cousin John. Mr. Skimpole presently appeared,
2953 and Richard shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged during the
2954 remainder of the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from
2955 Mr. Jarndyce, who was very fond of the game and from whom I wished of
2956 course to learn it as quickly as I could in order that I might be of
2957 the very small use of being able to play when he had no better
2958 adversary. But I thought, occasionally, when Mr. Skimpole played some
2959 fragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and the
2960 violoncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all
2961 effort his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that
2962 Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having
2963 been arrested since dinner and that it was very curious altogether.
     
2964 It was late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven
2965 o'clock, Mr. Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that
2966 the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours
2967 from night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and
2968 his radiant face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us
2969 there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and Richard were
2970 lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs.
2971 Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr.
2972 Jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned.
     
2973 "Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!" he said, rubbing his head
2974 and walking about with his good-humoured vexation. "What's this they
2975 tell me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why
2976 did you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? The
2977 wind's round again. I feel it all over me!"
     
2978 We neither of us quite knew what to answer.
     
2979 "Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are
2980 you out of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you?
2981 How could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it's due east -- must be!"
     
2982 "Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honourable in
2983 me to tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon us -- "
     
2984 "Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!" said Mr.
2985 Jarndyce, giving his head a great rub and stopping short.
     
2986 "Indeed, sir?"
     
2987 "Everybody! And he'll be in the same scrape again next week!" said
2988 Mr. Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his
2989 hand that had gone out. "He's always in the same scrape. He was born
2990 in the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the
2991 newspapers when his mother was confined was 'On Tuesday last, at her
2992 residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son in
2993 difficulties.'"
     
2994 Richard laughed heartily but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to
2995 shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to
2996 your better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope
2997 you will consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do
2998 press me, sir, I shall know I am wrong and will tell you."
     
2999 "Well!" cried Mr. Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent
3000 endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. "I -- here! Take it
3001 away, my dear. I don't know what I am about with it; it's all the
3002 wind -- invariably has that effect -- I won't press you, Rick; you may be
3003 right. But really -- to get hold of you and Esther -- and to squeeze you
3004 like a couple of tender young Saint Michael's oranges! It'll blow a
3005 gale in the course of the night!"
     
3006 He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he
3007 were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again
3008 and vehemently rubbing them all over his head.
     
3009 I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Skimpole,
3010 being in all such matters quite a child -- 
     
3011 "Eh, my dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce, catching at the word.
     
3012 "Being quite a child, sir," said I, "and so different from other
3013 people -- "
     
3014 "You are right!" said Mr. Jarndyce, brightening. "Your woman's wit
3015 hits the mark. He is a child -- an absolute child. I told you he was a
3016 child, you know, when I first mentioned him."
     
3017 Certainly! Certainly! we said.
     
3018 "And he IS a child. Now, isn't he?" asked Mr. Jarndyce, brightening
3019 more and more.
     
3020 He was indeed, we said.
     
3021 "When you come to think of it, it's the height of childishness in
3022 you -- I mean me -- " said Mr. Jarndyce, "to regard him for a moment as a
3023 man. You can't make HIM responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with
3024 designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!"
     
3025 It was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing,
3026 and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible
3027 not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which
3028 was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any
3029 one, that I saw the tears in Ada's eyes, while she echoed his laugh,
3030 and felt them in my own.
     
3031 "Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I am," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to
3032 require reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from
3033 beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling
3034 YOU two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have
3035 thought of YOUR having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds,
3036 it would have been just the same!" said Mr. Jarndyce with his whole
3037 face in a glow.
     
3038 We all confirmed it from our night's experience.
     
3039 "To be sure, to be sure!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "However, Rick, Esther,
3040 and you too, Ada, for I don't know that even your little purse is
3041 safe from his inexperience -- I must have a promise all round that
3042 nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not
3043 even sixpences."
     
3044 We all promised faithfully, Richard with a merry glance at me
3045 touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of
3046 OUR transgressing.
     
3047 "As to Skimpole," said Mr. Jarndyce, "a habitable doll's house with
3048 good board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow
3049 money of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child's sleep by
3050 this time, I suppose; it's time I should take my craftier head to my
3051 more worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!"
     
3052 He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our
3053 candles, and said, "Oh! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I
3054 find it was a false alarm about the wind. It's in the south!" And
3055 went away singing to himself.
     
3056 Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs,
3057 that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the
3058 pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal,
3059 rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or
3060 depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his
3061 eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those
3062 petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that
3063 unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the
3064 stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
     
3065 Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening
3066 to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him
3067 through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr.
3068 Skimpole or in Mrs. Jellyby I could not expect to be able to
3069 reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge.
3070 Neither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with
3071 Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed to receive
3072 concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps,
3073 would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have
3074 persuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother's
3075 house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy
3076 speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to
3077 what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest history -- even as to
3078 the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was
3079 quite gone now.
     
3080 It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was
3081 not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit
3082 and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, "Esther, Esther, Esther!
3083 Duty, my dear!" and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a
3084 shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to
3085 bed.
     
     
     
     
3086 CHAPTER VII
     
3087 The Ghost's Walk
     
     
3088 While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather
3089 down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling -- drip,
3090 drip, drip -- by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement,
3091 the Ghost's Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire
3092 that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being
3093 fine again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination
3094 on the spot, for Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he
3095 were, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in Paris
3096 with my Lady; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon
3097 Chesney Wold.
     
3098 There may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals at Chesney
3099 Wold. The horses in the stables -- the long stables in a barren,
3100 red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a
3101 clock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who
3102 love to perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting -- THEY
3103 may contemplate some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions,
3104 and may be better artists at them than the grooms. The old roan, so
3105 famous for cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the
3106 grated window near his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that
3107 glisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and may
3108 have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out
3109 the next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The
3110 grey, whose place is opposite the door and who with an impatient
3111 rattle of his halter pricks his ears and turns his head so wistfully
3112 when it is opened, and to whom the opener says, "Woa grey, then,
3113 steady! Noabody wants you to-day!" may know it quite as well as the
3114 man. The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen,
3115 stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut
3116 in livelier communication than is held in the servants' hall or at
3117 the Dedlock Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps
3118 corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the corner.
     
3119 So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with his large
3120 head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when the shadows of
3121 the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and leave him
3122 at one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own
3123 house, where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very
3124 much wanting something to worry besides himself and his chain. So
3125 now, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall the house full of
3126 company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, the stables full of
3127 horses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon horses, until
3128 he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is.
3129 Then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the
3130 spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain -- and no family here!" as
3131 he goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn.
     
3132 So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have
3133 their restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has been
3134 very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself -- upstairs,
3135 downstairs, and in my Lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole
3136 country-side, while the raindrops are pattering round their
3137 inactivity. So the rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking
3138 in and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of
3139 the breezy days when their ears are blown about or of those seasons
3140 of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. The turkey in
3141 the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably
3142 Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully
3143 taken from him when he got into the lane among the felled trees,
3144 where there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose, who stoops
3145 to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, if
3146 we only knew it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway
3147 casts its shadow on the ground.
     
3148 Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at
3149 Chesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a
3150 little noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually leads
3151 off to ghosts and mystery.
     
3152 It has rained so hard and rained so long down in Lincolnshire that
3153 Mrs. Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several
3154 times taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that
3155 the drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Rouncewell might have been
3156 sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather
3157 deaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. She is a fine old
3158 lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back and
3159 such a stomacher that if her stays should turn out when she dies to
3160 have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows
3161 her would have cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell
3162 little. The house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she
3163 expresses it, "is what she looks at." She sits in her room (in a side
3164 passage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a
3165 smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round
3166 trees and smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to
3167 play at bowls with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her
3168 mind. She can open it on occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it
3169 is shut up now and lies on the breadth of Mrs. Rouncewell's
3170 iron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep.
     
3171 It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney
3172 Wold without Mrs. Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years.
3173 Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer "fifty year,
3174 three months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if I live
3175 till Tuesday." Mr. Rouncewell died some time before the decease of
3176 the pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took
3177 it with him) in a corner of the churchyard in the park near the
3178 mouldy porch. He was born in the market-town, and so was his young
3179 widow. Her progress in the family began in the time of the last Sir
3180 Leicester and originated in the still-room.
     
3181 The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He
3182 supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual
3183 characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was
3184 born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to
3185 make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned -- would
3186 never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is
3187 an excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so.
3188 He has a great liking for Mrs. Rouncewell; he says she is a most
3189 respectable, creditable woman. He always shakes hands with her when
3190 he comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes away; and if he were
3191 very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run over, or
3192 placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a disadvantage, he
3193 would say if he could speak, "Leave me, and send Mrs. Rouncewell
3194 here!" feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with
3195 anybody else.
     
3196 Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the
3197 younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even
3198 to this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when
3199 she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover
3200 about her in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a
3201 fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second
3202 son would have been provided for at Chesney Wold and would have been
3203 made steward in due season, but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to
3204 constructing steam-engines out of saucepans and setting birds to draw
3205 their own water with the least possible amount of labour, so
3206 assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a
3207 thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to
3208 the wheel and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell
3209 great uneasiness. She felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in
3210 the Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that
3211 general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a
3212 tall chimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young
3213 rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign
3214 of grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model
3215 of a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his
3216 backslidings to the baronet. "Mrs. Rouncewell," said Sir Leicester,
3217 "I can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any
3218 subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him
3219 into some Works. The iron country farther north is, I suppose, the
3220 congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies." Farther north
3221 he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Leicester Dedlock
3222 ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or
3223 ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded
3224 him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and
3225 grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three
3226 nights in the week for unlawful purposes.
     
3227 Nevertheless, Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and
3228 art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto
3229 him Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of his apprenticeship,
3230 and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to
3231 enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture
3232 of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day
3233 in Mrs. Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.
     
3234 "And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I
3235 am glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs. Rouncewell. "You are a fine
3236 young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!" Mrs.
3237 Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.
     
3238 "They say I am like my father, grandmother."
     
3239 "Like him, also, my dear -- but most like your poor uncle George! And
3240 your dear father." Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. "He is
3241 well?"
     
3242 "Thriving, grandmother, in every way."
     
3243 "I am thankful!" Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son but has a
3244 plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable
3245 soldier who had gone over to the enemy.
     
3246 "He is quite happy?" says she.
     
3247 "Quite."
     
3248 "I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways and
3249 has sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows
3250 best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't
3251 understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity
3252 of good company too!"
     
3253 "Grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what a very
3254 pretty girl that was I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?"
     
3255 "Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so
3256 hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She's
3257 an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house already, very
3258 pretty. She lives with me at my table here."
     
3259 "I hope I have not driven her away?"
     
3260 "She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She
3261 is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,"
3262 says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits,
3263 "than it formerly was!"
     
3264 The young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of
3265 experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.
     
3266 "Wheels!" says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears
3267 of her companion. "What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious
3268 sake?"
     
3269 After a short interval, a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-eyed,
3270 dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in -- so fresh in her rosy and
3271 yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on her
3272 hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
     
3273 "What company is this, Rosa?" says Mrs. Rouncewell.
     
3274 "It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house -- yes,
3275 and if you please, I told them so!" in quick reply to a gesture of
3276 dissent from the housekeeper. "I went to the hall-door and told them
3277 it was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the young man who was
3278 driving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this card
3279 to you."
     
3280 "Read it, my dear Watt," says the housekeeper.
     
3281 Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him that they drop it between them
3282 and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is
3283 shyer than before.
     
3284 "Mr. Guppy" is all the information the card yields.
     
3285 "Guppy!" repeats Mrs. Rouncewell, "MR. Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard
3286 of him!"
     
3287 "If you please, he told ME that!" says Rosa. "But he said that he and
3288 the other young gentleman came from London only last night by the
3289 mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten miles off, this
3290 morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard
3291 a great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do
3292 with themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are
3293 lawyers. He says he is not in Mr. Tulkinghorn's office, but he is
3294 sure he may make use of Mr. Tulkinghorn's name if necessary."
3295 Finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long
3296 speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.
     
3297 Now, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place,
3298 and besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Rouncewell's will. The old
3299 lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour,
3300 and dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden
3301 wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The
3302 grandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest,
3303 accompanies him -- though to do him justice, he is exceedingly
3304 unwilling to trouble her.
     
3305 "Much obliged to you, ma'am!" says Mr. Guppy, divesting himself of
3306 his wet dreadnought in the hall. "Us London lawyers don't often get
3307 an out, and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know."
     
3308 The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves
3309 her hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow
3310 Rosa; Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener
3311 goes before to open the shutters.
     
3312 As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and
3313 his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle
3314 about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right
3315 things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression
3316 of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber
3317 that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house
3318 itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens
3319 with stately approval to Rosa's exposition. Her grandson is so
3320 attentive to it that Rosa is shyer than ever -- and prettier. Thus they
3321 pass on from room to room, raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few
3322 brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and
3323 reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It
3324 appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his inconsolable friend that
3325 there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to
3326 consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves
3327 for seven hundred years.
     
3328 Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Guppy's
3329 spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly
3330 strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,
3331 painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a
3332 charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon
3333 interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.
     
3334 "Dear me!" says Mr. Guppy. "Who's that?"
     
3335 "The picture over the fire-place," says Rosa, "is the portrait of the
3336 present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the
3337 best work of the master."
     
3338 "Blest," says Mr. Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend,
3339 "if I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been
3340 engraved, miss?"
     
3341 "The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always
3342 refused permission."
     
3343 "Well!" says Mr. Guppy in a low voice. "I'll be shot if it ain't very
3344 curious how well I know that picture! So that's Lady Dedlock, is it!"
     
3345 "The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The
3346 picture on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester."
     
3347 Mr. Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. "It's
3348 unaccountable to me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how
3349 well I know that picture! I'm dashed," adds Mr. Guppy, looking round,
3350 "if I don't think I must have had a dream of that picture, you know!"
     
3351 As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Guppy's dreams,
3352 the probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by
3353 the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young
3354 gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a
3355 dazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for
3356 interest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare,
3357 as if he were looking everywhere for Lady Dedlock again.
     
3358 He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown,
3359 as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she
3360 looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death.
3361 All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains
3362 to see and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to
3363 the end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her
3364 description; which is always this: "The terrace below is much
3365 admired. It is called, from an old story in the family, the Ghost's
3366 Walk."
     
3367 "No?" says Mr. Guppy, greedily curious. "What's the story, miss? Is
3368 it anything about a picture?"
     
3369 "Pray tell us the story," says Watt in a half whisper.
     
3370 "I don't know it, sir." Rosa is shyer than ever.
     
3371 "It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten," says the
3372 housekeeper, advancing. "It has never been more than a family
3373 anecdote."
     
3374 "You'll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a
3375 picture, ma'am," observes Mr. Guppy, "because I do assure you that
3376 the more I think of that picture the better I know it, without
3377 knowing how I know it!"
     
3378 The story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can
3379 guarantee that. Mr. Guppy is obliged to her for the information and
3380 is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided
3381 down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard
3382 to drive away. It is now dusk. Mrs. Rouncewell can trust to the
3383 discretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace
3384 came to have that ghostly name.
     
3385 She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and
3386 tells them: "In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the
3387 First -- I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who
3388 leagued themselves against that excellent king -- Sir Morbury Dedlock
3389 was the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a
3390 ghost in the family before those days, I can't say. I should think it
3391 very likely indeed."
     
3392 Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a
3393 family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She
3394 regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a
3395 genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.
     
3396 "Sir Morbury Dedlock," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "was, I have no occasion
3397 to say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it IS supposed that
3398 his Lady, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the
3399 bad cause. It is said that she had relations among King Charles's
3400 enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave
3401 them information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his
3402 Majesty's cause met here, it is said that my Lady was always nearer
3403 to the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a
3404 sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Watt?"
     
3405 Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
     
3406 "I hear the rain-drip on the stones," replies the young man, "and I
3407 hear a curious echo -- I suppose an echo -- which is very like a halting
3408 step."
     
3409 The housekeeper gravely nods and continues: "Partly on account of
3410 this division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir Morbury
3411 and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty temper.
3412 They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they
3413 had no children to moderate between them. After her favourite
3414 brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir
3415 Morbury's near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated
3416 the race into which she had married. When the Dedlocks were about to
3417 ride out from Chesney Wold in the king's cause, she is supposed to
3418 have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night
3419 and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour,
3420 her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the
3421 stall where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the
3422 wrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being
3423 frightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that
3424 hour began to pine away."
     
3425 The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a
3426 whisper.
     
3427 "She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She
3428 never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being
3429 crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon
3430 the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and
3431 down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater
3432 difficulty every day. At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she
3433 had never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night),
3434 standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement.
3435 He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over
3436 her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, 'I will die here
3437 where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I
3438 will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when
3439 calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen
3440 for my step!'"
     
3441 Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the
3442 ground, half frightened and half shy.
     
3443 "There and then she died. And from those days," says Mrs. Rouncewell,
3444 "the name has come down -- the Ghost's Walk. If the tread is an echo,
3445 it is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for
3446 a long while together. But it comes back from time to time; and so
3447 sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard
3448 then."
     
3449 "And disgrace, grandmother -- " says Watt.
     
3450 "Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold," returns the housekeeper.
     
3451 Her grandson apologizes with "True. True."
     
3452 "That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound,"
3453 says Mrs. Rouncewell, getting up from her chair; "and what is to be
3454 noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is afraid of
3455 nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot
3456 shut it out. Watt, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed
3457 there, 'a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can
3458 play music. You understand how those things are managed?"
     
3459 "Pretty well, grandmother, I think."
     
3460 "Set it a-going."
     
3461 Watt sets it a-going -- music and all.
     
3462 "Now, come hither," says the housekeeper. "Hither, child, towards my
3463 Lady's pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen!
3464 Can you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the
3465 beat, and everything?"
     
3466 "I certainly can!"
     
3467 "So my Lady says."
     
     
     
     
3468 CHAPTER VIII
     
3469 Covering a Multitude of Sins
     
     
3470 It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of
3471 window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like
3472 two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the
3473 indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day
3474 came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the
3475 scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory
3476 over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects
3477 that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly
3478 discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still
3479 glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and
3480 fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough
3481 to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only
3482 incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all
3483 melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape,
3484 prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower,
3485 threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible
3486 with its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have
3487 learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.
     
3488 Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so
3489 attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,
3490 though what with trying to remember the contents of each little
3491 store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate
3492 about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and
3493 china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a
3494 methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy
3495 that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell
3496 ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been
3497 installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they
3498 were all rather late and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take
3499 a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I found it
3500 quite a delightful place -- in front, the pretty avenue and drive by
3501 which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the
3502 gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll
3503 it); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up
3504 there, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have
3505 kissed me from that distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a
3506 kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard,
3507 and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its
3508 three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large,
3509 some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the
3510 southfront for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable,
3511 welcoming look -- it was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with
3512 her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin John, a bold
3513 thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.
     
3514 Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight.
3515 There was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about
3516 bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he
3517 had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the
3518 overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy
3519 bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked
3520 to make honey, or he wouldn't do it -- nobody asked him. It was not
3521 necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every
3522 confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything
3523 that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take
3524 notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the
3525 world would be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was
3526 a ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone
3527 as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a
3528 Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he
3529 thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The
3530 drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot attend
3531 to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to
3532 see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the liberty of
3533 looking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody who
3534 doesn't want to look about him." This appeared to Mr. Skimpole to be
3535 the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy,
3536 always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the
3537 bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the
3538 consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited
3539 about his honey!
     
3540 He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground
3541 and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a
3542 meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them
3543 still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties.
3544 They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the
3545 passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr.
3546 Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I
3547 found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part
3548 quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes.
     
3549 "Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the
3550 growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here."
     
3551 "You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.
     
3552 "Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or
3553 disappointed in -- the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here. The
3554 growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of
3555 half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!"
     
3556 I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that
3557 benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy
3558 and so honoured there, and my heart so full -- I kissed his hand. I
3559 don't know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted and
3560 walked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of jumping
3561 out, until he turned and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what
3562 he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat
3563 down.
     
3564 "There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish."
     
3565 "It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it is
3566 difficult -- "
     
3567 "Nonsense!" he said. "It's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good
3568 little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to
3569 be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good
3570 opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in
3571 all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have
3572 before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again."
     
3573 I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is
3574 not what I expected of you!" And it had such a good effect that I
3575 folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr.
3576 Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as
3577 confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him
3578 every morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if I had.
     
3579 "Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery
3580 business?"
     
3581 And of course I shook my head.
     
3582 "I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted it
3583 into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case
3584 have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a will
3585 and the trusts under a will -- or it was once. It's about nothing but
3586 costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing,
3587 and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and
3588 sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving
3589 about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably
3590 waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That's the great
3591 question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted
3592 away."
     
3593 "But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his
3594 head, "about a will?"
     
3595 "Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," he
3596 returned. "A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune,
3597 and made a great will. In the question how the trusts under that will
3598 are to be administered, the fortune left by the will is squandered
3599 away; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable
3600 condition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had
3601 committed an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will
3602 itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause,
3603 everything that everybody in it, except one man, knows already is
3604 referred to that only one man who don't know, it to find out -- all
3605 through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and
3606 over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of
3607 cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which
3608 is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the
3609 middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs
3610 and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the
3611 wildest visions of a witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law,
3612 law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can't do this,
3613 equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't
3614 do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel
3615 appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel
3616 appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the
3617 history of the apple pie. And thus, through years and years, and
3618 lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and
3619 over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit
3620 on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to
3621 it, whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When
3622 my great uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the
3623 beginning of the end!"
     
3624 "The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"
     
3625 He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther.
3626 When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the signs of his
3627 misery upon it."
     
3628 "How changed it must be now!" I said.
     
3629 "It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its
3630 present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the
3631 wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to
3632 disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the
3633 meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the
3634 cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds
3635 choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained
3636 of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of
3637 the house too, it was so shattered and ruined."
     
3638 He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a
3639 shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down
3640 again with his hands in his pockets.
     
3641 "I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?"
     
3642 I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
     
3643 "Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some
3644 property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was then;
3645 I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought to call it
3646 the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will
3647 ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but
3648 an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses,
3649 with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much
3650 as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their
3651 hinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of
3652 rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and
3653 every door might be death's door) turning stagnant green, the very
3654 crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. Although Bleak
3655 House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with
3656 the same seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all
3657 over England -- the children know them!"
     
3658 "How changed it is!" I said again.
     
3659 "Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom
3660 in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (The idea of my
3661 wisdom!) "These are things I never talk about or even think about,
3662 excepting in the growlery here. If you consider it right to mention
3663 them to Rick and Ada," looking seriously at me, "you can. I leave it
3664 to your discretion, Esther."
     
3665 "I hope, sir -- " said I.
     
3666 "I think you had better call me guardian, my dear."
     
3667 I felt that I was choking again -- I taxed myself with it, "Esther,
3668 now, you know you are!" -- when he feigned to say this slightly, as if
3669 it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the
3670 housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to
3671 myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the
3672 basket, looked at him quietly.
     
3673 "I hope, guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my
3674 discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a
3675 disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is
3676 the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to
3677 confess it."
     
3678 He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told me,
3679 with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and
3680 that I was quite clever enough for him.
     
3681 "I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it,
3682 guardian."
     
3683 "You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here,
3684 my dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of the child's
3685 (I don't mean Skimpole's) rhyme:
     
     
3686    "'Little old woman, and whither so high?'
3687     'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'
     
     
3688 "You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your
3689 housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon
3690 the growlery and nail up the door."
     
3691 This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old
3692 Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame
3693 Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became
3694 quite lost among them.
     
3695 "However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick,
3696 a fine young fellow full of promise. What's to be done with him?"
     
3697 Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!
     
3698 "Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his
3699 hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a
3700 profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a
3701 world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done."
     
3702 "More what, guardian?" said I.
     
3703 "More wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the
3704 thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have
3705 something to say about it; Master Somebody -- a sort of ridiculous
3706 sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the
3707 end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane -- will have something to say about
3708 it; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will
3709 have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to
3710 say about it; they will all have to be handsomely feed, all round,
3711 about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy,
3712 unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general,
3713 wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with
3714 wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a
3715 pit of it, I don't know; so it is."
     
3716 He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. But
3717 it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether
3718 he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure
3719 to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was
3720 sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and
3721 stretch out his legs.
     
3722 "Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr. Richard
3723 what he inclines to himself."
     
3724 "Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, just
3725 accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet
3726 way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure
3727 to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman."
     
3728 I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was
3729 attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me. I
3730 had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to
3731 Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would do
3732 my best, though I feared (I really felt it necessary to repeat this)
3733 that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which my
3734 guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.
     
3735 "Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think we may
3736 have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding word.
3737 Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?"
     
3738 He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and
3739 felt sure I understood him.
     
3740 "About myself, sir?" said I.
     
3741 "Yes."
     
3742 "Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly
3743 colder than I could have wished, in his, "nothing! I am quite sure
3744 that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to know,
3745 I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance
3746 and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard heart
3747 indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world."
     
3748 He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada.
3749 From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite
3750 content to know no more, quite happy.
     
3751 We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had to
3752 become acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood
3753 who knew Mr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew
3754 him who wanted to do anything with anybody else's money. It amazed us
3755 when we began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him
3756 in the growlery of a morning to find how the great object of the
3757 lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form
3758 themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The
3759 ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were
3760 even more so. They threw themselves into committees in the most
3761 impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite
3762 extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their
3763 whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole
3764 post-office directory -- shilling cards, half-crown cards,
3765 half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They
3766 wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money,
3767 they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they
3768 wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr.
3769 Jarndyce had -- or had not. Their objects were as various as their
3770 demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to
3771 pay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a
3772 picturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached)
3773 the Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a
3774 testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby, they were going to have their
3775 secretary's portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law,
3776 whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up
3777 everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an
3778 annuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a
3779 multitude of titles. They were the Women of England, the Daughters of
3780 Britain, the Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the
3781 Females of America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They
3782 appeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing. They
3783 seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be
3784 constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing
3785 their candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think, on
3786 the whole, what feverish lives they must lead.
     
3787 Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious
3788 benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who
3789 seemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce,
3790 to be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We
3791 observed that the wind always changed when Mrs. Pardiggle became the
3792 subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr.
3793 Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked
3794 that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who
3795 did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people
3796 who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore
3797 curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the
3798 former class, and were glad when she called one day with her five
3799 young sons.
     
3800 She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose,
3801 and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room.
3802 And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her
3803 skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at
3804 home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold
3805 weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as they followed.
     
3806 "These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility
3807 after the first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seen
3808 their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in
3809 the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest
3810 (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of
3811 five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second
3812 (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to
3813 the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine),
3814 one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to
3815 the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily
3816 enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never,
3817 through life, to use tobacco in any form."
     
3818 We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that
3819 they were weazened and shrivelled -- though they were certainly that
3820 too -- but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the
3821 mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed
3822 Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave
3823 me such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his
3824 contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive
3825 manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the
3826 little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and
3827 evenly miserable.
     
3828 "You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "at Mrs.
3829 Jellyby's?"
     
3830 We said yes, we had passed one night there.
     
3831 "Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same
3832 demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy
3833 as if it had a sort of spectacles on too -- and I may take the
3834 opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less
3835 engaging by her eyes being what Ada called "choking eyes," meaning
3836 very prominent -- "Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society and deserves
3837 a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the African
3838 project -- Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine
3839 weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest,
3840 according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs.
3841 Jellyby in all things. I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her treatment
3842 of her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that
3843 her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to
3844 which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right
3845 or wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them
3846 everywhere."
     
3847 I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the
3848 ill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He
3849 turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.
     
3850 "They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six
3851 o'clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the
3852 depth of winter," said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me
3853 during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a
3854 Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on
3855 the local Linen Box Committee and many general committees; and my
3856 canvassing alone is very extensive -- perhaps no one's more so. But
3857 they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire
3858 that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable
3859 business in general -- in short, that taste for the sort of
3860 thing -- which will render them in after life a service to their
3861 neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not
3862 frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in
3863 subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many
3864 public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and
3865 discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred
3866 (five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined the
3867 Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manifested
3868 consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours
3869 from the chairman of the evening."
     
3870 Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the
3871 injury of that night.
     
3872 "You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "in
3873 some of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our
3874 esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are
3875 concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. That
3876 is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my
3877 mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according
3878 to their ages and their little means; and then Mr. Pardiggle brings
3879 up the rear. Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited donation,
3880 under my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to
3881 ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others."
     
3882 Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose Mr.
3883 Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle, would
3884 Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr.
3885 Jellyby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it
3886 came into my head.
     
3887 "You are very pleasantly situated here!" said Mrs. Pardiggle.
     
3888 We were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed
3889 out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to
3890 me to rest with curious indifference.
     
3891 "You know Mr. Gusher?" said our visitor.
     
3892 We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher's
3893 acquaintance.
     
3894 "The loss is yours, I assure you," said Mrs. Pardiggle with her
3895 commanding deportment. "He is a very fervid, impassioned
3896 speaker -- full of fire! Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now,
3897 which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public
3898 meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for
3899 hours and hours! By this time, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle,
3900 moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency,
3901 a little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket
3902 on it, "by this time you have found me out, I dare say?"
     
3903 This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in
3904 perfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after
3905 what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour
3906 of my cheeks.
     
3907 "Found out, I mean," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "the prominent point in my
3908 character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable
3909 immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely
3910 admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work.
3911 The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard
3912 work that I don't know what fatigue is."
     
3913 We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or
3914 something to that effect. I don't think we knew what it was either,
3915 but this is what our politeness expressed.
     
3916 "I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if
3917 you try!" said Mrs. Pardiggle. "The quantity of exertion (which is no
3918 exertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing),
3919 that I go through sometimes astonishes myself. I have seen my young
3920 family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I
3921 may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!"
     
3922 If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had
3923 already looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he
3924 doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of
3925 his cap, which was under his left arm.
     
3926 "This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds," said
3927 Mrs. Pardiggle. "If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to
3928 say, I tell that person directly, 'I am incapable of fatigue, my good
3929 friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.' It
3930 answers admirably! Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have your
3931 assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare's very
3932 soon."
     
3933 At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general
3934 ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect.
3935 But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more
3936 particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications. That I was
3937 inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very
3938 differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of
3939 view. That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must
3940 be essential to such a work. That I had much to learn, myself, before
3941 I could teach others, and that I could not confide in my good
3942 intentions alone. For these reasons I thought it best to be as useful
3943 as I could, and to render what kind services I could to those
3944 immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually
3945 and naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but
3946 confidence, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older than I, and had
3947 great experience, and was so very military in her manners.
     
3948 "You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said she, "but perhaps you are not
3949 equal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast
3950 difference. If you would like to see how I go through my work, I am
3951 now about -- with my young family -- to visit a brickmaker in the
3952 neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you
3953 with me. Miss Clare also, if she will do me the favour."
     
3954 Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case,
3955 accepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our
3956 bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs.
3957 Pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light
3958 objects it contained. Mrs. Pardiggle took possession of Ada, and I
3959 followed with the family.
     
3960 Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud
3961 tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker's
3962 about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged
3963 against another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival
3964 candidates for a pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of
3965 printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it appeared
3966 to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the
3967 pensioners -- who were not elected yet.
     
3968 I am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being
3969 usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me
3970 great uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the
3971 manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground
3972 that his pocket-money was "boned" from him. On my pointing out the
3973 great impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his
3974 parent (for he added sulkily "By her!"), he pinched me and said, "Oh,
3975 then! Now! Who are you! YOU wouldn't like it, I think? What does she
3976 make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away
3977 again? Why do you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?"
3978 These exasperating questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of
3979 Oswald and Francis that they all pinched me at once, and in a
3980 dreadfully expert way -- screwing up such little pieces of my arms that
3981 I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamped
3982 upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having
3983 the whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to
3984 abstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage
3985 when we passed a pastry-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming
3986 purple. I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the
3987 course of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally
3988 constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being
3989 natural.
     
3990 I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house, though it was one
3991 of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close
3992 to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the doors
3993 growing nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put
3994 to catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked
3995 up with mud into a little pond like a large dirt-pie. At the doors
3996 and windows some men and women lounged or prowled about, and took
3997 little notice of us except to laugh to one another or to say
3998 something as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business
3999 and not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to
4000 look after other people's.
     
4001 Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral
4002 determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy
4003 habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have
4004 been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the
4005 farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled.
4006 Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman
4007 with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a
4008 man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying
4009 at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man
4010 fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of
4011 washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in,
4012 and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide
4013 her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.
     
4014 "Well, my friends," said Mrs. Pardiggle, but her voice had not a
4015 friendly sound, I thought; it was much too business-like and
4016 systematic. "How do you do, all of you? I am here again. I told you,
4017 you couldn't tire me, you know. I am fond of hard work, and am true
4018 to my word."
     
4019 "There an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his
4020 hand as he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is there?"
     
4021 "No, my friend," said Mrs. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool
4022 and knocking down another. "We are all here."
     
4023 "Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the
4024 man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.
     
4025 The young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young
4026 man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with
4027 their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.
     
4028 "You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs. Pardiggle to these
4029 latter. "I enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better
4030 I like it."
     
4031 "Then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. "I wants
4032 it done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my
4033 place. I wants an end of being drawed like a badger. Now you're
4034 a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom -- I know what
4035 you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't got no occasion to be
4036 up to it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes,
4037 she IS a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot we drinks.
4038 How do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! An't my
4039 place dirty? Yes, it is dirty -- it's nat'rally dirty, and it's
4040 nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome
4041 children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them,
4042 and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I
4043 an't read the little book wot you left. There an't nobody here as
4044 knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to
4045 me. It's a book fit for a babby, and I'm not a babby. If you was to
4046 leave me a doll, I shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conducting of
4047 myself? Why, I've been drunk for three days; and I'da been drunk four
4048 if I'da had the money. Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I
4049 don't never mean for to go to church. I shouldn't be expected there,
4050 if I did; the beadle's too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get
4051 that black eye? Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn't, she's a
4052 lie!"
     
4053 He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now
4054 turned over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who
4055 had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible
4056 composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his
4057 antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable's staff
4058 and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious
4059 custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an
4060 inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house.
     
4061 Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of
4062 place, and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on
4063 infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking
4064 possession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took
4065 no notice of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog
4066 bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle was most emphatic. We
4067 both felt painfully sensible that between us and these people there
4068 was an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend. By
4069 whom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that.
4070 Even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such
4071 auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so
4072 much tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had
4073 referred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and Mr. Jarndyce
4074 said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had
4075 had no other on his desolate island.
     
4076 We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs. Pardiggle
4077 left off.
     
4078 The man on the floor, then turning his head round again, said
4079 morosely, "Well! You've done, have you?"
     
4080 "For to-day, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come
4081 to you again in your regular order," returned Mrs. Pardiggle with
4082 demonstrative cheerfulness.
     
4083 "So long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting his
4084 eyes with an oath, "you may do wot you like!"
     
4085 Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the
4086 confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.
4087 Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others
4088 to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and
4089 all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then
4090 proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say
4091 that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show
4092 that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of
4093 dealing in it to a large extent.
     
4094 She supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was
4095 left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the
4096 baby were ill.
     
4097 She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before
4098 that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her
4099 hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and
4100 violence and ill treatment from the poor little child.
     
4101 Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to
4102 touch its little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew
4103 her back. The child died.
     
4104 "Oh, Esther!" cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. "Look here!
4105 Oh, Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty
4106 little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I
4107 never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, baby!"
     
4108 Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down
4109 weeping and put her hand upon the mother's might have softened any
4110 mother's heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in
4111 astonishment and then burst into tears.
     
4112 Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to
4113 make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf,
4114 and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the
4115 mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children.
4116 She answered nothing, but sat weeping -- weeping very much.
     
4117 When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and
4118 was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet.
4119 The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The
4120 man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but
4121 he was silent.
     
4122 An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing
4123 at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, "Jenny! Jenny!"
4124 The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman's neck.
     
4125 She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had
4126 no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she
4127 condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no
4128 beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were "Jenny! Jenny!" All
4129 the rest was in the tone in which she said them.
     
4130 I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby
4131 and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to
4132 see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was
4133 softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of
4134 such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor
4135 is little known, excepting to themselves and God.
     
4136 We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole
4137 out quietly and without notice from any one except the man. He was
4138 leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there was
4139 scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want
4140 to hide that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he
4141 did, and thanked him. He made no answer.
     
4142 Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we found
4143 at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me,
4144 when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we
4145 arranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our
4146 visit at the brick-maker's house. We said as little as we could to
4147 Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly.
     
4148 Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning
4149 expedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house,
4150 where a number of men were flocking about the door. Among them, and
4151 prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. At a
4152 short distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial
4153 company. The sister was standing laughing and talking with some other
4154 young women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed
4155 ashamed and turned away as we went by.
     
4156 We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling and
4157 proceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman
4158 who had brought such consolation with her standing there looking
4159 anxiously out.
     
4160 "It's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. "I'm
4161 a-watching for my master. My heart's in my mouth. If he was to catch
4162 me away from home, he'd pretty near murder me."
     
4163 "Do you mean your husband?" said I.
     
4164 "Yes, miss, my master. Jenny's asleep, quite worn out. She's scarcely
4165 had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights,
4166 except when I've been able to take it for a minute or two."
     
4167 As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had
4168 brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort
4169 had been made to clean the room -- it seemed in its nature almost
4170 hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much
4171 solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and
4172 neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on my
4173 handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of
4174 sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so
4175 lightly, so tenderly!
     
4176 "May heaven reward you!" we said to her. "You are a good woman."
     
4177 "Me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. "Hush! Jenny, Jenny!"
     
4178 The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the
4179 familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.
     
4180 How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the
4181 tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the
4182 child through Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head -- how
4183 little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come
4184 to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I only
4185 thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all
4186 unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a
4187 hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave,
4188 and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in terror
4189 for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, "Jenny, Jenny!"
     
     
     
     
4190 CHAPTER IX
     
4191 Signs and Tokens
     
     
4192 I don't know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself. I
4193 mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think
4194 about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself
4195 coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, "Dear, dear,
4196 you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn't!" but it is all of
4197 no use. I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that
4198 if these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it
4199 must be because I have really something to do with them and can't be
4200 kept out.
     
4201 My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised, and found
4202 so much employment for our time that the winter days flew by us like
4203 bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the
4204 evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he was one of the
4205 most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of
4206 our society.
     
4207 He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say
4208 it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before,
4209 but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or
4210 show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure
4211 and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within
4212 myself while I was sitting at work whether I was not growing quite
4213 deceitful.
     
4214 But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I
4215 was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too, so far as
4216 any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they
4217 relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one
4218 another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing
4219 how it interested me.
     
4220 "Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman," Richard
4221 would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his
4222 pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, "that I can't
4223 get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day -- grinding away
4224 at those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down
4225 dale, all the country round, like a highwayman -- it does me so much
4226 good to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that
4227 here I am again!"
     
4228 "You know, Dame Durden, dear," Ada would say at night, with her head
4229 upon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, "I
4230 don't want to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to sit a little
4231 while thinking, with your dear face for company, and to hear the wind
4232 and remember the poor sailors at sea -- "
     
4233 Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over
4234 very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination
4235 of his childhood for the sea. Mr. Jarndyce had written to a relation
4236 of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in
4237 Richard's favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a
4238 gracious manner that he would be happy to advance the prospects of
4239 the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power,
4240 which was not at all probable, and that my Lady sent her compliments
4241 to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was
4242 allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he would ever do his
4243 duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself.
     
4244 "So I apprehend it's pretty clear," said Richard to me, "that I shall
4245 have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do
4246 that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a
4247 clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the Chancellor
4248 and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause.
4249 He'd find himself growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!"
     
4250 With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever
4251 flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite
4252 perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd
4253 way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money
4254 in a singular manner which I don't think I can better explain than by
4255 reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Skimpole.
     
4256 Mr. Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Skimpole
4257 himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with
4258 instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to
4259 Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which
4260 Richard justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number
4261 of times he talked to me as if he had saved or realized that amount,
4262 would form a sum in simple addition.
     
4263 "My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?" he said to me when he wanted,
4264 without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the
4265 brickmaker. "I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses' business."
     
4266 "How was that?" said I.
     
4267 "Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of
4268 and never expected to see any more. You don't deny that?"
     
4269 "No," said I.
     
4270 "Very well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds -- "
     
4271 "The same ten pounds," I hinted.
     
4272 "That has nothing to do with it!" returned Richard. "I have got ten
4273 pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to
4274 spend it without being particular."
     
4275 In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice
4276 of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he
4277 carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
     
4278 "Let me see!" he would say. "I saved five pounds out of the
4279 brickmaker's affair, so if I have a good rattle to London and back in
4280 a post-chaise and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved
4281 one. And it's a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny
4282 saved is a penny got!"
     
4283 I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there
4284 possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all his
4285 wild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother in a
4286 few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have shown
4287 itself abundantly even without Ada's influence; but with it, he
4288 became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be
4289 interested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am
4290 sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking
4291 with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling
4292 deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each
4293 shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps
4294 not yet suspected even by the other -- I am sure that I was scarcely
4295 less enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased with the
4296 pretty dream.
     
4297 We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr.
4298 Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription, said,
4299 "From Boythorn? Aye, aye!" and opened and read it with evident
4300 pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about
4301 half-way through, that Boythorn was "coming down" on a visit. Now who
4302 was Boythorn, we all thought. And I dare say we all thought too -- I am
4303 sure I did, for one -- would Boythorn at all interfere with what was
4304 going forward?
     
4305 "I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn," said Mr.
4306 Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, "more than
4307 five and forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the
4308 world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest
4309 boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the
4310 heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest
4311 and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow."
     
4312 "In stature, sir?" asked Richard.
     
4313 "Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr. Jarndyce; "being some
4314 ten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his head
4315 thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his
4316 hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! There's no simile for
4317 his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the
4318 house shake."
     
4319 As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we
4320 observed the favourable omen that there was not the least indication
4321 of any change in the wind.
     
4322 "But it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the
4323 passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick -- and Ada, and
4324 little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor -- that I
4325 speak of," he pursued. "His language is as sounding as his voice. He
4326 is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his
4327 condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre
4328 from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with
4329 some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must
4330 not be surprised to see him take me under his protection, for he has
4331 never forgotten that I was a low boy at school and that our
4332 friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth out
4333 (he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man," to me, "will
4334 be here this afternoon, my dear."
     
4335 I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr.
4336 Boythorn's reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some
4337 curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear.
4338 The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was
4339 put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light
4340 but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall
4341 resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and
4342 in a stentorian tone: "We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most
4343 abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right
4344 instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the
4345 face of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate
4346 villain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot
4347 without the least remorse!"
     
4348 "Did he do it on purpose?" Mr. Jarndyce inquired.
     
4349 "I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his
4350 whole existence in misdirecting travellers!" returned the other. "By
4351 my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld when
4352 he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood
4353 before that fellow face to face and didn't knock his brains out!"
     
4354 "Teeth, you mean?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
4355 "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole
4356 house vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And
4357 that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the
4358 countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image
4359 of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a
4360 field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot
4361 in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!"
     
4362 "I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now, will you come
4363 upstairs?"
     
4364 "By my soul, Jarndyce," returned his guest, who seemed to refer to
4365 his watch, "if you had been married, I would have turned back at the
4366 garden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya
4367 Mountains sooner than I would have presented myself at this
4368 unseasonable hour."
     
4369 "Not quite so far, I hope?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
4370 "By my life and honour, yes!" cried the visitor. "I wouldn't be
4371 guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house
4372 waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I would
4373 infinitely rather destroy myself -- infinitely rather!"
     
4374 Talking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his
4375 bedroom thundering "Ha, ha, ha!" and again "Ha, ha, ha!" until the
4376 flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion and
4377 to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him
4378 laugh.
     
4379 We all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a
4380 sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice,
4381 and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he
4382 spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go
4383 off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared
4384 to have it so confirmed by his appearance when Mr. Jarndyce presented
4385 him. He was not only a very handsome old gentleman -- upright and
4386 stalwart as he had been described to us -- with a massive grey head, a
4387 fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become
4388 corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it
4389 no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but
4390 for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to
4391 assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so
4392 chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much
4393 sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing
4394 to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was -- incapable, as Richard
4395 said, of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those
4396 blank great guns because he carried no small arms whatever -- that
4397 really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat
4398 at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led
4399 by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up
4400 his head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous "Ha, ha, ha!"
     
4401 "You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
4402 "By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the
4403 other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten
4404 thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole
4405 support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment,
4406 a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most
4407 astonishing birds that ever lived!"
     
4408 The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so
4409 tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn's man, on his
4410 forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted
4411 on his master's head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the
4412 most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of
4413 a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good
4414 illustration of his character, I thought.
     
4415 "By my soul, Jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of
4416 bread to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place I would
4417 seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and
4418 shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones
4419 rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by
4420 fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do
4421 it for you with the greatest satisfaction!" (All this time the very
4422 small canary was eating out of his hand.)
     
4423 "I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at
4424 present," returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, "that it would be greatly
4425 advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole
4426 bar."
     
4427 "There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the
4428 face of the earth!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Nothing but a mine below it
4429 on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and
4430 precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it
4431 also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the
4432 Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to
4433 atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it
4434 in the least!"
     
4435 It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he
4436 recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw
4437 up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country
4438 seemed to echo to his "Ha, ha, ha!" It had not the least effect in
4439 disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who
4440 hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now
4441 on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no
4442 more than another bird.
     
4443 "But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of
4444 way?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "You are not free from the toils of the law
4445 yourself!"
     
4446 "The fellow has brought actions against ME for trespass, and I have
4447 brought actions against HIM for trespass," returned Mr. Boythorn. "By
4448 heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible
4449 that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer."
     
4450 "Complimentary to our distant relation!" said my guardian laughingly
4451 to Ada and Richard.
     
4452 "I would beg Miss Clare's pardon and Mr. Carstone's pardon," resumed
4453 our visitor, "if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of
4454 the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary
4455 and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance."
     
4456 "Or he keeps us," suggested Richard.
     
4457 "By my soul," exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley,
4458 "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the
4459 most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by
4460 some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but
4461 a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly
4462 conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should
4463 not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and
4464 living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory
4465 balls in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary,
4466 or somebody, writes to me 'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents
4467 his compliments to Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his
4468 attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old
4469 parsonage-house, now the property of Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir
4470 Leicester's right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of
4471 Chesney Wold, and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up
4472 the same.' I write to the fellow, 'Mr. Lawrence Boythorn presents his
4473 compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call HIS
4474 attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir
4475 Leicester Dedlock's positions on every possible subject and has to
4476 add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to
4477 see the man who may undertake to do it.' The fellow sends a most
4478 abandoned villain with one eye to construct a gateway. I play upon
4479 that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine until the breath is
4480 nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night.
4481 I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to
4482 come over the fence and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man
4483 traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the
4484 engine -- resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the
4485 existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass;
4486 I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and
4487 battery; I defend them and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha,
4488 ha!"
     
4489 To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have
4490 thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same
4491 time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly
4492 smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought
4493 him the gentlest. To hear him laugh and see the broad good nature of
4494 his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the
4495 world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a
4496 summer joke.
     
4497 "No, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock! Though
4498 I willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that Lady
4499 Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would
4500 do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head
4501 seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at
4502 twenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and
4503 presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the
4504 breath of life through a tight waist -- and got broke for it -- is not
4505 the man to be walked over by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive,
4506 locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!"
     
4507 "Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?" said my
4508 guardian.
     
4509 "Most assuredly not!" said Mr. Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder
4510 with an air of protection that had something serious in it, though he
4511 laughed. "He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may
4512 rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass -- with apologies to Miss
4513 Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so
4514 dry a subject -- is there nothing for me from your men Kenge and
4515 Carboy?"
     
4516 "I think not, Esther?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
4517 "Nothing, guardian."
     
4518 "Much obliged!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Had no need to ask, after even my
4519 slight experience of Miss Summerson's forethought for every one about
4520 her." (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) "I
4521 inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet
4522 been in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent down
4523 here. I dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning."
     
4524 I saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very
4525 pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a
4526 satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat
4527 at a little distance from the piano listening to the music -- and he
4528 had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music,
4529 for his face showed it -- that I asked my guardian as we sat at the
4530 backgammon board whether Mr. Boythorn had ever been married.
     
4531 "No," said he. "No."
     
4532 "But he meant to be!" said I.
     
4533 "How did you find out that?" he returned with a smile. "Why,
4534 guardian," I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding
4535 what was in my thoughts, "there is something so tender in his manner,
4536 after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and -- "
     
4537 Mr. Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting as I have just
4538 described him.
     
4539 I said no more.
     
4540 "You are right, little woman," he answered. "He was all but married
4541 once. Long ago. And once."
     
4542 "Did the lady die?"
     
4543 "No -- but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his
4544 later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of
4545 romance yet?"
     
4546 "I think, guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say
4547 that when you have told me so."
     
4548 "He has never since been what he might have been," said Mr. Jarndyce,
4549 "and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant
4550 and his little yellow friend. It's your throw, my dear!"
     
4551 I felt, from my guardian's manner, that beyond this point I could not
4552 pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forbore to
4553 ask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I
4554 thought a little while about this old love story in the night, when I
4555 was awakened by Mr. Boythorn's lusty snoring; and I tried to do that
4556 very difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested
4557 with the graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded,
4558 and dreamed of the days when I lived in my godmother's house. I am
4559 not sufficiently acquainted with such subjects to know whether it is
4560 at all remarkable that I almost always dreamed of that period of my
4561 life.
     
4562 With the morning there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to
4563 Mr. Boythorn informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon
4564 him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills,
4565 and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact
4566 as possible, I remained at home while Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard
4567 took advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion, Mr.
4568 Boythorn was to wait for Kenge and Carboy's clerk and then was to go
4569 on foot to meet them on their return.
     
4570 Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen's books, adding up
4571 columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great
4572 bustle about it when Mr. Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had
4573 some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young
4574 gentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and I was glad to see
4575 him, because he was associated with my present happiness.
     
4576 I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an
4577 entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid
4578 gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house
4579 flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little
4580 finger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with
4581 bear's-grease and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention
4582 that quite confused me when I begged him to take a seat until the
4583 servant should return; and as he sat there crossing and uncrossing
4584 his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant ride,
4585 and hoped that Mr. Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found
4586 him looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way.
     
4587 When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr.
4588 Boythorn's room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for
4589 him when he came down, of which Mr. Jarndyce hoped he would partake.
4590 He said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door,
4591 "Shall I have the honour of finding you here, miss?" I replied yes, I
4592 should be there; and he went out with a bow and another look.
     
4593 I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much
4594 embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do would be to
4595 wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave
4596 him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some
4597 time on the table. The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long one,
4598 and a stormy one too, I should think, for although his room was at
4599 some distance I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a
4600 high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation.
     
4601 At last Mr. Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the
4602 conference. "My eye, miss," he said in a low voice, "he's a Tartar!"
     
4603 "Pray take some refreshment, sir," said I.
     
4604 Mr. Guppy sat down at the table and began nervously sharpening the
4605 carving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as I felt
4606 quite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The
4607 sharpening lasted so long that at last I felt a kind of obligation on
4608 me to raise my eyes in order that I might break the spell under which
4609 he seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off.
     
4610 He immediately looked at the dish and began to carve.
     
4611 "What will you take yourself, miss? You'll take a morsel of
4612 something?"
     
4613 "No, thank you," said I.
     
4614 "Shan't I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?" said Mr. Guppy,
4615 hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.
     
4616 "Nothing, thank you," said I. "I have only waited to see that you
4617 have everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?"
     
4618 "No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I'm sure. I've everything that I
4619 can require to make me comfortable -- at least I -- not comfortable -- I'm
4620 never that." He drank off two more glasses of wine, one after
4621 another.
     
4622 I thought I had better go.
     
4623 "I beg your pardon, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, rising when he saw me
4624 rise. "But would you allow me the favour of a minute's private
4625 conversation?"
     
4626 Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.
     
4627 "What follows is without prejudice, miss?" said Mr. Guppy, anxiously
4628 bringing a chair towards my table.
     
4629 "I don't understand what you mean," said I, wondering.
     
4630 "It's one of our law terms, miss. You won't make any use of it to my
4631 detriment at Kenge and Carboy's or elsewhere. If our conversation
4632 shouldn't lead to anything, I am to be as I was and am not to be
4633 prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it's in
4634 total confidence."
     
4635 "I am at a loss, sir," said I, "to imagine what you can have to
4636 communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but
4637 once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury."
     
4638 "Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it -- that's quite sufficient." All this
4639 time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief
4640 or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his
4641 right. "If you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I
4642 think it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke that
4643 cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant."
     
4644 He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well
4645 behind my table.
     
4646 "You wouldn't allow me to offer you one, would you miss?" said Mr.
4647 Guppy, apparently refreshed.
     
4648 "Not any," said I.
     
4649 "Not half a glass?" said Mr. Guppy. "Quarter? No! Then, to proceed.
4650 My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy's, is two
4651 pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it
4652 was one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened
4653 period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of
4654 five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve
4655 months from the present date. My mother has a little property, which
4656 takes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an
4657 independent though unassuming manner in the Old Street Road. She is
4658 eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is
4659 all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings -- as who
4660 has not? -- but I never knew her do it when company was present, at
4661 which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt
4662 liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is
4663 lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the
4664 'ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore
4665 you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a
4666 declaration -- to make an offer!"
     
4667 Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not
4668 much frightened. I said, "Get up from that ridiculous position
4669 immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise
4670 and ring the bell!"
     
4671 "Hear me out, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands.
     
4672 "I cannot consent to hear another word, sir," I returned, "Unless you
4673 get up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as
4674 you ought to do if you have any sense at all."
     
4675 He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.
     
4676 "Yet what a mockery it is, miss," he said with his hand upon his
4677 heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the
4678 tray, "to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils
4679 from food at such a moment, miss."
     
4680 "I beg you to conclude," said I; "you have asked me to hear you out,
4681 and I beg you to conclude."
     
4682 "I will, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "As I love and honour, so likewise I
4683 obey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before the
4684 shrine!"
     
4685 "That is quite impossible," said I, "and entirely out of the
4686 question."
     
4687 "I am aware," said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray and
4688 regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not
4689 directed to him, with his late intent look, "I am aware that in a
4690 worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a
4691 poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel! No, don't ring -- I have been
4692 brought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of
4693 general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence,
4694 got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means
4695 might I not find of advancing your interests and pushing your
4696 fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know
4697 nothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your
4698 confidence, and you set me on?"
     
4699 I told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my
4700 interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and
4701 he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go
4702 away immediately.
     
4703 "Cruel miss," said Mr. Guppy, "hear but another word! I think you
4704 must have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I
4705 waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I
4706 could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps
4707 of the 'ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was
4708 well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have
4709 walked up and down of an evening opposite Jellyby's house only to
4710 look upon the bricks that once contained thee. This out of to-day,
4711 quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its
4712 pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. If I
4713 speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful
4714 wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it."
     
4715 "I should be pained, Mr. Guppy," said I, rising and putting my hand
4716 upon the bell-rope, "to do you or any one who was sincere the
4717 injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably
4718 expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good
4719 opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank
4720 you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I
4721 hope," I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, "that
4722 you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish
4723 and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's business."
     
4724 "Half a minute, miss!" cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to
4725 ring. "This has been without prejudice?"
     
4726 "I will never mention it," said I, "unless you should give me future
4727 occasion to do so."
     
4728 "A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better at any
4729 time, however distant -- THAT'S no consequence, for my feelings can
4730 never alter -- of anything I have said, particularly what might I not
4731 do, Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or
4732 dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs.
4733 Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient."
     
4734 I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written
4735 card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my
4736 eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had
4737 passed the door.
     
4738 I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments
4739 and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and
4740 put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought
4741 I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went
4742 upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh
4743 about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry
4744 about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as
4745 if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been
4746 since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.
     
     
     
     
4747 CHAPTER X
     
4748 The Law-Writer
     
     
4749 On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more
4750 particularly in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby,
4751 law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's
4752 Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in
4753 all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls
4754 of parchment; in paper -- foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,
4755 whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens,
4756 ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and
4757 wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs,
4758 diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands -- glass
4759 and leaden -- pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small
4760 office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever
4761 since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.
4762 On that occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by the
4763 new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the
4764 time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For
4765 smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's
4766 name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite
4767 quite overpowered the parent tree.
     
4768 Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there,
4769 for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard
4770 of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring
4771 past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he
4772 ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in
4773 Cook's Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the
4774 sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street,
4775 whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he
4776 knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it -- if
4777 Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook's Court, which no
4778 law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,
4779 and no one is the worse or wiser.
     
4780 In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time"
4781 of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same
4782 law-stationering premises a niece -- a short, shrewd niece, something
4783 too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like
4784 a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The
4785 Cook's Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of
4786 this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a
4787 solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her
4788 up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for
4789 a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited
4790 internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,
4791 had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever
4792 of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it
4793 either never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby,
4794 who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man's
4795 estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook's
4796 Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the
4797 niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,
4798 is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.
     
4799 Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the
4800 neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed
4801 from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr.
4802 Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet
4803 tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining
4804 head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He
4805 tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook's
4806 Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at
4807 the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy
4808 flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two
4809 'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From
4810 beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in
4811 its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in
4812 the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these
4813 reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the
4814 'prentices, "I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!"
     
4815 This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened
4816 the wit of the Cook's Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the
4817 name of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and
4818 expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character.
4819 It is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty
4820 shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with
4821 clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to
4822 have been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or
4823 contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of
4824 his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been
4825 developed under the most favourable circumstances, "has fits," which
4826 the parish can't account for.
     
4827 Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten
4828 years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and
4829 is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint
4830 that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,
4831 or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be
4832 near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a
4833 satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel
4834 that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the
4835 breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can
4836 always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who
4837 thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer's establishment
4838 is, in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes
4839 the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with
4840 its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant
4841 apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court at one
4842 end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses'
4843 the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a
4844 prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil -- and
4845 plenty of it too -- of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs.
4846 Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of
4847 Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many
4848 privations.
     
4849 Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the
4850 business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the
4851 tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,
4852 licenses Mr. Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no
4853 responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,
4854 insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the
4855 neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and
4856 even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually
4857 call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the
4858 wives') position and Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands')
4859 behaviour and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying bat-like about
4860 Cook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say
4861 that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is
4862 sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the
4863 spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even observed that the
4864 wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining
4865 example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with
4866 greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more
4867 than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of
4868 correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's
4869 being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk
4870 in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the
4871 sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a
4872 Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were
4873 old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now under
4874 that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his
4875 imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and
4876 Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of
4877 the country out of telling the two 'prentices how he HAS heard say
4878 that a brook "as clear as crystial" once ran right down the middle of
4879 Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away
4880 into the meadows -- gets such a flavour of the country out of this that
4881 he never wants to go there.
     
4882 The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully
4883 effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his
4884 shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim
4885 westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow
4886 flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden into
4887 Lincoln's Inn Fields.
     
4888 Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.
4889 Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those
4890 shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in
4891 nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still
4892 remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman
4893 helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,
4894 flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache -- as
4895 would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here, among
4896 his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.
4897 Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where
4898 the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,
4899 quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.
     
4900 Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of
4901 the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from
4902 attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned,
4903 mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables
4904 with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the
4905 holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,
4906 environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where
4907 he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks
4908 that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on
4909 the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that
4910 can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers
4911 are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring
4912 to it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of
4913 sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of
4914 indecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now
4915 the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's not it. Mr.
4916 Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again.
     
4917 Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory
4918 staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and
4919 he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office.
4920 He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at
4921 elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened
4922 with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no
4923 clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.
4924 His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be
4925 drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious
4926 instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the
4927 stationers', expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in
4928 the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any
4929 crossing-sweeper in Holborn.
     
4930 The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,
4931 the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to
4932 the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or
4933 never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on
4934 his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the
4935 middle-aged man out at elbows, "I shall be back presently." Very
4936 rarely tells him anything more explicit.
     
4937 Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came -- not quite so straight, but
4938 nearly -- to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's,
4939 Law-Stationer's, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in
4940 all its branches, &c., &c., &c.
     
4941 It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a
4942 balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about
4943 Snagsby's door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one
4944 and supper at half-past nine. Mr. Snagsby was about to descend into
4945 the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door
4946 just now and saw the crow who was out late.
     
4947 "Master at home?"
     
4948 Guster is minding the shop, for the 'prentices take tea in the
4949 kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's two
4950 daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two
4951 second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two
4952 'prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely
4953 awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won't
4954 grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will.
     
4955 "Master at home?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
4956 Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad
4957 to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and
4958 veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture
4959 of the law -- a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.
     
4960 Mr. Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a
4961 bit of bread and butter. Says, "Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!"
     
4962 "I want half a word with you, Snagsby."
     
4963 "Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man
4964 round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir." Snagsby has
4965 brightened in a moment.
     
4966 The confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse,
4967 counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing
4968 round, on a stool at the desk.
     
4969 "Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby."
     
4970 "Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand,
4971 modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is
4972 accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save
4973 words.
     
4974 "You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately."
     
4975 "Yes, sir, we did."
     
4976 "There was one of them," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly
4977 feeling -- tight, unopenable oyster of the old school! -- in the wrong
4978 coat-pocket, "the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather
4979 like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I
4980 looked in to ask you -- but I haven't got it. No matter, any other time
4981 will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this."
     
4982 "Who copied this, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat
4983 on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a
4984 twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. "We gave this out,
4985 sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that
4986 time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to
4987 my book."
     
4988 Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of
4989 the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes
4990 the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down
4991 a page of the book, "Jewby -- Packer -- Jarndyce."
     
4992 "Jarndyce! Here we are, sir," says Mr. Snagsby. "To be sure! I might
4993 have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges
4994 just over on the opposite side of the lane."
     
4995 Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the
4996 law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.
     
4997 "WHAT do you call him? Nemo?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo, sir. Here
4998 it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight
4999 o'clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine."
     
5000 "Nemo!" repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo is Latin for no one."
     
5001 "It must be English for some one, sir, I think," Mr. Snagsby submits
5002 with his deferential cough. "It is a person's name. Here it is, you
5003 see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o'clock;
5004 brought in Thursday morning, half after nine."
     
5005 The tail of Mr. Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.
5006 Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by
5007 deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs.
5008 Snagsby, as who should say, "My dear, a customer!"
     
5009 "Half after nine, sir," repeats Mr. Snagsby. "Our law-writers, who
5010 live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but
5011 it's the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a
5012 written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the
5013 King's Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know
5014 the kind of document, sir -- wanting employ?"
     
5015 Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of
5016 Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavinses'
5017 windows. Coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of
5018 several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.
5019 Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance
5020 over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions
5021 with his mouth to this effect: "Tul-king-horn -- rich -- in-flu-en-tial!"
     
5022 "Have you given this man work before?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
5023 "Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."
     
5024 "Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he
5025 lived?"
     
5026 "Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a -- " Mr. Snagsby makes
5027 another bolt, as if the bit of bread and buffer were insurmountable
5028 " -- at a rag and bottle shop."
     
5029 "Can you show me the place as I go back?"
     
5030 "With the greatest pleasure, sir!"
     
5031 Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his
5032 black coat, takes his hat from its peg. "Oh! Here is my little
5033 woman!" he says aloud. "My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one
5034 of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with
5035 Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir -- I shan't be two minutes, my
5036 love!"
     
5037 Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps
5038 at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office,
5039 refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently
5040 curious.
     
5041 "You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr. Snagsby,
5042 walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to
5043 the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in
5044 general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never
5045 wants sleep. He'll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long
5046 as ever you like."
     
5047 It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full
5048 effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and
5049 against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against
5050 plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the
5051 general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has
5052 interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest
5053 business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that
5054 kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what
5055 and collects about us nobody knows whence or how -- we only knowing in
5056 general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to
5057 shovel it away -- the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and
5058 bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise,
5059 lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept,
5060 as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
     
5061 "This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.
     
5062 "This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly.
5063 "Thank you."
     
5064 "Are you not going in, sir?"
     
5065 "No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good
5066 evening. Thank you!" Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his
5067 little woman and his tea.
     
5068 But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes
5069 a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and
5070 enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so
5071 in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by
5072 a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed
5073 candle in his hand.
     
5074 "Pray is your lodger within?"
     
5075 "Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.
     
5076 "Male. The person who does copying."
     
5077 Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an
5078 indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
     
5079 "Did you wish to see him, sir?"
     
5080 "Yes."
     
5081 "It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I
5082 call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"
     
5083 "I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
5084 "Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his
5085 cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after
5086 Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi-hi!" he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly
5087 disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat
5088 expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.
     
5089 "Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know
5090 what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
     
5091 "What do they say of him?"
     
5092 "They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know
5093 better -- he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so
5094 black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that
5095 bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!"
     
5096 Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door
5097 on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and
5098 accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
     
5099 The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if
5100 he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,
5101 and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as
5102 if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner
5103 by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness
5104 marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau
5105 on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger
5106 one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The
5107 floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of
5108 rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the
5109 darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn
5110 together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine
5111 might be staring in -- the banshee of the man upon the bed.
     
5112 For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,
5113 lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just
5114 within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and
5115 trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral
5116 darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of
5117 its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of
5118 winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his
5119 whiskers and his beard -- the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the
5120 scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is,
5121 foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes
5122 those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the
5123 general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco,
5124 there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
     
5125 "Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick
5126 against the door.
     
5127 He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away,
5128 but his eyes are surely open.
     
5129 "Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo!"
     
5130 As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes
5131 out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters
5132 staring down upon the bed.
     
     
     
     
5133 CHAPTER XI
     
5134 Our Dear Brother
     
     
5135 A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,
5136 irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?"
     
5137 "It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his
5138 ear. "Can't you wake him?"
     
5139 "No."
     
5140 "What have you done with your candle?"
     
5141 "It's gone out. Here it is."
     
5142 Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and
5143 tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his
5144 endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his
5145 lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from
5146 the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason
5147 that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs
5148 outside.
     
5149 The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up
5150 with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man
5151 generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice. "Hi!
5152 I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.
5153 "I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself
5154 very close."
     
5155 Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the
5156 great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes
5157 upon the bed.
     
5158 "God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops
5159 the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over
5160 the bedside.
     
5161 They look at one another for a moment.
     
5162 "Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's
5163 poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with
5164 his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.
     
5165 Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, "Miss Flite! Flite!
5166 Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!" Krook follows him with his
5167 eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old
5168 portmanteau and steal back again.
     
5169 "Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!" So Mr. Krook addresses a
5170 crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes
5171 in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man
5172 brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad
5173 Scotch tongue.
     
5174 "Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at
5175 them after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!"
     
5176 Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has
5177 been dead any time.
     
5178 "Any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "It's probable he wull
5179 have been dead aboot three hours."
     
5180 "About that time, I should say," observes a dark young man on the
5181 other side of the bed.
     
5182 "Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the
5183 first.
     
5184 The dark young man says yes.
     
5185 "Then I'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other, "for I'm nae
5186 gude here!" With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and
5187 returns to finish his dinner.
     
5188 The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face
5189 and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his
5190 pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
     
5191 "I knew this person by sight very well," says he. "He has purchased
5192 opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related
5193 to him?" glancing round upon the three bystanders.
     
5194 "I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from
5195 the surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once I was the nearest
5196 relation he had."
     
5197 "He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is
5198 no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough
5199 here now," taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen
5200 people."
     
5201 "Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook.
     
5202 "Took the over-dose?"
     
5203 "Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible
5204 interest.
     
5205 "I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit
5206 of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?"
     
5207 "I suppose he was. His room -- don't look rich," says Krook, who might
5208 have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.
5209 "But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to
5210 name his circumstances to me."
     
5211 "Did he owe you any rent?"
     
5212 "Six weeks."
     
5213 "He will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination.
5214 "It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to
5215 judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy
5216 release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare
5217 say, good-looking." He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on
5218 the bedstead's edge with his face towards that other face and his
5219 hand upon the region of the heart. "I recollect once thinking there
5220 was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall
5221 in life. Was that so?" he continues, looking round.
     
5222 Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose
5223 heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my
5224 lodger for a year and a half and lived -- or didn't live -- by
5225 law-writing, I know no more of him."
     
5226 During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old
5227 portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all
5228 appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the
5229 bed -- from the young surgeon's professional interest in death,
5230 noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as
5231 an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy
5232 woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his
5233 rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this
5234 while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention
5235 nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might
5236 the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,
5237 as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
     
5238 He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
5239 professional way.
     
5240 "I looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the
5241 intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some
5242 employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
5243 stationer -- Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since no one here knows anything
5244 about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!" to the
5245 little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
5246 often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
5247 law-stationer. "Suppose you do!"
     
5248 While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation
5249 and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and
5250 he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
5251 stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
     
5252 Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.
5253 "Dear me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless
5254 my soul!"
     
5255 "Can you give the person of the house any information about this
5256 unfortunate creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He was in
5257 arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know."
     
5258 "Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind
5259 his hand, "I really don't know what advice I could offer, except
5260 sending for the beadle."
     
5261 "I don't speak of advice," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I could
5262 advise -- "
     
5263 "No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr. Snagsby, with his
5264 deferential cough.
     
5265 "I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he
5266 came from, or to anything concerning him."
     
5267 "I assure you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with
5268 his cough of general propitiation, "that I no more know where he came
5269 from than I know -- "
     
5270 "Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon to help him
5271 out.
     
5272 A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook,
5273 with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
     
5274 "As to his connexions, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "if a person was to
5275 say to me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you
5276 in the Bank of England if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do
5277 it, sir! About a year and a half ago -- to the best of my belief, at
5278 the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle
5279 shop -- "
     
5280 "That was the time!" says Krook with a nod.
     
5281 "About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he
5282 came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my
5283 little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)
5284 in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to
5285 understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to
5286 put too fine a point upon it," a favourite apology for plain speaking
5287 with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative
5288 frankness, "hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
5289 strangers, particular -- not to put too fine a point upon it -- when they
5290 want anything. But she was rather took by something about this
5291 person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want
5292 of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you to judge;
5293 and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My
5294 little woman hasn't a good ear for names," proceeds Mr. Snagsby after
5295 consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and she
5296 considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,
5297 she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, 'Mr. Snagsby, you
5298 haven't found Nimrod any work yet!' or 'Mr. Snagsby, why didn't you
5299 give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?' or
5300 such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our
5301 place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick
5302 hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him
5303 out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have
5304 it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which -- " Mr. Snagsby
5305 concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much
5306 as to add, "I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he
5307 were in a condition to do it."
     
5308 "Hadn't you better see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he
5309 had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and
5310 you will be asked the question. You can read?"
     
5311 "No, I can't," returns the old man with a sudden grin.
     
5312 "Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will
5313 get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I'll wait
5314 if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should
5315 ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the
5316 candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is
5317 anything to help you."
     
5318 "In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.
     
5319 Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have
5320 seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though
5321 there is very little else, heaven knows.
     
5322 The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer
5323 conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the
5324 chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.
5325 The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches
5326 tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his
5327 long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied
5328 in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same
5329 place and attitude.
     
5330 There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;
5331 there is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets
5332 on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,
5333 on which are scrawled rough memoranda -- as, took, such a day, so many
5334 grains; took, such another day, so many more -- begun some time ago, as
5335 if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left
5336 off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to
5337 coroners' inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
5338 and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an
5339 old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon
5340 examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence
5341 are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby's suggestion is the practical
5342 suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
     
5343 So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out
5344 of the room. "Don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon; "that
5345 won't do!" Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she
5346 goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her
5347 lips.
     
5348 "Good night!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and
5349 meditation.
     
5350 By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its
5351 inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the
5352 army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.
5353 Krook's window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already
5354 walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he
5355 stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base
5356 occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall
5357 back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms
5358 with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in
5359 young Perkins' having "fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews her
5360 friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the
5361 corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge
5362 of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges
5363 confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance
5364 of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable
5365 in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
5366 bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's
5367 the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr.
5368 Krook warn't made away with first, mingled with a little natural
5369 disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the
5370 beadle arrives.
     
5371 The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
5372 ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the
5373 moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The
5374 policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
5375 barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that
5376 must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation
5377 is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the
5378 beadle is on the ground and has gone in.
     
5379 By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,
5380 which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be
5381 in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the
5382 coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is
5383 immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing
5384 whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that
5385 Mrs. Green's son "was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
5386 than anybody," which son of Mrs. Green's appears, on inquiry, to be
5387 at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months
5388 out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the
5389 Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,
5390 examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
5391 exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.
5392 Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and
5393 undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with
5394 having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that
5395 effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the
5396 workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law
5397 and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on
5398 condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it -- a
5399 condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the
5400 time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or
5401 less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible
5402 great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues
5403 his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
5404 gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
5405 street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost
5406 child and a murder.
     
5407 Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting
5408 about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror's name
5409 is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own
5410 name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served
5411 and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook's to keep
5412 a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently
5413 arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in
5414 the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
5415 earthly lodgings take for No one -- and for Every one.
     
5416 And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
5417 and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through
5418 five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that
5419 any one can trace than a deserted infant.
     
5420 Next day the court is all alive -- is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins,
5421 more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation
5422 with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor
5423 room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice
5424 a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional
5425 celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes
5426 (according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally
5427 round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk
5428 stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require
5429 sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has
5430 established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says
5431 his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering
5432 between the door of Mr. Krook's establishment and the door of the
5433 Sol's Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet
5434 spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
     
5435 At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are
5436 waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good
5437 dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol's Arms. The coroner frequents
5438 more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,
5439 tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death
5440 in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the
5441 landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the
5442 piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of
5443 several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings
5444 in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury
5445 as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the
5446 spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner's
5447 head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which
5448 rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be
5449 hanged presently.
     
5450 Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress,
5451 sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a
5452 large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who
5453 modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public,
5454 but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this
5455 is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up
5456 an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the
5457 Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
     
5458 "Well, gentlemen -- " the coroner begins.
     
5459 "Silence there, will you!" says the beadle. Not to the coroner,
5460 though it might appear so.
     
5461 "Well, gentlemen," resumes the coroner. "You are impanelled here to
5462 inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given
5463 before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will
5464 give your verdict according to the -- skittles; they must be stopped,
5465 you know, beadle! -- evidence, and not according to anything else. The
5466 first thing to be done is to view the body."
     
5467 "Make way there!" cries the beadle.
     
5468 So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a
5469 straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook's back
5470 second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and
5471 precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very
5472 neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has
5473 provided a special little table near the coroner in the Harmonic
5474 Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the
5475 public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not
5476 superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print
5477 what "Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,"
5478 said and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly
5479 and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according
5480 to the latest examples.
     
5481 Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return.
5482 Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction
5483 and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a
5484 bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury
5485 learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about
5486 him. "A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen," says the
5487 coroner, "who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery
5488 of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have
5489 already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the
5490 law-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in
5491 attendance who knows anything more?"
     
5492 Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.
     
5493 Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have
5494 you got to say about this?
     
5495 Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and
5496 without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the
5497 court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been
5498 well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one
5499 before the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen
5500 months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live
5501 such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the
5502 plaintive -- so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased -- was
5503 reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive's air in
5504 which that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and
5505 considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go
5506 about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins
5507 may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her
5508 husband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and
5509 worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you
5510 cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be
5511 Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and
5512 his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from
5513 his pocket and split Johnny's head (which the child knows not fear
5514 and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never
5515 however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far
5516 from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not
5517 partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor
5518 grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing
5519 down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here
5520 would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).
     
5521 Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is
5522 not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of
5523 the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr.
5524 Tulkinghorn.
     
5525 Oh! Here's the boy, gentlemen!
     
5526 Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop
5527 a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary
5528 paces.
     
5529 Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody
5530 has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is
5531 short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don't find
5532 no fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can't spell it. No father, no
5533 mother, no friends. Never been to school. What's home? Knows a
5534 broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect
5535 who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can't
5536 exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie
5537 to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to
5538 punish him, and serve him right -- and so he'll tell the truth.
     
5539 "This won't do, gentlemen!" says the coroner with a melancholy shake
5540 of the head.
     
5541 "Don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an
5542 attentive juryman.
     
5543 "Out of the question," says the coroner. "You have heard the boy.
5544 'Can't exactly say' won't do, you know. We can't take THAT in a court
5545 of justice, gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside."
     
5546 Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially
5547 of Little Swills, the comic vocalist.
     
5548 Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.
     
5549 Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in
5550 the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half,
5551 found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to
5552 lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come
5553 to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death,
5554 you will find a verdict accordingly.
     
5555 Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are
5556 discharged. Good afternoon.
     
5557 While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give
5558 private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.
     
5559 That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he
5560 recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes
5561 hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when
5562 he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man
5563 turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and
5564 found that he had not a friend in the world, said, "Neither have I.
5565 Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a night's lodging.
5566 That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he
5567 slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he
5568 ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man
5569 had no money, he would say in passing, "I am as poor as you to-day,
5570 Jo," but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most
5571 heartily believes) been glad to give him some.
     
5572 "He was wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his
5573 wretched sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I
5574 wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he
5575 wos!"
     
5576 As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a
5577 half-crown in his hand. "If you ever see me coming past your crossing
5578 with my little woman -- I mean a lady -- " says Mr. Snagsby with his
5579 finger on his nose, "don't allude to it!"
     
5580 For some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol's Arms
5581 colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of
5582 pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to
5583 Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and
5584 top up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being
5585 asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his
5586 strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy start." The
5587 landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding Little Swills so popular,
5588 commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a
5589 song in character he don't know his equal and that that man's
5590 character-wardrobe would fill a cart.
     
5591 Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night and then
5592 flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving,
5593 the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced
5594 (red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and
5595 support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little
5596 Swills says, "Gentlemen, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short
5597 description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day." Is
5598 much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes
5599 in as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes
5600 the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment,
5601 to the refrain: With his (the coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol
5602 lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
     
5603 The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally
5604 round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now
5605 laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt
5606 eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this
5607 forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the
5608 mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised
5609 to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon
5610 the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would
5611 have seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within
5612 him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is
5613 she, while these ashes are above the ground!
     
5614 It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby's, in Cook's Court,
5615 where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself
5616 allows -- not to put too fine a point upon it -- out of one fit into
5617 twenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender
5618 heart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been
5619 imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may,
5620 now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby's
5621 account of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time
5622 she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch
5623 cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came
5624 out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of
5625 fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically
5626 availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not
5627 to give her warning "when she quite comes to," and also in appeals to
5628 the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed.
5629 Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in
5630 Cursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the
5631 subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most
5632 patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am sure!"
     
5633 What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he
5634 strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men
5635 crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what
5636 cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that
5637 daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.
     
5638 Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers
5639 as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook's and bears off
5640 the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard,
5641 pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated
5642 to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed,
5643 while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official
5644 back-stairs -- would to heaven they HAD departed! -- are very complacent
5645 and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would
5646 reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they
5647 bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial.
     
5648 With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little
5649 tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate -- with every villainy
5650 of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of
5651 death in action close on life -- here they lower our dear brother down
5652 a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in
5653 corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful
5654 testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this
5655 boastful island together.
     
5656 Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too
5657 long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the
5658 windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at
5659 least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so
5660 sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its
5661 witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to
5662 every passerby, "Look here!"
     
5663 With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to
5664 the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and
5665 looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while.
     
5666 It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and
5667 makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in
5668 again a little while, and so departs.
     
5669 Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't
5670 exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's,
5671 thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a
5672 distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: "He wos wery
5673 good to me, he wos!"
     
     
     
     
5674 CHAPTER XII
     
5675 On the Watch
     
     
5676 It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney
5677 Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares,
5678 for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The
5679 fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad
5680 tidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will
5681 entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the
5682 BEAU MONDE (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a
5683 giant refreshed in French) at the ancient and hospitable family seat
5684 in Lincolnshire.
     
5685 For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and
5686 of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in
5687 the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper
5688 limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect
5689 from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle
5690 woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves
5691 and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows
5692 of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It
5693 looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars
5694 and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart
5695 the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a
5696 broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the
5697 hearth and seems to rend it.
     
5698 Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and
5699 Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman and Sir
5700 Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a
5701 considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging
5702 demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs
5703 with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they
5704 rattle out of the yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome and
5705 canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de
5706 Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and
5707 queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the
5708 Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
     
5709 Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Lady
5710 Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre,
5711 drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only
5712 last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay -- within the walls playing
5713 with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace
5714 Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more
5715 Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles
5716 filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a
5717 word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little
5718 gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing
5719 Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking,
5720 tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and
5721 much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate -- only last Sunday, my
5722 Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair,
5723 almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
     
5724 She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies
5725 before her, as it lies behind -- her Ariel has put a girdle of it round
5726 the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped -- but the imperfect remedy
5727 is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced.
5728 Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless
5729 avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let
5730 it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck
5731 glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain -- two dark
5732 square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it
5733 aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!
     
5734 Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored.
5735 When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own
5736 greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so
5737 inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in
5738 his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to
5739 society.
     
5740 "You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my
5741 Lady after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read
5742 a page in twenty miles.
     
5743 "Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever."
     
5744 "I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn's long effusions, I think?"
     
5745 "You see everything," says Sir Leicester with admiration.
     
5746 "Ha!" sighs my Lady. "He is the most tiresome of men!"
     
5747 "He sends -- I really beg your pardon -- he sends," says Sir Leicester,
5748 selecting the letter and unfolding it, "a message to you. Our
5749 stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out of
5750 my memory. I beg you'll excuse me. He says -- " Sir Leicester is so
5751 long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady looks
5752 a little irritated. "He says 'In the matter of the right of way -- ' I
5753 beg your pardon, that's not the place. He says -- yes! Here I have it!
5754 He says, 'I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope,
5755 has benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as
5756 it may interest her) that I have something to tell her on her return
5757 in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery
5758 suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen
5759 him.'"
     
5760 My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
     
5761 "That's the message," observes Sir Leicester.
     
5762 "I should like to walk a little," says my Lady, still looking out of
5763 her window.
     
5764 "Walk?" repeats Sir Leicester in a tone of surprise.
     
5765 "I should like to walk a little," says my Lady with unmistakable
5766 distinctness. "Please to stop the carriage."
     
5767 The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the
5768 rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an
5769 impatient motion of my Lady's hand. My Lady alights so quickly and
5770 walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous
5771 politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a
5772 minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles,
5773 looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of
5774 a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.
     
5775 The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three
5776 days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more
5777 or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly
5778 politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme
5779 of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady,
5780 says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be
5781 her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each
5782 other. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in
5783 hand, to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my Lady,
5784 how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, with an inclination of her
5785 gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is
5786 ravishing!
     
5787 The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like
5788 the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose
5789 countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in
5790 whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the
5791 Radical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it
5792 after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Lady for Chesney
5793 Wold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire.
     
5794 Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and
5795 through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare
5796 trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched
5797 at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to
5798 coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their
5799 lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of
5800 the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing
5801 that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some arguing with
5802 malcontents who won't admit it, now all consenting to consider the
5803 question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate,
5804 incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting
5805 in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the
5806 travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly
5807 through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an
5808 inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the
5809 brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that.
     
5810 Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester's
5811 customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
     
5812 "How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
     
5813 "I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir
5814 Leicester?"
     
5815 "In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell."
     
5816 "My Lady is looking charmingly well," says Mrs. Rouncewell with
5817 another curtsy.
     
5818 My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is
5819 as wearily well as she can hope to be.
     
5820 But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who
5821 has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she
5822 may have conquered, asks, "Who is that girl?"
     
5823 "A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa."
     
5824 "Come here, Rosa!" Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance
5825 of interest. "Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says,
5826 touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.
     
5827 Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and
5828 glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, but looks
5829 all the prettier.
     
5830 "How old are you?"
     
5831 "Nineteen, my Lady."
     
5832 "Nineteen," repeats my Lady thoughtfully. "Take care they don't spoil
5833 you by flattery."
     
5834 "Yes, my Lady."
     
5835 My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers
5836 and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester
5837 pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a
5838 panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what
5839 to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the
5840 days of Queen Elizabeth.
     
5841 That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but
5842 murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so
5843 beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling
5844 touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this,
5845 not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of
5846 affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven
5847 forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of
5848 that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world
5849 admires; but if my Lady would only be "a little more free," not quite
5850 so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more
5851 affable.
     
5852 "'Tis almost a pity," Mrs. Rouncewell adds -- only "almost" because it
5853 borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it
5854 is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs -- "that my
5855 Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young
5856 lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of
5857 excellence she wants."
     
5858 "Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says
5859 Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good
5860 grandson.
     
5861 "More and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are
5862 words it's not my place to use -- nor so much as to hear -- applied to
5863 any drawback on my Lady."
     
5864 "I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?"
     
5865 "If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always
5866 reason to be."
     
5867 "Well," says Watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their
5868 prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and
5869 vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!"
     
5870 "Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for
5871 joking."
     
5872 "Sir Leicester is no joke by any means," says Watt, "and I humbly ask
5873 his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and
5874 their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my
5875 stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller
5876 might?"
     
5877 "Surely, none in the world, child."
     
5878 "I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I have an inexpressible
5879 desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood."
     
5880 He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.
5881 But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that
5882 burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady's maid is holding
5883 forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
     
5884 My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in
5885 the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown
5886 woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline
5887 mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws
5888 too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably
5889 keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking
5890 out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could
5891 be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour
5892 and near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little
5893 adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to
5894 go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being
5895 accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is
5896 almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language;
5897 consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for
5898 having attracted my Lady's attention, and she pours them out with
5899 such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the
5900 affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon
5901 stage of that performance.
     
5902 Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady's service since five years
5903 and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet,
5904 caressed -- absolutely caressed -- by my Lady on the moment of her
5905 arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! "And do you know how pretty you
5906 are, child?" "No, my Lady." You are right there! "And how old are
5907 you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!"
5908 Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.
     
5909 In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense
5910 can't forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her
5911 countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of
5912 visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke -- an enjoyment
5913 expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of
5914 face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which
5915 intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady's
5916 mirrors when my Lady is not among them.
     
5917 All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of
5918 them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering
5919 faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not
5920 submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to
5921 pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable
5922 intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen
5923 scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James's to their
5924 being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By
5925 day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and
5926 carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the
5927 village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in
5928 the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my
5929 Lady's picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of
5930 jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is
5931 almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of
5932 the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.
     
5933 The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no
5934 contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and
5935 virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of
5936 its immense advantages. What can it be?
     
5937 Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to
5938 set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel
5939 neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There
5940 are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,
5941 swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by
5942 other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their
5943 noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into
5944 his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is
5945 troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is
5946 there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle
5947 notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got
5948 below the surface and is doing less harmless things than
5949 jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no
5950 rational person need particularly object?
     
5951 Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this
5952 January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
5953 have set up a dandyism -- in religion, for instance. Who in mere
5954 lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk
5955 about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the
5956 things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow
5957 should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it
5958 out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by
5959 putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few
5960 hundred years of history.
     
5961 There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,
5962 but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world
5963 and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be
5964 languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who
5965 are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be
5966 disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder
5967 and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves
5968 in the milliners' and tailors' patterns of past generations and be
5969 particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress
5970 from the moving age.
     
5971 Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his
5972 party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester
5973 Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see
5974 to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate
5975 used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a
5976 Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment
5977 that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited
5978 choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie
5979 between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle -- supposing it to be
5980 impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be
5981 assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of
5982 that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the
5983 leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to
5984 Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,
5985 what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of
5986 the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the
5987 Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What
5988 follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces
5989 (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock)
5990 because you can't provide for Noodle!
     
5991 On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends
5992 across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the
5993 country -- about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it
5994 that is in question -- is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with
5995 Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament,
5996 and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got
5997 him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight
5998 attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear
5999 upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for
6000 three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have
6001 strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the
6002 business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are,
6003 dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!
     
6004 As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences
6005 of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and
6006 distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but
6007 Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the
6008 great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no
6009 doubt -- a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be
6010 occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as
6011 on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and
6012 families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are
6013 the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can
6014 appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
     
6015 In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the
6016 brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the
6017 long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as
6018 with the circle the necromancer draws around him -- very strange
6019 appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this
6020 difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the
6021 greater danger of their breaking in.
     
6022 Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of
6023 injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not
6024 to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of
6025 the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and
6026 having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's room,
6027 and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time.
6028 He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park
6029 from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had
6030 never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a
6031 servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should
6032 be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of
6033 the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining
6034 flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any
6035 fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen
6036 walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
     
6037 Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the
6038 library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances
6039 down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive
6040 him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night
6041 my Lady casually asks her maid, "Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?"
     
6042 Every night the answer is, "No, my Lady, not yet."
     
6043 One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in
6044 deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in
6045 the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.
     
6046 "Be so good as to attend," says my Lady then, addressing the
6047 reflection of Hortense, "to your business. You can contemplate your
6048 beauty at another time."
     
6049 "Pardon! It was your Ladyship's beauty."
     
6050 "That," says my Lady, "you needn't contemplate at all."
     
6051 At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright
6052 groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the
6053 Ghost's Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady
6054 remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards
6055 them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never
6056 slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask -- if it be a
6057 mask -- and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every
6058 crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great
6059 or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his
6060 personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients;
6061 he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
     
6062 "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his
6063 hand.
     
6064 Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady
6065 is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands
6066 behind him, walks at Sir Leicester's side along the terrace. My Lady
6067 walks upon the other side.
     
6068 "We expected you before," says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation.
6069 As much as to say, "Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when
6070 you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a
6071 fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!"
     
6072 Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is
6073 much obliged.
     
6074 "I should have come down sooner," he explains, "but that I have been
6075 much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself
6076 and Boythorn."
     
6077 "A man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes Sir Leicester with
6078 severity. "An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a
6079 very low character of mind."
     
6080 "He is obstinate," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
6081 "It is natural to such a man to be so," says Sir Leicester, looking
6082 most profoundly obstinate himself. "I am not at all surprised to hear
6083 it."
     
6084 "The only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up
6085 anything."
     
6086 "No, sir," replies Sir Leicester. "Nothing. I give up?"
     
6087 "I don't mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you
6088 would not abandon. I mean any minor point."
     
6089 "Mr. Tulkinghorn," returns Sir Leicester, "there can be no minor
6090 point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe
6091 that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor
6092 point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as
6093 in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain."
     
6094 Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. "I have now my
6095 instructions," he says. "Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of
6096 trouble -- "
     
6097 "It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn," Sir Leicester
6098 interrupts him, "TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned,
6099 levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have
6100 been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and
6101 severely punished -- if not," adds Sir Leicester after a moment's
6102 pause, "if not hanged, drawn, and quartered."
     
6103 Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in
6104 passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory
6105 thing to having the sentence executed.
     
6106 "But night is coming on," says he, "and my Lady will take cold. My
6107 dear, let us go in."
     
6108 As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr.
6109 Tulkinghorn for the first time.
     
6110 "You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened
6111 to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had
6112 quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't
6113 imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely
6114 had some."
     
6115 "You had some?" Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.
     
6116 "Oh, yes!" returns my Lady carelessly. "I think I must have had some.
6117 And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that
6118 actual thing -- what is it! -- affidavit?"
     
6119 "Yes."
     
6120 "How very odd!"
     
6121 They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted
6122 in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows
6123 brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where,
6124 through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape
6125 shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller
6126 besides the waste of clouds.
     
6127 My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir
6128 Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands
6129 before the fire with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face.
6130 He looks across his arm at my Lady.
     
6131 "Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what
6132 is very strange, I found him -- "
     
6133 "Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!" Lady Dedlock
6134 languidly anticipates.
     
6135 "I found him dead."
     
6136 "Oh, dear me!" remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the
6137 fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
     
6138 "I was directed to his lodging -- a miserable, poverty-stricken
6139 place -- and I found him dead."
     
6140 "You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I
6141 think the less said -- "
     
6142 "Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady
6143 speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking!
6144 Dead?"
     
6145 Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head.
6146 "Whether by his own hand -- "
     
6147 "Upon my honour!" cries Sir Leicester. "Really!"
     
6148 "Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady.
     
6149 "Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say -- "
     
6150 "No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
     
6151 Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels
6152 that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is
6153 really -- really -- 
     
6154 "I was about to say," resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness,
6155 "that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my
6156 power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying
6157 that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his
6158 own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be
6159 known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison
6160 accidentally."
     
6161 "And what kind of man," my Lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?"
     
6162 "Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "He
6163 had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour
6164 and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him
6165 the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had
6166 once been something better, both in appearance and condition."
     
6167 "What did they call the wretched being?"
     
6168 "They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his
6169 name."
     
6170 "Not even any one who had attended on him?"
     
6171 "No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found
6172 him."
     
6173 "Without any clue to anything more?"
     
6174 "Without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old
6175 portmanteau, but -- No, there were no papers."
     
6176 During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady
6177 Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their
6178 customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another -- as
6179 was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir
6180 Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the
6181 Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately
6182 protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my
6183 Lady's mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he
6184 was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a
6185 subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
     
6186 "Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her
6187 mantles and furs, "but they interest one for the moment! Have the
6188 kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
     
6189 Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she
6190 passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner
6191 and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner -- again, next
6192 day -- again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the
6193 same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable
6194 to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr.
6195 Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble
6196 confidences, so oddly but of place and yet so perfectly at home. They
6197 appear to take as little note of one another as any two people
6198 enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore
6199 watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great
6200 reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the
6201 other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know
6202 how much the other knows -- all this is hidden, for the time, in their
6203 own hearts.
     
     
     
     
6204 CHAPTER XIII
     
6205 Esther's Narrative
     
     
6206 We held many consultations about what Richard was to be, first
6207 without Mr. Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him,
6208 but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. Richard
6209 said he was ready for anything. When Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether he
6210 might not already be too old to enter the Navy, Richard said he had
6211 thought of that, and perhaps he was. When Mr. Jarndyce asked him what
6212 he thought of the Army, Richard said he had thought of that, too, and
6213 it wasn't a bad idea. When Mr. Jarndyce advised him to try and decide
6214 within himself whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary
6215 boyish inclination or a strong impulse, Richard answered, Well he
6216 really HAD tried very often, and he couldn't make out.
     
6217 "How much of this indecision of character," Mr. Jarndyce said to me,
6218 "is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and
6219 procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't
6220 pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is
6221 responsible for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or
6222 confirmed in him a habit of putting off -- and trusting to this, that,
6223 and the other chance, without knowing what chance -- and dismissing
6224 everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of
6225 much older and steadier people may be even changed by the
6226 circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a
6227 boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and
6228 escape them."
     
6229 I felt this to be true; though if I may venture to mention what I
6230 thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's
6231 education had not counteracted those influences or directed his
6232 character. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt,
6233 I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most
6234 admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's
6235 business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings
6236 lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to
6237 the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection
6238 that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he
6239 could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had
6240 enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I
6241 had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and
6242 very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always
6243 remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not
6244 have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his
6245 studying them quite so much.
     
6246 To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know
6247 whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to
6248 the same extent -- or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever
6249 did.
     
6250 "I haven't the least idea," said Richard, musing, "what I had better
6251 be. Except that I am quite sure I don't want to go into the Church,
6252 it's a toss-up."
     
6253 "You have no inclination in Mr. Kenge's way?" suggested Mr. Jarndyce.
     
6254 "I don't know that, sir!" replied Richard. "I am fond of boating.
6255 Articled clerks go a good deal on the water. It's a capital
6256 profession!"
     
6257 "Surgeon -- " suggested Mr. Jarndyce.
     
6258 "That's the thing, sir!" cried Richard.
     
6259 I doubt if he had ever once thought of it before.
     
6260 "That's the thing, sir," repeated Richard with the greatest
6261 enthusiasm. "We have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!"
     
6262 He was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily.
6263 He said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it,
6264 the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was
6265 the art of all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this
6266 conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for
6267 himself what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the
6268 discovery, he was taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of
6269 the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses
6270 often ended in this or whether Richard's was a solitary case.
     
6271 Mr. Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put
6272 it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter.
6273 Richard was a little grave after these interviews, but invariably
6274 told Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk about
6275 something else.
     
6276 "By heaven!" cried Mr. Boythorn, who interested himself strongly in
6277 the subject -- though I need not say that, for he could do nothing
6278 weakly; "I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry
6279 devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is
6280 in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary
6281 task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that
6282 illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base
6283 and despicable," cried Mr. Boythorn, "the treatment of surgeons
6284 aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs -- both legs -- of every
6285 member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a
6286 transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if
6287 the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours!"
     
6288 "Wouldn't you give them a week?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
     
6289 "No!" cried Mr. Boythorn firmly. "Not on any consideration! Eight and
6290 forty hours! As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar
6291 gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such
6292 speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver
6293 mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it
6294 were only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a
6295 language spoken in the presence of the sun -- as to those fellows, who
6296 meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of
6297 knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of
6298 their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with
6299 pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the
6300 necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in
6301 Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order
6302 that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in
6303 early life, HOW thick skulls may become!"
     
6304 He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a
6305 most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, "Ha, ha, ha!" over and
6306 over again, until anybody else might have been expected to be quite
6307 subdued by the exertion.
     
6308 As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice
6309 after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr.
6310 Jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure Ada and me
6311 in the same final manner that it was "all right," it became advisable
6312 to take Mr. Kenge into council. Mr. Kenge, therefore, came down to
6313 dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his
6314 eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did
6315 exactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a little
6316 girl.
     
6317 "Ah!" said Mr. Kenge. "Yes. Well! A very good profession, Mr.
6318 Jarndyce, a very good profession."
     
6319 "The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently
6320 pursued," observed my guardian with a glance at Richard.
     
6321 "Oh, no doubt," said Mr. Kenge. "Diligently."
     
6322 "But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are
6323 worth much," said Mr. Jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration
6324 which another choice would be likely to escape."
     
6325 "Truly," said Mr. Kenge. "And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so
6326 meritoriously acquitted himself in the -- shall I say the classic
6327 shades? -- in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply
6328 the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in
6329 that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born,
6330 not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he
6331 enters."
     
6332 "You may rely upon it," said Richard in his off-hand manner, "that I
6333 shall go at it and do my best."
     
6334 "Very well, Mr. Jarndyce!" said Mr. Kenge, gently nodding his head.
6335 "Really, when we are assured by Mr. Richard that he means to go at it
6336 and to do his best," nodding feelingly and smoothly over those
6337 expressions, "I would submit to you that we have only to inquire into
6338 the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. Now, with
6339 reference to placing Mr. Richard with some sufficiently eminent
6340 practitioner. Is there any one in view at present?"
     
6341 "No one, Rick, I think?" said my guardian.
     
6342 "No one, sir," said Richard.
     
6343 "Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge. "As to situation, now. Is there any
6344 particular feeling on that head?"
     
6345 "N -- no," said Richard.
     
6346 "Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge again.
     
6347 "I should like a little variety," said Richard; "I mean a good range
6348 of experience."
     
6349 "Very requisite, no doubt," returned Mr. Kenge. "I think this may be
6350 easily arranged, Mr. Jarndyce? We have only, in the first place, to
6351 discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we make
6352 our want -- and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium? -- known, our
6353 only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large number.
6354 We have only, in the second place, to observe those little
6355 formalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life and our
6356 being under the guardianship of the court. We shall soon be -- shall I
6357 say, in Mr. Richard's own light-hearted manner, 'going at it' -- to our
6358 heart's content. It is a coincidence," said Mr. Kenge with a tinge of
6359 melancholy in his smile, "one of those coincidences which may or may
6360 not require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that
6361 I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might be deemed
6362 eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I
6363 can answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!"
     
6364 As this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr.
6365 Kenge should see his cousin. And as Mr. Jarndyce had before proposed
6366 to take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we
6367 should make our visit at once and combine Richard's business with it.
     
6368 Mr. Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a
6369 cheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer's shop.
6370 London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours
6371 at a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of
6372 exhaustion than we were. We made the round of the principal theatres,
6373 too, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were worth
6374 seeing. I mention this because it was at the theatre that I began to
6375 be made uncomfortable again by Mr. Guppy.
     
6376 I was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada, and Richard was
6377 in the place he liked best, behind Ada's chair, when, happening to
6378 look down into the pit, I saw Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened down
6379 upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt
6380 all through the performance that he never looked at the actors but
6381 constantly looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared
6382 expression of the deepest misery and the profoundest dejection.
     
6383 It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very
6384 embarrassing and so very ridiculous. But from that time forth, we
6385 never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit, always
6386 with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a
6387 general feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in,
6388 and I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little
6389 while to the interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his
6390 languishing eyes when I least expected it and, from that time, to be
6391 quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening.
     
6392 I really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only
6393 have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been
6394 bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at
6395 me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a
6396 constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to
6397 cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing
6398 naturally. As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the box,
6399 I could not bear to do that because I knew Richard and Ada relied on
6400 having me next them and that they could never have talked together so
6401 happily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not
6402 knowing where to look -- for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Guppy's eyes
6403 were following me -- and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this
6404 young man was putting himself on my account.
     
6405 Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. Then I feared that the
6406 young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.
6407 Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the
6408 possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy and giving him black eyes.
6409 Sometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I
6410 felt I could not do it. Sometimes I considered whether I should write
6411 to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a
6412 correspondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to
6413 the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Guppy's
6414 perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any
6415 theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we
6416 were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly -- where I am sure I
6417 saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful
6418 spikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The
6419 upholsterer's where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and
6420 my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near
6421 the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one
6422 moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching
6423 cold. If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the
6424 daytime, I really should have had no rest from him.
     
6425 While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so
6426 extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring
6427 us to town was not neglected. Mr. Kenge's cousin was a Mr. Bayham
6428 Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large
6429 public institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard
6430 into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that
6431 those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger's roof, and
6432 Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger
6433 "well enough," an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor's consent
6434 was obtained, and it was all settled.
     
6435 On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr.
6436 Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger's house.
6437 We were to be "merely a family party," Mrs. Badger's note said; and
6438 we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in
6439 the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a
6440 little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little,
6441 playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little,
6442 reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little.
6443 She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,
6444 and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her
6445 accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there
6446 was any harm in it.
     
6447 Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking
6448 gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised
6449 eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He
6450 admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the
6451 curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands.
6452 We had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite
6453 triumphantly, "You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham
6454 Badger's third!"
     
6455 "Indeed?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
6456 "Her third!" said Mr. Badger. "Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the
6457 appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former
6458 husbands?"
     
6459 I said "Not at all!"
     
6460 "And most remarkable men!" said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence.
6461 "Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger's first
6462 husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of
6463 Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European
6464 reputation."
     
6465 Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled.
     
6466 "Yes, my dear!" Mr. Badger replied to the smile, "I was observing to
6467 Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former
6468 husbands -- both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people
6469 generally do, difficult to believe."
     
6470 "I was barely twenty," said Mrs. Badger, "when I married Captain
6471 Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am
6472 quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I
6473 became the wife of Professor Dingo."
     
6474 "Of European reputation," added Mr. Badger in an undertone.
     
6475 "And when Mr. Badger and myself were married," pursued Mrs. Badger,
6476 "we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached
6477 to the day."
     
6478 "So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands -- two of them
6479 highly distinguished men," said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts,
6480 "and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the
6481 forenoon!"
     
6482 We all expressed our admiration.
     
6483 "But for Mr. Badger's modesty," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take
6484 leave to correct him and say three distinguished men."
     
6485 "Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!" observed Mrs.
6486 Badger.
     
6487 "And, my dear," said Mr. Badger, "what do I always tell you? That
6488 without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction
6489 as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many
6490 opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak -- no, really," said Mr.
6491 Badger to us generally, "so unreasonable -- as to put my reputation on
6492 the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and
6493 Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce,"
6494 continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the next
6495 drawing-room, "in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on
6496 his return home from the African station, where he had suffered from
6497 the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But
6498 it's a very fine head. A very fine head!"
     
6499 We all echoed, "A very fine head!"
     
6500 "I feel when I look at it," said Mr. Badger, "'That's a man I should
6501 like to have seen!' It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that
6502 Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor
6503 Dingo. I knew him well -- attended him in his last illness -- a speaking
6504 likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over
6505 the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger
6506 IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy."
     
6507 Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very
6508 genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and
6509 the professor still ran in Mr. Badger's head, and as Ada and I had
6510 the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full
6511 benefit of them.
     
6512 "Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me
6513 the professor's goblet, James!"
     
6514 Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass.
     
6515 "Astonishing how they keep!" said Mr. Badger. "They were presented to
6516 Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean."
     
6517 He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.
     
6518 "Not that claret!" he said. "Excuse me! This is an occasion, and ON
6519 an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.
6520 (James, Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that
6521 was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You
6522 will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of
6523 this wine with you. (Captain Swosser's claret to your mistress,
6524 James!) My love, your health!"
     
6525 After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger's first and
6526 second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room a
6527 biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser
6528 before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the
6529 time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,
6530 given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.
     
6531 "The dear old Crippler!" said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. "She was
6532 a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser
6533 used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a
6534 nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved
6535 that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he
6536 frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he
6537 would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck
6538 where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he
6539 fell -- raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire
6540 from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes."
     
6541 Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
     
6542 "It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo," she
6543 resumed with a plaintive smile. "I felt it a good deal at first. Such
6544 an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with
6545 science -- particularly science -- inured me to it. Being the professor's
6546 sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I
6547 had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that
6548 the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr.
6549 Badger is not in the least like either!"
     
6550 We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and
6551 Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.
6552 In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never
6553 madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,
6554 never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.
6555 The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and
6556 Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great
6557 difficulty, "Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!"
6558 when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb.
     
6559 Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,
6560 that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other's
6561 society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be
6562 separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we
6563 got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent
6564 than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my
6565 arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.
     
6566 "My darling Esther!" murmured Ada. "I have a great secret to tell
6567 you!"
     
6568 A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
     
6569 "What is it, Ada?"
     
6570 "Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"
     
6571 "Shall I try to guess?" said I.
     
6572 "Oh, no! Don't! Pray don't!" cried Ada, very much startled by the
6573 idea of my doing so.
     
6574 "Now, I wonder who it can be about?" said I, pretending to consider.
     
6575 "It's about -- " said Ada in a whisper. "It's about -- my cousin
6576 Richard!"
     
6577 "Well, my own!" said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I
6578 could see. "And what about him?"
     
6579 "Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"
     
6580 It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her
6581 face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little
6582 glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just yet.
     
6583 "He says -- I know it's very foolish, we are both so young -- but he
6584 says," with a burst of tears, "that he loves me dearly, Esther."
     
6585 "Does he indeed?" said I. "I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet
6586 of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!"
     
6587 To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me
6588 round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant!
     
6589 "Why, my darling," said I, "what a goose you must take me for! Your
6590 cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don't
6591 know how long!"
     
6592 "And yet you never said a word about it!" cried Ada, kissing me.
     
6593 "No, my love," said I. "I waited to be told."
     
6594 "But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me, do you?"
6595 returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the
6596 hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no
6597 very freely.
     
6598 "And now," said I, "I know the worst of it."
     
6599 "Oh, that's not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!" cried Ada,
6600 holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast.
     
6601 "No?" said I. "Not even that?"
     
6602 "No, not even that!" said Ada, shaking her head.
     
6603 "Why, you never mean to say -- " I was beginning in joke.
     
6604 But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, "Yes, I do!
6605 You know, you know I do!" And then sobbed out, "With all my heart I
6606 do! With all my whole heart, Esther!"
     
6607 I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I
6608 had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the
6609 talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of
6610 it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.
     
6611 "Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?" she asked.
     
6612 "Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet," said I, "I should think my
6613 cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know."
     
6614 "We want to speak to him before Richard goes," said Ada timidly, "and
6615 we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn't
6616 mind Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?"
     
6617 "Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?" said I.
     
6618 "I am not quite certain," returned Ada with a bashful simplicity that
6619 would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, "but I
6620 think he's waiting at the door."
     
6621 There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me,
6622 and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love
6623 with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so
6624 trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a
6625 little while -- I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself -- and
6626 then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how
6627 there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could
6628 come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were
6629 real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do
6630 their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and
6631 perseverance, each always for the other's sake. Well! Richard said
6632 that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that
6633 she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called
6634 me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there,
6635 advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I
6636 gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to-morrow.
     
6637 So, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in
6638 the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him
6639 that I had it in trust to tell him something.
     
6640 "Well, little woman," said he, shutting up his book, "if you have
6641 accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it."
     
6642 "I hope not, guardian," said I. "I can guarantee that there is no
6643 secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday."
     
6644 "Aye? And what is it, Esther?"
     
6645 "Guardian," said I, "you remember the happy night when first we came
6646 down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?"
     
6647 I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then.
6648 Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.
     
6649 "Because -- " said I with a little hesitation.
     
6650 "Yes, my dear!" said he. "Don't hurry."
     
6651 "Because," said I, "Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have
6652 told each other so."
     
6653 "Already!" cried my guardian, quite astonished.
     
6654 "Yes!" said I. "And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather
6655 expected it."
     
6656 "The deuce you did!" said he.
     
6657 He sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so
6658 handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me
6659 to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he
6660 encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself
6661 to Richard with a cheerful gravity.
     
6662 "Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am glad to have won your confidence. I
6663 hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us
6664 four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new
6665 interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the
6666 possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada,
6667 don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together.
6668 I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was
6669 afar off, Rick, afar off!"
     
6670 "We look afar off, sir," returned Richard.
     
6671 "Well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "That's rational. Now, hear me, my dears!
6672 I might tell you that you don't know your own minds yet, that a
6673 thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is
6674 well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken,
6675 or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such
6676 wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I
6677 will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one
6678 another what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you
6679 according to that assumption is, if you DO change -- if you DO come to
6680 find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and
6681 woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me,
6682 Rick!) -- don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be
6683 nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and
6684 distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and
6685 hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it."
     
6686 "I am very sure, sir," returned Richard, "that I speak for Ada too
6687 when I say that you have the strongest power over us both -- rooted in
6688 respect, gratitude, and affection -- strengthening every day."
     
6689 "Dear cousin John," said Ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place can
6690 never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have
6691 rendered to him is transferred to you."
     
6692 "Come!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now for our assumption. Now we lift our
6693 eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before
6694 you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive
6695 you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never
6696 separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a
6697 good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy
6698 in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great
6699 men, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely
6700 meaning it and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition
6701 that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could
6702 be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts,
6703 leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here."
     
6704 "I will leave IT here, sir," replied Richard smiling, "if I brought
6705 it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to
6706 my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance."
     
6707 "Right!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "If you are not to make her happy, why
6708 should you pursue her?"
     
6709 "I wouldn't make her unhappy -- no, not even for her love," retorted
6710 Richard proudly.
     
6711 "Well said!" cried Mr. Jarndyce. "That's well said! She remains here,
6712 in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less
6713 than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well.
6714 Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think
6715 you and Ada had better take a walk."
     
6716 Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him,
6717 and then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again
6718 directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.
     
6719 The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as they
6720 passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining, and out
6721 at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn
6722 through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up
6723 in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so
6724 beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through
6725 the sunlight as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the
6726 years to come and making them all years of brightness. So they passed
6727 away into the shadow and were gone. It was only a burst of light that
6728 had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun
6729 was clouded over.
     
6730 "Am I right, Esther?" said my guardian when they were gone.
     
6731 He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was right!
     
6732 "Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core
6733 of so much that is good!" said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. "I
6734 have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor
6735 always near." And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.
     
6736 I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all
6737 I could to conceal it.
     
6738 "Tut tut!" said he. "But we must take care, too, that our little
6739 woman's life is not all consumed in care for others."
     
6740 "Care? My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the
6741 world!"
     
6742 "I believe so, too," said he. "But some one may find out what Esther
6743 never will -- that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above
6744 all other people!"
     
6745 I have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else
6746 at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It
6747 was a gentleman of a dark complexion -- a young surgeon. He was rather
6748 reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least,
6749 Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.
     
     
     
     
6750 CHAPTER XIV
     
6751 Deportment
     
     
6752 Richard left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and
6753 committed Ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in
6754 me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more
6755 nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both
6756 thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all
6757 their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard
6758 once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to
6759 him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of
6760 all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and
6761 persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were
6762 married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the
6763 keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.
     
6764 "And if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Esther -- which it may, you
6765 know!" said Richard to crown all.
     
6766 A shade crossed Ada's face.
     
6767 "My dearest Ada," asked Richard, "why not?"
     
6768 "It had better declare us poor at once," said Ada.
     
6769 "Oh! I don't know about that," returned Richard, "but at all events,
6770 it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in
6771 heaven knows how many years."
     
6772 "Too true," said Ada.
     
6773 "Yes, but," urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather
6774 than her words, "the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it
6775 must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that
6776 reasonable?"
     
6777 "You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will
6778 make us unhappy."
     
6779 "But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!" cried Richard gaily.
6780 "We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD
6781 make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The
6782 court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we
6783 are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is
6784 our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right."
     
6785 "No," said Ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it."
     
6786 "Well, well," cried Richard, "then we will forget all about it! We
6787 consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her
6788 approving face, and it's done!"
     
6789 "Dame Durden's approving face," said I, looking out of the box in
6790 which I was packing his books, "was not very visible when you called
6791 it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do
6792 better."
     
6793 So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no
6794 other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man
6795 the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I,
6796 prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
     
6797 On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs.
6798 Jellyby's but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It
6799 appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken
6800 Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some
6801 considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits
6802 of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the
6803 Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt,
6804 sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter's part
6805 in the proceedings anything but a holiday.
     
6806 It being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we
6807 called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile
6808 End directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business, arising
6809 out of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I
6810 had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not
6811 to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have
6812 strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again.
6813 The oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the
6814 passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that
6815 he had "gone after the sheep." When we repeated, with some surprise,
6816 "The sheep?" she said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed
6817 them quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was!
     
6818 I was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following
6819 morning, and Ada was busy writing -- of course to Richard -- when Miss
6820 Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom
6821 she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt
6822 into corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and
6823 then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear
6824 child wore was either too large for him or too small. Among his other
6825 contradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little
6826 gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a
6827 ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches
6828 that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of
6829 plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different
6830 patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been
6831 supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely
6832 brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of
6833 needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been
6834 hastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She
6835 was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked
6836 very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a
6837 failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by
6838 the way in which she glanced first at him and then at us.
     
6839 "Oh, dear me!" said my guardian. "Due east!"
     
6840 Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.
6841 Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, "Ma's compliments, and
6842 she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the
6843 plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she
6844 knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them
6845 with me. Ma's compliments." With which she presented it sulkily
6846 enough.
     
6847 "Thank you," said my guardian. "I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby.
6848 Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!"
     
6849 We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if
6850 he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first,
6851 but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him
6852 on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then
6853 withdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a
6854 conversation with her usual abruptness.
     
6855 "We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn," said she. "I
6856 have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if
6857 I was a what's-his-name -- man and a brother!"
     
6858 I tried to say something soothing.
     
6859 "Oh, it's of no use, Miss Summerson," exclaimed Miss Jellyby, "though
6860 I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am
6861 used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn't be talked over if
6862 you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!"
     
6863 "I shan't!" said Peepy.
     
6864 "Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!" returned Miss
6865 Jellyby with tears in her eyes. "I'll never take pains to dress you
6866 any more."
     
6867 "Yes, I will go, Caddy!" cried Peepy, who was really a good child and
6868 who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.
     
6869 "It seems a little thing to cry about," said poor Miss Jellyby
6870 apologetically, "but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new
6871 circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that
6872 that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And
6873 look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as
6874 he is!"
     
6875 Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on
6876 the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of
6877 his den at us while he ate his cake.
     
6878 "I have sent him to the other end of the room," observed Miss
6879 Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, "because I don't want him to
6880 hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going
6881 to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt
6882 before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll he nobody
6883 but Ma to thank for it."
     
6884 We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as
6885 that.
     
6886 "It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you," returned Miss
6887 Jellyby, shaking her head. "Pa told me only yesterday morning (and
6888 dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn't weather the storm. I
6889 should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our
6890 house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with
6891 it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't
6892 care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather
6893 the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I'd run away."
     
6894 "My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa, no doubt, considers his
6895 family."
     
6896 "Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson," replied Miss
6897 Jellyby; "but what comfort is his family to him? His family is
6898 nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion,
6899 and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's end to week's end,
6900 is like one great washing-day -- only nothing's washed!"
     
6901 Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes.
     
6902 "I am sure I pity Pa to that degree," she said, "and am so angry with
6903 Ma that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going
6904 to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I
6905 won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed,
6906 to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of THAT!" said
6907 poor Miss Jellyby.
     
6908 I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs.
6909 Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing
6910 how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.
     
6911 "If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our
6912 house," pursued Miss Jellyby, "I should have been ashamed to come
6913 here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as
6914 it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to
6915 see you again the next time you come to town."
     
6916 She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at
6917 one another, foreseeing something more.
     
6918 "No!" said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. "Not at all likely! I know
6919 I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged."
     
6920 "Without their knowledge at home?" said I.
     
6921 "Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson," she returned, justifying
6922 herself in a fretful but not angry manner, "how can it be otherwise?
6923 You know what Ma is -- and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by
6924 telling HIM."
     
6925 "But would it not he adding to his unhappiness to marry without his
6926 knowledge or consent, my dear?" said I.
     
6927 "No," said Miss Jellyby, softening. "I hope not. I should try to make
6928 him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy and the
6929 others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they
6930 should have some care taken of them then."
     
6931 There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more
6932 and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little
6933 home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his cave under
6934 the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud
6935 lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister,
6936 and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that
6937 Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we
6938 could recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time
6939 conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our
6940 faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal
6941 to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss
6942 Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.
     
6943 "It began in your coming to our house," she said.
     
6944 We naturally asked how.
     
6945 "I felt I was so awkward," she replied, "that I made up my mind to be
6946 improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told
6947 Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked
6948 at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn't in sight, but I
6949 was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr.
6950 Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street."
     
6951 "And was it there, my dear -- " I began.
     
6952 "Yes, it was there," said Caddy, "and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop.
6953 There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is
6954 the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was
6955 likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him."
     
6956 "I am sorry to hear this," said I, "I must confess."
     
6957 "I don't know why you should be sorry," she retorted a little
6958 anxiously, "but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he
6959 is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because
6960 old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break
6961 his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly.
6962 Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed -- very
6963 gentlemanly."
     
6964 "Does his wife know of it?" asked Ada.
     
6965 "Old Mr. Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?" returned Miss Jellyby,
6966 opening her eyes. "There's no such person. He is a widower."
     
6967 We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on
6968 account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope
6969 whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his
6970 sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for
6971 compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him.
6972 Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss and
6973 assuring him that she hadn't meant to do it.
     
6974 "That's the state of the case," said Caddy. "If I ever blame myself,
6975 I still think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can,
6976 and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won't
6977 much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,"
6978 said Caddy with a sob, "that I shall never hear of Africa after I am
6979 married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr.
6980 Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does."
     
6981 "It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!" said I.
     
6982 "Very gentlemanly indeed," said Caddy. "He is celebrated almost
6983 everywhere for his deportment."
     
6984 "Does he teach?" asked Ada.
     
6985 "No, he don't teach anything in particular," replied Caddy. "But his
6986 deportment is beautiful."
     
6987 Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that
6988 there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to
6989 know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had
6990 improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady,
6991 and that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her
6992 lover for a few minutes before breakfast -- only for a few minutes. "I
6993 go there at other times," said Caddy, "but Prince does not come then.
6994 Young Mr. Turveydrop's name is Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it
6995 sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr.
6996 Turveydrop had him christened Prince in remembrance of the Prince
6997 Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his
6998 deportment. I hope you won't think the worse of me for having made
6999 these little appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with
7000 you, because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she
7001 likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would
7002 think well of him -- at least, I am sure you couldn't possibly think
7003 any ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn't ask
7004 you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would," said Caddy, who
7005 had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, "I should be very
7006 glad -- very glad."
     
7007 It happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss
7008 Flite's that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our
7009 account had interested him; but something had always happened to
7010 prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have
7011 sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very
7012 rash step if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to
7013 place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go
7014 to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss
7015 Flite's, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on
7016 condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to
7017 dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to
7018 by both, we smartened Peepy up a little with the assistance of a few
7019 pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending
7020 our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.
     
7021 I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the
7022 corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the
7023 same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates
7024 on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly,
7025 no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate
7026 which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I
7027 read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up
7028 by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in
7029 cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the
7030 daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent,
7031 last night, for a concert.
     
7032 We went upstairs -- it had been quite a fine house once, when it was
7033 anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business
7034 to smoke in it all day -- and into Mr. Turveydrop's great room, which
7035 was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight.
7036 It was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms
7037 along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with
7038 painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed
7039 to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed
7040 autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or
7041 fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and
7042 I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy, pinching my
7043 arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. "Miss Summerson, Mr.
7044 Prince Turveydrop!"
     
7045 I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with
7046 flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round
7047 his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a
7048 kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His
7049 little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a
7050 little innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an
7051 amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that I received
7052 the impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had
7053 not been much considered or well used.
     
7054 "I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low
7055 to me. "I began to fear," with timid tenderness, "as it was past the
7056 usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming."
     
7057 "I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have
7058 detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir," said I.
     
7059 "Oh, dear!" said he.
     
7060 "And pray," I entreated, "do not allow me to be the cause of any more
7061 delay."
     
7062 With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well
7063 used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady
7064 of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and
7065 who was very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then
7066 tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies
7067 stood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr.
7068 Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment.
     
7069 He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth,
7070 false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded
7071 breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon
7072 to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and
7073 strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a
7074 neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and
7075 his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though
7076 he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his
7077 arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown
7078 to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he
7079 flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered,
7080 round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane,
7081 he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had
7082 wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not
7083 like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the
7084 world but a model of deportment.
     
7085 "Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson."
     
7086 "Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, "by Miss Summerson's presence."
7087 As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases
7088 come into the whites of his eyes.
     
7089 "My father," said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting
7090 belief in him, "is a celebrated character. My father is greatly
7091 admired."
     
7092 "Go on, Prince! Go on!" said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back
7093 to the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. "Go on, my son!"
     
7094 At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on.
7095 Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played
7096 the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little
7097 breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always
7098 conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step
7099 and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His
7100 distinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire,
7101 a model of deportment.
     
7102 "And he never does anything else," said the old lady of the
7103 censorious countenance. "Yet would you believe that it's HIS name on
7104 the door-plate?"
     
7105 "His son's name is the same, you know," said I.
     
7106 "He wouldn't let his son have any name if he could take it from him,"
7107 returned the old lady. "Look at the son's dress!" It certainly was
7108 plain -- threadbare -- almost shabby. "Yet the father must be garnished
7109 and tricked out," said the old lady, "because of his deportment. I'd
7110 deport him! Transport him would be better!"
     
7111 I felt curious to know more concerning this person. I asked, "Does he
7112 give lessons in deportment now?"
     
7113 "Now!" returned the old lady shortly. "Never did."
     
7114 After a moment's consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had
7115 been his accomplishment.
     
7116 "I don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am," said the old lady.
     
7117 I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and
7118 more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the
7119 subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong
7120 assurances that they were mildly stated.
     
7121 He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable
7122 connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport
7123 himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered
7124 her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which
7125 were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment
7126 to the best models and to keep the best models constantly before
7127 himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of
7128 fashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere
7129 at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best
7130 clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little
7131 dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and
7132 laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the
7133 mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man's absorbing
7134 selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the
7135 last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving
7136 terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable
7137 claim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and
7138 deference. The son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the
7139 deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith,
7140 and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a
7141 day and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary
7142 pinnacle.
     
7143 "The airs the fellow gives himself!" said my informant, shaking her
7144 head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on
7145 his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was
7146 rendering. "He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is
7147 so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might
7148 suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!" said the old lady,
7149 apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. "I could bite you!"
     
7150 I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with
7151 feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her with the
7152 father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without
7153 the old lady's account, or what I might have thought of the old
7154 lady's account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of
7155 things in the whole that carried conviction with it.
     
7156 My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so
7157 hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when
7158 the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.
     
7159 He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a
7160 distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary
7161 to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any
7162 case, but merely told him where I did reside.
     
7163 "A lady so graceful and accomplished," he said, kissing his
7164 right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils,
7165 "will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to
7166 polish -- polish -- polish!"
     
7167 He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I
7168 thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the
7169 sofa. And really he did look very like it.
     
7170 "To polish -- polish -- polish!" he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and
7171 gently fluttering his fingers. "But we are not, if I may say so to
7172 one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art -- " with the
7173 high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make
7174 without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes " -- we are not
7175 what we used to be in point of deportment."
     
7176 "Are we not, sir?" said I.
     
7177 "We have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could
7178 do to a very limited extent in his cravat. "A levelling age is not
7179 favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with
7180 some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been
7181 called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal
7182 Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my
7183 removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that
7184 fine building), 'Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don't I know
7185 him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' But these are little
7186 matters of anecdote -- the general property, ma'am -- still repeated
7187 occasionally among the upper classes."
     
7188 "Indeed?" said I.
     
7189 He replied with the high-shouldered bow. "Where what is left among us
7190 of deportment," he added, "still lingers. England -- alas, my
7191 country! -- has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.
7192 She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed
7193 us but a race of weavers."
     
7194 "One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated
7195 here," said I.
     
7196 "You are very good." He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. "You
7197 flatter me. But, no -- no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy
7198 with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my
7199 dear child, but he has -- no deportment."
     
7200 "He appears to be an excellent master," I observed.
     
7201 "Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that
7202 can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can
7203 impart. But there ARE things -- " He took another pinch of snuff and
7204 made the bow again, as if to add, "This kind of thing, for instance."
     
7205 I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover,
7206 now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than
7207 ever.
     
7208 "My amiable child," murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.
     
7209 "Your son is indefatigable," said I.
     
7210 "It is my reward," said Mr. Turveydrop, "to hear you say so. In some
7211 respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a
7212 devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman," said Mr. Turveydrop
7213 with very disagreeable gallantry, "what a sex you are!"
     
7214 I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her
7215 bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was
7216 a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the
7217 unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't
7218 know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a
7219 dozen words.
     
7220 "My dear," said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, "do you know the
7221 hour?"
     
7222 "No, father." The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold
7223 one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind.
     
7224 "My son," said he, "it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at
7225 Kensington at three."
     
7226 "That's time enough for me, father," said Prince. "I can take a
7227 morsel of dinner standing and be off."
     
7228 "My dear boy," returned his father, "you must be very quick. You will
7229 find the cold mutton on the table."
     
7230 "Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?"
     
7231 "Yes, my dear. I suppose," said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and
7232 lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, "that I must show
7233 myself, as usual, about town."
     
7234 "You had better dine out comfortably somewhere," said his son.
     
7235 "My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at
7236 the French house, in the Opera Colonnade."
     
7237 "That's right. Good-bye, father!" said Prince, shaking hands.
     
7238 "Good-bye, my son. Bless you!"
     
7239 Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do
7240 his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so
7241 dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it were
7242 an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly
7243 in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking
7244 leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the
7245 secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish
7246 character. I felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put
7247 his little kit in his pocket -- and with it his desire to stay a little
7248 while with Caddy -- and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton
7249 and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with
7250 his father than the censorious old lady.
     
7251 The father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner,
7252 I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style
7253 he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to
7254 the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself
7255 among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost
7256 in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I
7257 was quite unable to talk to Caddy or even to fix my attention on what
7258 she said to me, especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether
7259 there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing
7260 profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their
7261 deportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the possibility
7262 of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, "Esther, you must make up
7263 your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy." I
7264 accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to
7265 Lincoln's Inn.
     
7266 Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected that
7267 it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so
7268 anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he
7269 would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short
7270 words that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. "He
7271 does it with the best intention," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the
7272 effect he means, poor fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason, how
7273 could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole
7274 life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag,
7275 fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She
7276 could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it
7277 was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "Besides, it's not
7278 as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself
7279 airs," said Caddy. "I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!
     
7280 "There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,"
7281 continued Caddy, "which I should not have liked to mention unless you
7282 had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's
7283 of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for
7284 Prince's wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle
7285 that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever
7286 I have tried. So I get a little practice with -- who do you think? Poor
7287 Miss Flite! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and
7288 clean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she
7289 taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says
7290 it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old
7291 Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can
7292 make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and
7293 tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am
7294 not clever at my needle, yet," said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on
7295 Peepy's frock, "but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been
7296 engaged to Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt
7297 better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me
7298 out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat
7299 and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the
7300 whole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to
7301 Ma."
     
7302 The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched
7303 mine. "Caddy, my love," I replied, "I begin to have a great affection
7304 for you, and I hope we shall become friends."
     
7305 "Oh, do you?" cried Caddy. "How happy that would make me!"
     
7306 "My dear Caddy," said I, "let us be friends from this time, and let
7307 us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right
7308 way through them." Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could in
7309 my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would not
7310 have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop that day for any smaller
7311 consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.
     
7312 By this time we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood
7313 open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to
7314 let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded
7315 upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and
7316 that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and
7317 window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room
7318 with the dark door to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my
7319 attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it
7320 was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of
7321 mournfulness and even dread. "You look pale," said Caddy when we came
7322 out, "and cold!" I felt as if the room had chilled me.
     
7323 We had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada
7324 were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were
7325 looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to
7326 attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her
7327 cheerfully by the fire.
     
7328 "I have finished my professional visit," he said, coming forward.
7329 "Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is
7330 set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I
7331 understand."
     
7332 Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a
7333 general curtsy to us.
     
7334 "Honoured, indeed," said she, "by another visit from the wards in
7335 Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my
7336 humble roof!" with a special curtsy. "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear" -- she
7337 had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her
7338 by it -- "a double welcome!"
     
7339 "Has she been very ill?" asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we
7340 had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly,
7341 though he had put the question in a whisper.
     
7342 "Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed," she said
7343 confidentially. "Not pain, you know -- trouble. Not bodily so much as
7344 nervous, nervous! The truth is," in a subdued voice and trembling,
7345 "we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very
7346 susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr.
7347 Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!" with
7348 great stateliness. "The wards in Jarndyce -- Jarndyce of Bleak
7349 House -- Fitz-Jarndyce!"
     
7350 "Miss Flite," said Mr. Woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he
7351 were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand
7352 gently on her arm, "Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual
7353 accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might
7354 have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and
7355 agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery,
7356 though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I
7357 have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since
7358 and being of some small use to her."
     
7359 "The kindest physician in the college," whispered Miss Flite to me.
7360 "I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer
7361 estates."
     
7362 "She will be as well in a day or two," said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at
7363 her with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. In other words,
7364 quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?"
     
7365 "Most extraordinary!" said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. "You never
7366 heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or
7367 Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of
7368 shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the
7369 paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So
7370 well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you
7371 say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I
7372 think? I think," said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very
7373 shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant
7374 manner, "that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during
7375 which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long
7376 time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now
7377 that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a
7378 little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other
7379 day -- I attend it regularly, with my documents -- I taxed him with it,
7380 and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and
7381 HE smiled at me from his bench. But it's great good fortune, is it
7382 not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage.
7383 Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!"
     
7384 I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this
7385 fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of
7386 it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder
7387 whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,
7388 contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.
     
7389 "And what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?" said he in his
7390 pleasant voice. "Have they any names?"
     
7391 "I can answer for Miss Flite that they have," said I, "for she
7392 promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?"
     
7393 Ada remembered very well.
     
7394 "Did I?" said Miss Flite. "Who's that at my door? What are you
7395 listening at my door for, Krook?"
     
7396 The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there
7397 with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.
     
7398 "I warn't listening, Miss Flite," he said, "I was going to give a rap
7399 with my knuckles, only you're so quick!"
     
7400 "Make your cat go down. Drive her away!" the old lady angrily
7401 exclaimed.
     
7402 "Bah, bah! There ain't no danger, gentlefolks," said Mr. Krook,
7403 looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at
7404 all of us; "she'd never offer at the birds when I was here unless I
7405 told her to it."
     
7406 "You will excuse my landlord," said the old lady with a dignified
7407 air. "M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?"
     
7408 "Hi!" said the old man. "You know I am the Chancellor."
     
7409 "Well?" returned Miss Flite. "What of that?"
     
7410 "For the Chancellor," said the old man with a chuckle, "not to be
7411 acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't it, Miss Flite? Mightn't I
7412 take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce
7413 a'most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never
7414 to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go
7415 there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one
7416 day with another."
     
7417 "I never go there," said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any
7418 consideration). "I would sooner go -- somewhere else."
     
7419 "Would you though?" returned Krook, grinning. "You're bearing hard
7420 upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though
7421 perhaps it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What,
7422 you're looking at my lodger's birds, Mr. Jarndyce?" The old man had
7423 come by little and little into the room until he now touched my
7424 guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his
7425 spectacled eyes. "It's one of her strange ways that she'll never tell
7426 the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em
7427 all." This was in a whisper. "Shall I run 'em over, Flite?" he asked
7428 aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away,
7429 affecting to sweep the grate.
     
7430 "If you like," she answered hurriedly.
     
7431 The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went
7432 through the list.
     
7433 "Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin,
7434 Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,
7435 Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's
7436 the whole collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together, by
7437 my noble and learned brother."
     
7438 "This is a bitter wind!" muttered my guardian.
     
7439 "When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they're to be
7440 let go free," said Krook, winking at us again. "And then," he added,
7441 whispering and grinning, "if that ever was to happen -- which it
7442 won't -- the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em."
     
7443 "If ever the wind was in the east," said my guardian, pretending to
7444 look out of the window for a weathercock, "I think it's there
7445 to-day!"
     
7446 We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not
7447 Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature
7448 in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be.
7449 It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr.
7450 Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended
7451 him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and
7452 all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our
7453 inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce and
7454 sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had
7455 passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon
7456 some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach.
7457 I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive
7458 of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he
7459 could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook's was that day. His
7460 watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes
7461 from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the
7462 slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When
7463 we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across
7464 and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of
7465 power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until
7466 they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.
     
7467 At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house
7468 and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was
7469 certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on
7470 the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old
7471 stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were
7472 pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.
     
7473 "What are you doing here?" asked my guardian.
     
7474 "Trying to learn myself to read and write," said Krook.
     
7475 "And how do you get on?"
     
7476 "Slow. Bad," returned the old man impatiently. "It's hard at my time
7477 of life."
     
7478 "It would be easier to be taught by some one," said my guardian.
     
7479 "Aye, but they might teach me wrong!" returned the old man with a
7480 wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. "I don't know what I may
7481 have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn't like to lose
7482 anything by being learned wrong now."
     
7483 "Wrong?" said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. "Who do you
7484 suppose would teach you wrong?"
     
7485 "I don't know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!" replied the old man,
7486 turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. "I
7487 don't suppose as anybody would, but I'd rather trust my own self than
7488 another!"
     
7489 These answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian
7490 to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln's Inn
7491 together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented
7492 him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason
7493 to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually
7494 was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin,
7495 of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop,
7496 as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him
7497 mad as yet.
     
7498 On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's affections by buying him a
7499 windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take
7500 off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my
7501 side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we
7502 imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back.
7503 We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened
7504 exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all
7505 very happy indeed until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach,
7506 with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.
     
7507 I have forgotten to mention -- at least I have not mentioned -- that Mr.
7508 Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr.
7509 Badger's. Or that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or
7510 that he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada,
7511 "Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!" Ada
7512 laughed and said -- 
     
7513 But I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always
7514 merry.
     
     
     
     
7515 CHAPTER XV
     
7516 Bell Yard
     
     
7517 While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the
7518 crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
7519 astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our
7520 arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two
7521 shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to
7522 brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were
7523 almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All
7524 objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for
7525 anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power
7526 seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for
7527 any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in
7528 the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly
7529 swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be
7530 the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake
7531 and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole
7532 procession of people.
     
7533 Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with
7534 her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to
7535 us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle
7536 out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in
7537 behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared
7538 Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist
7539 surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they
7540 seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at
7541 first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr.
7542 Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great
7543 creature -- which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale
7544 meant in intellectual beauty -- and whether we were not struck by his
7545 massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many
7546 missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing
7547 respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's
7548 mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission and that it
7549 was the most popular mission of all.
     
7550 Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his
7551 heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but
7552 that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where
7553 benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a
7554 regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap
7555 notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action,
7556 servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one
7557 another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help
7558 the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and
7559 self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he
7560 plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale by
7561 Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and
7562 when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a
7563 meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who
7564 were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come
7565 forward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I think the wind
7566 was in the east for three whole weeks.
     
7567 I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed
7568 to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness
7569 were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and
7570 were the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly
7571 undesigning and candid man among many opposites could not fail to
7572 give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole
7573 divined this and was politic; I really never understood him well
7574 enough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the
7575 rest of the world.
     
7576 He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we
7577 had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his
7578 usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
     
7579 Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were
7580 often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he
7581 was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view -- in his
7582 expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in
7583 the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes
7584 quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, "Now, my dear
7585 doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you
7586 attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money -- in my
7587 expansive intentions -- if you only knew it!" And really (he said) he
7588 meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it.
7589 If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind
7590 attached so much importance to put in the doctor's hand, he would
7591 have put them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted
7592 the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it -- if his will
7593 were genuine and real, which it was -- it appeared to him that it was
7594 the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.
     
7595 "It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,"
7596 said Mr. Skimpole, "but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My
7597 butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It's a part of the
7598 pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature that he always calls
7599 it a 'little' bill -- to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I
7600 reply to the butcher, 'My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid.
7601 You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You
7602 are paid. I mean it.'"
     
7603 "But, suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in
7604 the bill, instead of providing it?"
     
7605 "My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. You take the
7606 butcher's position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very
7607 ground. Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence
7608 a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my
7609 honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question. 'I like
7610 spring lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I
7611 wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!' 'My good fellow,'
7612 said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that
7613 be? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the
7614 money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in,
7615 whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!' He
7616 had not a word. There was an end of the subject."
     
7617 "Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my guardian.
     
7618 "Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole. "But in that he
7619 was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of
7620 Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a
7621 short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire."
     
7622 "He is a great favourite with my girls," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and I
7623 have promised for them."
     
7624 "Nature forgot to shade him off, I think," observed Mr. Skimpole to
7625 Ada and me. "A little too boisterous -- like the sea. A little too
7626 vehement -- like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every
7627 colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!"
     
7628 I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very
7629 highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to
7630 many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides
7631 which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of
7632 breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole was referred
7633 to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly
7634 pleased with him.
     
7635 "He has invited me," said Mr. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust
7636 himself in such hands -- which the present child is encouraged to do,
7637 with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him -- I shall go. He
7638 proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost
7639 money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By
7640 the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss
7641 Summerson?"
     
7642 He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful,
7643 light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment.
     
7644 "Oh, yes!" said I.
     
7645 "Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff," said Mr.
7646 Skimpole. "He will never do violence to the sunshine any more."
     
7647 It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with
7648 anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on
7649 the sofa that night wiping his head.
     
7650 "His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr. Skimpole. "His
7651 successor is in my house now -- in possession, I think he calls it. He
7652 came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I put it to him,
7653 'This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed
7654 daughter you wouldn't like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?'
7655 But he stayed."
     
7656 Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched
7657 the piano by which he was seated.
     
7658 "And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put
7659 full stops, "The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And
7660 that Coavinses' profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses.
7661 Were at a considerable disadvantage."
     
7662 Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr.
7663 Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs. Ada and I
7664 both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing
7665 in his mind.
     
7666 After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his
7667 head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and
7668 stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this, Skimpole," he
7669 said thoughtfully.
     
7670 Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up
7671 surprised.
     
7672 "The man was necessary," pursued my guardian, walking backward and
7673 forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the
7674 room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high
7675 east wind had blown it into that form. "If we make such men necessary
7676 by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by
7677 our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was
7678 no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to
7679 know more about this."
     
7680 "Oh! Coavinses?" cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he
7681 meant. "Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses' headquarters, and you
7682 can know what you will."
     
7683 Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal.
7684 "Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as
7685 another!" We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with
7686 us and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing,
7687 he said, for him to want Coavinses instead of Coavinses wanting him!
     
7688 He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was
7689 a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle. On
7690 our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came
7691 out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket.
     
7692 "Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his
7693 chin.
     
7694 "There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr.
7695 Jarndyce, "who is dead."
     
7696 "Yes?" said the boy. "Well?"
     
7697 "I want to know his name, if you please?"
     
7698 "Name of Neckett," said the boy.
     
7699 "And his address?"
     
7700 "Bell Yard," said the boy. "Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of
7701 Blinder."
     
7702 "Was he -- I don't know how to shape the question -- " murmured my
7703 guardian, "industrious?"
     
7704 "Was Neckett?" said the boy. "Yes, wery much so. He was never tired
7705 of watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten
7706 hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it."
     
7707 "He might have done worse," I heard my guardian soliloquize. "He
7708 might have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That's all
7709 I want."
     
7710 We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate,
7711 fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln's Inn,
7712 where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses,
7713 awaited us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow alley at a very
7714 short distance. We soon found the chandler's shop. In it was a
7715 good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or
7716 perhaps both.
     
7717 "Neckett's children?" said she in reply to my inquiry. "Yes, Surely,
7718 miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs." And
7719 she handed me the key across the counter.
     
7720 I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted
7721 that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the
7722 children's door, I came out without asking any more questions and led
7723 the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could, but four
7724 of us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the
7725 second story we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there
7726 looking out of his room.
     
7727 "Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an
7728 angry stare.
     
7729 "No, sir," said I; "I am going higher up."
     
7730 He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing
7731 the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and
7732 followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. "Good day!" he said
7733 abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head
7734 on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent
7735 eyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which,
7736 associated with his figure -- still large and powerful, though
7737 evidently in its decline -- rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his
7738 hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that
7739 it was covered with a litter of papers.
     
7740 Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at
7741 the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked in.
7742 Mrs. Blinder's got the key!"
     
7743 I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room
7744 with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a
7745 mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a
7746 heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather
7747 was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets
7748 as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that
7749 their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken
7750 as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its
7751 head on his shoulder.
     
7752 "Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked.
     
7753 "Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
     
7754 "Is Charley your brother?"
     
7755 "No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley."
     
7756 "Are there any more of you besides Charley?"
     
7757 "Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child
7758 he was nursing. "And Charley."
     
7759 "Where is Charley now?"
     
7760 "Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again
7761 and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to
7762 gaze at us at the same time.
     
7763 We were looking at one another and at these two children when there
7764 came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd
7765 and older-looking in the face -- pretty-faced too -- wearing a womanly
7766 sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a
7767 womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with
7768 washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her
7769 arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing
7770 and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the
7771 truth.
     
7772 She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had
7773 made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very
7774 light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she
7775 stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.
     
7776 "Oh, here's Charley!" said the boy.
     
7777 The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be
7778 taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of
7779 manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us
7780 over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.
     
7781 "Is it possible," whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the
7782 little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy
7783 keeping close to her, holding to her apron, "that this child works
7784 for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake, look at this!"
     
7785 It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two
7786 of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet
7787 with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the
7788 childish figure.
     
7789 "Charley, Charley!" said my guardian. "How old are you?"
     
7790 "Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.
     
7791 "Oh! What a great age," said my guardian. "What a great age,
7792 Charley!"
     
7793 I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half
7794 playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.
     
7795 "And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my
7796 guardian.
     
7797 "Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect
7798 confidence, "since father died."
     
7799 "And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley," said my guardian,
7800 turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?"
     
7801 "Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing
7802 to-day."
     
7803 "God help you, Charley!" said my guardian. "You're not tall enough to
7804 reach the tub!"
     
7805 "In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly. "I've got a high pair as
7806 belonged to mother."
     
7807 "And when did mother die? Poor mother!"
     
7808 "Mother died just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at
7809 the face upon her bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good a
7810 mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and
7811 did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began
7812 to go out. And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?"
     
7813 "And do you often go out?"
     
7814 "As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling,
7815 "because of earning sixpences and shillings!"
     
7816 "And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"
     
7817 "To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs. Blinder
7818 comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and
7819 perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom
7820 an't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?"
     
7821 "No-o!" said Tom stoutly.
     
7822 "When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and
7823 they show up here quite bright -- almost quite bright. Don't they,
7824 Tom?"
     
7825 "Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright."
     
7826 "Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature -- Oh, in such a
7827 motherly, womanly way! "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed.
7828 And when he's tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and
7829 light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it
7830 with me. Don't you, Tom?"
     
7831 "Oh, yes, Charley!" said Tom. "That I do!" And either in this glimpse
7832 of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for
7833 Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty
7834 folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.
     
7835 It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among
7836 these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and
7837 their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of
7838 taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work,
7839 and by her bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried, although she
7840 sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any
7841 movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges,
7842 I saw two silent tears fall down her face.
     
7843 I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops,
7844 and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the
7845 birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that
7846 Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken
7847 her all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian.
     
7848 "It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said; "who could
7849 take it from them!"
     
7850 "Well, well!" said my guardian to us two. "It is enough that the time
7851 will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that
7852 forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these -- This child," he
7853 added after a few moments, "could she possibly continue this?"
     
7854 "Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs. Blinder, getting her
7855 heavy breath by painful degrees. "She's as handy as it's possible to
7856 be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the
7857 mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her
7858 with him after he was took ill, it really was! 'Mrs. Blinder,' he
7859 said to me the very last he spoke -- he was lying there -- 'Mrs.
7860 Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in
7861 this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our
7862 Father!'"
     
7863 "He had no other calling?" said my guardian.
     
7864 "No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerers.
7865 When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I
7866 confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in
7867 the yard. It wasn't approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a
7868 genteel calling," said Mrs. Blinder, "and most people do object to
7869 it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger,
7870 though his temper has been hard tried."
     
7871 "So you gave him notice?" said my guardian.
     
7872 "So I gave him notice," said Mrs. Blinder. "But really when the time
7873 came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was
7874 punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs.
7875 Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, "and it's
7876 something in this world even to do that."
     
7877 "So you kept him after all?"
     
7878 "Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could
7879 arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its
7880 being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent
7881 gruff -- but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been
7882 kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is
7883 proved."
     
7884 "Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
     
7885 "Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder; "but certainly
7886 not so many as would have been if their father's calling had been
7887 different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a
7888 little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and
7889 tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little
7890 subscription, and -- in general -- not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte.
7891 Some people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child; some
7892 people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having
7893 her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and
7894 perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she's patienter than
7895 others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the
7896 full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not
7897 so bad, sir, but might be better."
     
7898 Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity
7899 of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it
7900 was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his
7901 attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the
7902 Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way
7903 up.
     
7904 "I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he
7905 said, as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming
7906 in. I don't come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom!
7907 Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?"
     
7908 He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as
7909 a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern
7910 character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My
7911 guardian noticed it and respected it.
     
7912 "No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly.
     
7913 "May be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon his
7914 knee and waving him off impatiently. "I don't want to argue with
7915 ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man
7916 his life."
     
7917 "You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr. Jarndyce, "for
7918 being chafed and irritated -- "
     
7919 "There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of
7920 a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!"
     
7921 "Not very, I think."
     
7922 "Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if
7923 he meant to strike him, "do you know anything of Courts of Equity?"
     
7924 "Perhaps I do, to my sorrow."
     
7925 "To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath, "if so, I beg
7926 your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir," with
7927 renewed violence, "I have been dragged for five and twenty years over
7928 burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go
7929 into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing
7930 jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell
7931 you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I," he
7932 said, beating one hand on the other passionately, "am the man from
7933 Shropshire."
     
7934 "I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing
7935 some entertainment in the same grave place," said my guardian
7936 composedly. "You may have heard my name -- Jarndyce."
     
7937 "Mr. Jarndyce," said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, "you
7938 bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I
7939 tell you -- and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they
7940 are friends of yours -- that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I
7941 should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging
7942 them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get,
7943 that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!" he said,
7944 speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. "You may
7945 tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to
7946 do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There's nothing between doing
7947 it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman
7948 that haunts the court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should
7949 become imbecile."
     
7950 The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his
7951 face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what
7952 he said, were most painful to see.
     
7953 "Mr. Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. As true as there is a
7954 heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father
7955 (a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my
7956 mother for her life. After my mother's death, all was to come to me
7957 except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my
7958 brother. My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his
7959 legacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it
7960 already in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That
7961 was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one
7962 disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had
7963 been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing
7964 a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced
7965 there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else.
7966 Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first
7967 came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years
7968 while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my
7969 father's son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal
7970 creature. He then found out that there were not defendants
7971 enough -- remember, there were only seventeen as yet! -- but that we must
7972 have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The
7973 costs at that time -- before the thing was begun! -- were three times the
7974 legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to
7975 escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my
7976 father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen
7977 into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else -- and here I
7978 stand, this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands
7979 and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine
7980 less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was
7981 in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?"
     
7982 Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and
7983 that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this
7984 monstrous system.
     
7985 "There again!" said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage. "The
7986 system! I am told on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to
7987 individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into court and say, 'My
7988 Lord, I beg to know this from you -- is this right or wrong? Have you
7989 the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am
7990 dismissed?' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer
7991 the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in
7992 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by
7993 being so cool and satisfied -- as they all do, for I know they gain by
7994 it while I lose, don't I? -- I mustn't say to him, 'I will have
7995 something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!' HE is
7996 not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of
7997 them, here -- I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried
7998 beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that
7999 system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!"
     
8000 His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage
8001 without seeing it.
     
8002 "I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "Mr.
8003 Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I
8004 have been in prison for contempt of court. I have been in prison for
8005 threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that
8006 trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I
8007 sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing,
8008 too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and
8009 all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained
8010 myself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself I should become
8011 imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in
8012 my part of the country say they remember me so, but now I must have
8013 this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits
8014 together. It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,' the Lord
8015 Chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to
8016 stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I
8017 know it would,' said I to him, 'and it would have been far better for
8018 me never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily
8019 for me, I can't undo the past, and the past drives me here!'
8020 Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, "I'll shame them. To the
8021 last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I
8022 was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to
8023 speak with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here and
8024 sent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet
8025 foremost!'"
     
8026 His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its
8027 contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was
8028 quiet.
     
8029 "I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said,
8030 going to them again, "and let them play about. I didn't mean to say
8031 all this, but it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom,
8032 are you?"
     
8033 "No!" said Tom. "You ain't angry with ME."
     
8034 "You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come then,
8035 little one!" He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was
8036 willing enough to be carried. "I shouldn't wonder if we found a
8037 ginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let's go and look for him!"
     
8038 He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a
8039 certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went
8040 downstairs to his room.
     
8041 Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our
8042 arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very
8043 pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes.
8044 Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will and surprising
8045 energy -- intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious
8046 blacksmith -- and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years
8047 ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous
8048 combativeness upon -- a sort of Young Love among the thorns -- when the
8049 Court of Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact
8050 thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise
8051 he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or
8052 he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of
8053 parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the Court of Chancery
8054 had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was
8055 much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided
8056 for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father
8057 of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr.
8058 Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of
8059 Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could had dispensed
8060 with Coavinses. There had been times when, if he had been a sultan,
8061 and his grand vizier had said one morning, "What does the Commander
8062 of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have
8063 even gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what
8064 turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving
8065 employment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to
8066 Coavinses, that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up
8067 these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these
8068 social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and the
8069 tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and
8070 thought, "I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little
8071 comforts were MY work!"
     
8072 There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these
8073 fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of
8074 the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even
8075 as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder.
8076 We kissed Charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped
8077 outside the house to see her run away to her work. I don't know where
8078 she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature in
8079 her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of
8080 the court and melt into the city's strife and sound like a dewdrop in
8081 an ocean.
     
     
     
     
8082 CHAPTER XVI
     
8083 Tom-all-Alone's
     
     
8084 My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished
8085 fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day she
8086 is at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow
8087 she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with
8088 confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry has some trouble
8089 to keep pace with her. It would have more but that his other faithful
8090 ally, for better and for worse -- the gout -- darts into the old oak
8091 bed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by both legs.
     
8092 Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a
8093 demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male
8094 line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of
8095 man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved,
8096 sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have
8097 taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but
8098 the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive even to the
8099 levelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. It has
8100 come down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the
8101 pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities.
8102 Sir Leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he
8103 has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the
8104 discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the
8105 aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to
8106 you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout."
     
8107 Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder
8108 as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels
8109 that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically
8110 twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere,
8111 but he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has
8112 for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make
8113 the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I
8114 submit myself to the compromise."
     
8115 And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in
8116 the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of
8117 my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long
8118 perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with
8119 soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in
8120 the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a
8121 chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode
8122 a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness. Inside,
8123 his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, "Each of us was
8124 a passing reality here and left this coloured shadow of himself and
8125 melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks
8126 now lulling you to rest," and hear their testimony to his greatness
8127 too. And he is very great this day. And woe to Boythorn or other
8128 daring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!
     
8129 My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by her
8130 portrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention of
8131 remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of
8132 the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for
8133 her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder
8134 gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to
8135 another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society,
8136 that if that sort of thing was to last -- which it couldn't, for a man
8137 of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his figure couldn't be
8138 expected to bear it -- there would be no resource for him, upon his
8139 honour, but to cut his throat!
     
8140 What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the
8141 house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the
8142 outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him
8143 when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been
8144 between many people in the innumerable histories of this world who
8145 from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very
8146 curiously brought together!
     
8147 Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any
8148 link there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked a question
8149 by replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows that it's hard to
8150 keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to
8151 live by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out.
     
8152 Jo lives -- that is to say, Jo has not yet died -- in a ruinous place
8153 known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It is a
8154 black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the
8155 crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by
8156 some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took
8157 to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements
8158 contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined human wretch
8159 vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd
8160 of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards;
8161 and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips
8162 in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more
8163 evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle,
8164 and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to
8165 Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years -- though born expressly
8166 to do it.
     
8167 Twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the
8168 springing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone's; and each time a house has
8169 fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and
8170 have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain,
8171 and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several
8172 more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-Alone's
8173 may be expected to be a good one.
     
8174 This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an
8175 insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so.
8176 Whether "Tom" is the popular representative of the original plaintiff
8177 or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tom lived here when
8178 the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers
8179 came to join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive
8180 name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the
8181 pale of hope, perhaps nobody knows. Certainly Jo don't know.
     
8182 "For I don't," says Jo, "I don't know nothink."
     
8183 It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the
8184 streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the
8185 meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and
8186 at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To
8187 see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen
8188 deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that
8189 language -- to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must
8190 be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on
8191 Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps
8192 Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means
8193 anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be
8194 hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would
8195 appear to be perfectly true that I have no business here, or there,
8196 or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I AM
8197 here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the
8198 creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told
8199 that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a
8200 witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the
8201 horses, dogs, and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I
8202 belong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose
8203 delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a
8204 bishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only
8205 knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and
8206 immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest
8207 thing of all.
     
8208 Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is
8209 always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread
8210 as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses
8211 not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the
8212 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives
8213 it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the
8214 accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what
8215 it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual
8216 destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look
8217 up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit.
     
8218 He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. The
8219 town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and
8220 whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been
8221 suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower
8222 animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is
8223 market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided,
8224 run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and
8225 foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often
8226 sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!
     
8227 A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog -- a
8228 drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and
8229 evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for
8230 some hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three
8231 or four, can't remember where he left them, looks up and down the
8232 street as half expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his
8233 ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog,
8234 accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep,
8235 ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs and tear out mouthfuls
8236 of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog who has been
8237 taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen
8238 to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal
8239 satisfaction; likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or
8240 regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses,
8241 they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human
8242 listener is the brute!
     
8243 Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years
8244 they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark -- but not
8245 their bite.
     
8246 The day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and drizzly.
8247 Jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the
8248 horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for
8249 the unsavoury shelter of Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight comes on; gas
8250 begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder,
8251 runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is
8252 beginning to close in.
     
8253 In his chambers Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the
8254 nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a
8255 disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. We
8256 are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow
8257 shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened
8258 Allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points
8259 with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively
8260 toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no reason,
8261 look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does
8262 not look out of window.
     
8263 And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are
8264 women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks -- too many; they are
8265 at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of
8266 that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a
8267 woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all
8268 secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that very well.
     
8269 But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house
8270 behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner there is
8271 something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by
8272 her attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and
8273 assumed -- as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she
8274 treads with an unaccustomed foot -- she is a lady. Her face is veiled,
8275 and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of
8276 those who pass her look round sharply.
     
8277 She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her
8278 and can follow it. She never turns her head until she comes to the
8279 crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her and begs.
8280 Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other
8281 side. Then she slightly beckons to him and says, "Come here!"
     
8282 Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court.
     
8283 "Are you the boy I've read of in the papers?" she asked behind her
8284 veil.
     
8285 "I don't know," says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, "nothink about
8286 no papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all."
     
8287 "Were you examined at an inquest?"
     
8288 "I don't know nothink about no -- where I was took by the beadle, do
8289 you mean?" says Jo. "Was the boy's name at the inkwhich Jo?"
     
8290 "Yes."
     
8291 "That's me!" says Jo.
     
8292 "Come farther up."
     
8293 "You mean about the man?" says Jo, following. "Him as wos dead?"
     
8294 "Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so
8295 very ill and poor?"
     
8296 "Oh, jist!" says Jo.
     
8297 "Did he look like -- not like YOU?" says the woman with abhorrence.
     
8298 "Oh, not so bad as me," says Jo. "I'm a reg'lar one I am! You didn't
8299 know him, did you?"
     
8300 "How dare you ask me if I knew him?"
     
8301 "No offence, my lady," says Jo with much humility, for even he has
8302 got at the suspicion of her being a lady.
     
8303 "I am not a lady. I am a servant."
     
8304 "You are a jolly servant!" says Jo without the least idea of saying
8305 anything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration.
     
8306 "Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from me!
8307 Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I
8308 read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where
8309 you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the
8310 place where he was buried?"
     
8311 Jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was
8312 mentioned.
     
8313 "Go before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to
8314 each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look back.
8315 Do what I want, and I will pay you well."
     
8316 Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off
8317 on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider
8318 their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head.
     
8319 "I'm fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!"
     
8320 "What does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant,
8321 recoiling from him.
     
8322 "Stow cutting away, you know!" says Jo.
     
8323 "I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money
8324 than you ever had in your life."
     
8325 Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub,
8326 takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly with
8327 his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire.
     
8328 Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.
     
8329 "Who lives here?"
     
8330 "Him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull," says Jo in a
8331 whisper without looking over his shoulder.
     
8332 "Go on to the next."
     
8333 Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.
     
8334 "Who lives here?"
     
8335 "HE lived here," Jo answers as before.
     
8336 After a silence he is asked, "In which room?"
     
8337 "In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner.
8338 Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is the
8339 public-ouse where I was took to."
     
8340 "Go on to the next!"
     
8341 It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved of his first
8342 suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look
8343 round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they
8344 come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted
8345 now), and to the iron gate.
     
8346 "He was put there," says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.
     
8347 "Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!"
     
8348 "There!" says Jo, pointing. "Over yinder. Among them piles of bones,
8349 and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the
8350 top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver
8351 it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That's why they locks
8352 it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the
8353 rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the
8354 ground!"
     
8355 The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous
8356 archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting
8357 out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from her,
8358 for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands
8359 staring and is still staring when she recovers herself.
     
8360 "Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?"
     
8361 "I don't know nothink of consequential ground," says Jo, still
8362 staring.
     
8363 "Is it blessed?"
     
8364 "Which?" says Jo, in the last degree amazed.
     
8365 "Is it blessed?"
     
8366 "I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I
8367 shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in
8368 his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think
8369 it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!"
     
8370 The servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to take
8371 of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove to get some
8372 money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her
8373 hand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling
8374 rings.
     
8375 She drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and
8376 shuddering as their hands approach. "Now," she adds, "show me the
8377 spot again!"
     
8378 Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and
8379 with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length,
8380 looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds
8381 that he is alone.
     
8382 His first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light
8383 and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow -- gold. His next is
8384 to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality.
8385 His next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the
8386 step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for
8387 Tom-all-Alone's, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to
8388 produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a
8389 reassurance of its being genuine.
     
8390 The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady
8391 goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is
8392 fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout;
8393 he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous
8394 pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the
8395 fireside in his own snug dressing-room.
     
8396 "Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the
8397 house, my dear," says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. "His dressing-room is
8398 on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon
8399 the Ghost's Walk more distinct than it is to-night!"
     
     
     
     
8400 CHAPTER XVII
     
8401 Esther's Narrative
     
     
8402 Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though
8403 he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick abilities,
8404 his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was
8405 always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I
8406 knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted
8407 that he had been educated in no habits of application and
8408 concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same
8409 manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in
8410 character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks,
8411 always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful,
8412 dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities
8413 in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They
8414 were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously
8415 won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were
8416 very bad masters. If they had been under Richard's direction, they
8417 would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction,
8418 they became his enemies.
     
8419 I write down these opinions not because I believe that this or any
8420 other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did think
8421 so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These
8422 were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed besides
8423 how right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the
8424 uncertainties and delays of the Chancery suit had imparted to his
8425 nature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that
8426 he was part of a great gaming system.
     
8427 Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger coming one afternoon when my guardian was
8428 not at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired after
8429 Richard.
     
8430 "Why, Mr. Carstone," said Mrs. Badger, "is very well and is, I assure
8431 you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say
8432 of me that I was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn
8433 to the midshipmen's mess when the purser's junk had become as tough
8434 as the fore-topsel weather earings. It was his naval way of
8435 mentioning generally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may
8436 render the same tribute, I am sure, to Mr. Carstone. But I -- you won't
8437 think me premature if I mention it?"
     
8438 I said no, as Mrs. Badger's insinuating tone seemed to require such
8439 an answer.
     
8440 "Nor Miss Clare?" said Mrs. Bayham Badger sweetly.
     
8441 Ada said no, too, and looked uneasy.
     
8442 "Why, you see, my dears," said Mrs. Badger, " -- you'll excuse me
8443 calling you my dears?"
     
8444 We entreated Mrs. Badger not to mention it.
     
8445 "Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so,"
8446 pursued Mrs. Badger, "so perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that
8447 although I am still young -- or Mr. Bayham Badger pays me the
8448 compliment of saying so -- "
     
8449 "No," Mr. Badger called out like some one contradicting at a public
8450 meeting. "Not at all!"
     
8451 "Very well," smiled Mrs. Badger, "we will say still young."
     
8452 "Undoubtedly," said Mr. Badger.
     
8453 "My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of
8454 observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old
8455 Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser
8456 in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and
8457 befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser's command. YOU never
8458 heard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would
8459 not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts,
8460 but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to
8461 me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo."
     
8462 "A man of European reputation," murmured Mr. Badger.
     
8463 "When I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second,"
8464 said Mrs. Badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were
8465 parts of a charade, "I still enjoyed opportunities of observing
8466 youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo's lectures was a large
8467 one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man
8468 seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to
8469 throw our house open to the students as a kind of Scientific
8470 Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed
8471 biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. And there
8472 was science to an unlimited extent."
     
8473 "Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Badger
8474 reverentially. "There must have been great intellectual friction
8475 going on there under the auspices of such a man!"
     
8476 "And now," pursued Mrs. Badger, "now that I am the wife of my dear
8477 third, Mr. Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which
8478 were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new
8479 and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I
8480 therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a
8481 neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he
8482 has not chosen his profession advisedly."
     
8483 Ada looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs. Badger on what she
8484 founded her supposition.
     
8485 "My dear Miss Summerson," she replied, "on Mr. Carstone's character
8486 and conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably he
8487 would never think it worth-while to mention how he really feels, but
8488 he feels languid about the profession. He has not that positive
8489 interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided
8490 impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a
8491 tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr.
8492 Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can
8493 do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a
8494 very little money and through years of considerable endurance and
8495 disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the
8496 case with Mr. Carstone."
     
8497 "Does Mr. Badger think so too?" asked Ada timidly.
     
8498 "Why," said Mr. Badger, "to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view of
8499 the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned it. But
8500 when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great
8501 consideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Badger's mind, in addition to
8502 its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by
8503 two such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men
8504 as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The
8505 conclusion at which I have arrived is -- in short, is Mrs. Badger's
8506 conclusion."
     
8507 "It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said Mrs. Badger, "speaking in
8508 his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot
8509 make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you
8510 should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that
8511 this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical
8512 profession.
     
8513 "To all professions," observed Mr. Badger. "It was admirably said by
8514 Captain Swosser. Beautifully said."
     
8515 "People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north
8516 of Devon after our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he disfigured
8517 some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of
8518 those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor
8519 replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The
8520 principle is the same, I think?"
     
8521 "Precisely the same," said Mr. Badger. "Finely expressed! The
8522 professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness,
8523 when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer
8524 under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants.
8525 The ruling passion!"
     
8526 Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and
8527 Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was
8528 disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to
8529 us and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We
8530 agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard;
8531 and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious
8532 talk with him.
     
8533 So after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my
8534 darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly
8535 right in whatever he said.
     
8536 "And how do you get on, Richard?" said I. I always sat down on the
8537 other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.
     
8538 "Oh! Well enough!" said Richard.
     
8539 "He can't say better than that, Esther, can he?" cried my pet
8540 triumphantly.
     
8541 I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I
8542 couldn't.
     
8543 "Well enough?" I repeated.
     
8544 "Yes," said Richard, "well enough. It's rather jog-trotty and
8545 humdrum. But it'll do as well as anything else!"
     
8546 "Oh! My dear Richard!" I remonstrated.
     
8547 "What's the matter?" said Richard.
     
8548 "Do as well as anything else!"
     
8549 "I don't think there's any harm in that, Dame Durden," said Ada,
8550 looking so confidingly at me across him; "because if it will do as
8551 well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope."
     
8552 "Oh, yes, I hope so," returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair
8553 from his forehead. "After all, it may be only a kind of probation
8554 till our suit is -- I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit.
8555 Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it's all right enough. Let us talk about
8556 something else."
     
8557 Ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we
8558 had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought
8559 it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.
     
8560 "No, but Richard," said I, "and my dear Ada! Consider how important
8561 it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your
8562 cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any
8563 reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It
8564 will be too late very soon."
     
8565 "Oh, yes! We must talk about it!" said Ada. "But I think Richard is
8566 right."
     
8567 What was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty,
8568 and so engaging, and so fond of him!
     
8569 "Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard," said I, "and they
8570 seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the
8571 profession."
     
8572 "Did they though?" said Richard. "Oh! Well, that rather alters the
8573 case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not
8574 have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don't
8575 care much about it. But, oh, it don't matter! It'll do as well as
8576 anything else!"
     
8577 "You hear him, Ada!" said I.
     
8578 "The fact is," Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half
8579 jocosely, "it is not quite in my way. I don't take to it. And I get
8580 too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger's first and second."
     
8581 "I am sure THAT'S very natural!" cried Ada, quite delighted. "The
8582 very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!"
     
8583 "Then," pursued Richard, "it's monotonous, and to-day is too like
8584 yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day."
     
8585 "But I am afraid," said I, "this is an objection to all kinds of
8586 application -- to life itself, except under some very uncommon
8587 circumstances."
     
8588 "Do you think so?" returned Richard, still considering. "Perhaps! Ha!
8589 Why, then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again, "we
8590 travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It'll do as well as
8591 anything else. Oh, it's all right enough! Let us talk about something
8592 else."
     
8593 But even Ada, with her loving face -- and if it had seemed innocent and
8594 trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much
8595 more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting
8596 heart -- even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I
8597 thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were
8598 sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never
8599 meant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his
8600 affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a
8601 step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost
8602 grave.
     
8603 "My dear Mother Hubbard," he said, "that's the very thing! I have
8604 thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself
8605 for meaning to be so much in earnest and -- somehow -- not exactly being
8606 so. I don't know how it is; I seem to want something or other to
8607 stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling
8608 cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don't settle down to constancy
8609 in other things. It's such uphill work, and it takes such a time!"
8610 said Richard with an air of vexation.
     
8611 "That may be," I suggested, "because you don't like what you have
8612 chosen."
     
8613 "Poor fellow!" said Ada. "I am sure I don't wonder at it!"
     
8614 No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried
8615 again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I
8616 could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while
8617 he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!
     
8618 "You see, my precious girl," said Richard, passing her golden curls
8619 through and through his hand, "I was a little hasty perhaps; or I
8620 misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don't seem to lie in
8621 that direction. I couldn't tell till I tried. Now the question is
8622 whether it's worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems
8623 like making a great disturbance about nothing particular."
     
8624 "My dear Richard," said I, "how CAN you say about nothing
8625 particular?"
     
8626 "I don't mean absolutely that," he returned. "I mean that it MAY be
8627 nothing particular because I may never want it."
     
8628 Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly
8629 worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I
8630 then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial
8631 pursuit.
     
8632 "There, my dear Mrs. Shipton," said Richard, "you touch me home. Yes,
8633 I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me."
     
8634 "The law!" repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name.
     
8635 "If I went into Kenge's office," said Richard, "and if I were placed
8636 under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the -- hum! -- the
8637 forbidden ground -- and should be able to study it, and master it, and
8638 to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly
8639 conducted. I should be able to look after Ada's interests and my own
8640 interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and
8641 all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour."
     
8642 I was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering
8643 after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast
8644 a shade on Ada's face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any
8645 project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure
8646 that his mind was made up now.
     
8647 "My dear Minerva," said Richard, "I am as steady as you are. I made a
8648 mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won't do so any more, and
8649 I'll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,"
8650 said Richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is worth-while,
8651 after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!"
     
8652 This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that
8653 we had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion
8654 afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open
8655 with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his disposition was
8656 naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once
8657 (taking us with him) and made a full avowal. "Rick," said my
8658 guardian, after hearing him attentively, "we can retreat with honour,
8659 and we will. But we must be careful -- for our cousin's sake, Rick, for
8660 our cousin's sake -- that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in
8661 the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We
8662 will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it."
     
8663 Richard's energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he
8664 would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge's
8665 office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the
8666 spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we
8667 had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down
8668 among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying
8669 purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held
8670 possession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him,
8671 but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we
8672 were going upstairs to bed, to say, "Cousin John, I hope you don't
8673 think the worse of Richard?"
     
8674 "No, my love," said he.
     
8675 "Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such
8676 a difficult case. It is not uncommon."
     
8677 "No, no, my love," said he. "Don't look unhappy."
     
8678 "Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!" said Ada, smiling cheerfully,
8679 with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him
8680 good night. "But I should be a little so if you thought at all the
8681 worse of Richard."
     
8682 "My dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I should think the worse of him only
8683 if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be
8684 more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick,
8685 for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has
8686 time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not
8687 I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!"
     
8688 "No, indeed, cousin John," said Ada, "I am sure I could not -- I am
8689 sure I would not -- think any ill of Richard if the whole world did. I
8690 could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!"
     
8691 So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his
8692 shoulders -- both hands now -- and looking up into his face, like the
8693 picture of truth!
     
8694 "I think," said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, "I think it
8695 must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall
8696 occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the
8697 father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant
8698 slumbers! Happy dreams!"
     
8699 This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes with
8700 something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well
8701 remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard
8702 when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while
8703 since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was
8704 shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and
8705 even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once
8706 more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally
8707 been.
     
8708 Ada praised Richard more to me that night than ever she had praised
8709 him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her
8710 clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed
8711 her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy
8712 she looked.
     
8713 For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat up
8714 working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was
8715 wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don't know why. At least I don't
8716 think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don't think it
8717 matters.
     
8718 At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I
8719 would leave myself not a moment's leisure to be low-spirited. For I
8720 naturally said, "Esther! You to be low-spirited. YOU!" And it really
8721 was time to say so, for I -- yes, I really did see myself in the glass,
8722 almost crying. "As if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead
8723 of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!" said I.
     
8724 If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it
8725 directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some
8726 ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy
8727 with at that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was
8728 necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to
8729 go on with it until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and then to go to
8730 bed.
     
8731 I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in
8732 a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a stop
8733 for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To
8734 my great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still there, and
8735 sitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay
8736 unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered
8737 confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering
8738 among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn.
8739 Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still
8740 for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in
8741 again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and
8742 started.
     
8743 "Esther!"
     
8744 I told him what I had come for.
     
8745 "At work so late, my dear?"
     
8746 "I am working late to-night," said I, "because I couldn't sleep and
8747 wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look
8748 weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?"
     
8749 "None, little woman, that YOU would readily understand," said he.
     
8750 He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that I inwardly repeated,
8751 as if that would help me to his meaning, "That I could readily
8752 understand!"
     
8753 "Remain a moment, Esther," said he, "You were in my thoughts."
     
8754 "I hope I was not the trouble, guardian?"
     
8755 He slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. The change
8756 was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much
8757 self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, "None
8758 that I could understand!"
     
8759 "Little woman," said my guardian, "I was thinking -- that is, I have
8760 been thinking since I have been sitting here -- that you ought to know
8761 of your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing."
     
8762 "Dear guardian," I replied, "when you spoke to me before on that
8763 subject -- "
     
8764 "But since then," he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to
8765 say, "I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my
8766 having anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It
8767 is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know."
     
8768 "If you think so, guardian, it is right."
     
8769 "I think so," he returned very gently, and kindly, and very
8770 distinctly. "My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can
8771 attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a
8772 thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not
8773 magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature."
     
8774 I sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to
8775 be, "One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words:
8776 'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time
8777 will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and
8778 will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'" I had covered my face
8779 with my hands in repeating the words, but I took them away now with a
8780 better kind of shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the
8781 blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never, never,
8782 never felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well knew that
8783 he was never to be thanked, and said no more.
     
8784 "Nine years, my dear," he said after thinking for a little while,
8785 "have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in
8786 seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it
8787 unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as
8788 it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer's
8789 idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to
8790 justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years
8791 old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your
8792 remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from
8793 her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if
8794 the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be
8795 left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to
8796 consider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun."
     
8797 I listened in silence and looked attentively at him.
     
8798 "Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium
8799 through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the
8800 distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the
8801 need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was
8802 quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her
8803 darkened life, and replied to the letter."
     
8804 I took his hand and kissed it.
     
8805 "It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the
8806 writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the
8807 world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one.
8808 I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord and not of
8809 his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there
8810 were any ties of blood in such a case, the child's aunt. That more
8811 than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the
8812 steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration
8813 disclose. My dear, I have told you all."
     
8814 I held his hand for a little while in mine.
     
8815 "I saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making
8816 light of it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.
8817 She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every
8818 hour in every day!"
     
8819 "And oftener still," said I, "she blesses the guardian who is a
8820 father to her!"
     
8821 At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He
8822 subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been
8823 there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they
8824 had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, "That I
8825 could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!" No,
8826 it was true. I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day.
     
8827 "Take a fatherly good night, my dear," said he, kissing me on the
8828 forehead, "and so to rest. These are late hours for working and
8829 thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little
8830 housekeeper!"
     
8831 I neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my
8832 grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and
8833 its care of me, and fell asleep.
     
8834 We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take
8835 leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to
8836 China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a
8837 long, long time.
     
8838 I believe -- at least I know -- that he was not rich. All his widowed
8839 mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his
8840 profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very
8841 little influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at
8842 the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness
8843 and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. He was
8844 seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly
8845 seems to belong to anything.
     
8846 I think -- I mean, he told us -- that he had been in practice three or
8847 four years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three
8848 or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was
8849 bound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going
8850 away. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought it a
8851 pity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his art among
8852 those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it
8853 had a high opinion of him.
     
8854 When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for
8855 the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes,
8856 but she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long time
8857 ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan
8858 ap-Kerrig -- of some place that sounded like Gimlet -- who was the most
8859 illustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations
8860 were a sort of royal family. He appeared to have passed his life
8861 in always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and
8862 a bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his
8863 praises in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it,
8864 Mewlinnwillinwodd.
     
8865 Mrs. Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great
8866 kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Allan went he would
8867 remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below
8868 it. She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in
8869 India who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be
8870 picked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would
8871 suffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must
8872 ever be the first consideration. She talked so much about birth that
8873 for a moment I half fancied, and with pain -- But what an idle fancy to
8874 suppose that she could think or care what MINE was!
     
8875 Mr. Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was
8876 too considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to bring
8877 the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian
8878 for his hospitality and for the very happy hours -- he called them the
8879 very happy hours -- he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he
8880 said, would go with him wherever he went and would be always
8881 treasured. And so we gave him our hands, one after another -- at least,
8882 they did -- and I did; and so he put his lips to Ada's hand -- and to
8883 mine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage!
     
8884 I was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the
8885 servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and
8886 papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and
8887 another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by
8888 the window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no
8889 expectation of seeing!
     
8890 "Why, Caddy, my dear," said I, "what beautiful flowers!"
     
8891 She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.
     
8892 "Indeed, I think so, Esther," replied Caddy. "They are the loveliest
8893 I ever saw."
     
8894 "Prince, my dear?" said I in a whisper.
     
8895 "No," answered Caddy, shaking her head and holding them to me to
8896 smell. "Not Prince."
     
8897 "Well, to be sure, Caddy!" said I. "You must have two lovers!"
     
8898 "What? Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Caddy.
     
8899 "Do they look like that sort of thing?" I repeated, pinching her
8900 cheek.
     
8901 Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for
8902 half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be waiting
8903 for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window,
8904 every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they
8905 looked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into
8906 my room and put them in my dress.
     
8907 "For me?" said I, surprised.
     
8908 "For you," said Caddy with a kiss. "They were left behind by
8909 somebody."
     
8910 "Left behind?"
     
8911 "At poor Miss Flite's," said Caddy. "Somebody who has been very good
8912 to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these
8913 flowers behind. No, no! Don't take them out. Let the pretty little
8914 things lie here," said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand,
8915 "because I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder if somebody
8916 left them on purpose!"
     
8917 "Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Ada, coming laughingly
8918 behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. "Oh, yes, indeed
8919 they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing.
8920 Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!"
     
     
     
     
8921 CHAPTER XVIII
     
8922 Lady Dedlock
     
     
8923 It was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for
8924 Richard's making a trial of Mr. Kenge's office. Richard himself was
8925 the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr.
8926 Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave
8927 him at all. He didn't know, he said, really. It wasn't a bad
8928 profession; he couldn't assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked
8929 it as well as he liked any other -- suppose he gave it one more chance!
8930 Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and
8931 some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information
8932 with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began
8933 to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His
8934 vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer
8935 arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger and entered on an
8936 experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his
8937 waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to
8938 be in earnest "this time." And he was so good-natured throughout, and
8939 in such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult
8940 indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.
     
8941 "As to Mr. Jarndyce," who, I may mention, found the wind much given,
8942 during this period, to stick in the east; "As to Mr. Jarndyce,"
8943 Richard would say to me, "he is the finest fellow in the world,
8944 Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his
8945 satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up
8946 of this business now."
     
8947 The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face
8948 and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and
8949 nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us
8950 between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he
8951 wondered his hair didn't turn grey. His regular wind-up of the
8952 business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge's about
8953 midsummer to try how he liked it.
     
8954 All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in
8955 a former illustration -- generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully
8956 persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to
8957 say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about
8958 the time of his going to Mr. Kenge's, that he needed to have
8959 Fortunatus' purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in
8960 this way, "My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why
8961 does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it
8962 was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if
8963 I had stayed at Badger's I should have been obliged to spend twelve
8964 pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four
8965 pounds -- in a lump -- by the transaction!"
     
8966 It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what
8967 arrangements should be made for his living in London while he
8968 experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak
8969 House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener
8970 than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to settle
8971 down at Mr. Kenge's he would take some apartments or chambers where
8972 we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; "but, little
8973 woman," he added, rubbing his head very significantly, "he hasn't
8974 settled down there yet!" The discussions ended in our hiring for him,
8975 by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house
8976 near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had
8977 in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging;
8978 and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that
8979 he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and
8980 expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out
8981 that to spend anything less on something else was to save the
8982 difference.
     
8983 While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn's was
8984 postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging,
8985 there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with
8986 us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty
8987 of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel
8988 the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him,
8989 and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy.
     
8990 We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and
8991 had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had been
8992 all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it
8993 on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to
8994 think that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome
8995 objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of
8996 expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them
8997 out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular
8998 chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the
8999 furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from
9000 mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took
9001 one!
     
9002 "The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened
9003 sense of the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid for,
9004 and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible.
9005 Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair
9006 and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why
9007 should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose
9008 which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my
9009 landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant's
9010 nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!"
     
9011 "Well," said my guardian good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that
9012 whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay
9013 for them."
     
9014 "Exactly!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That's the crowning point of
9015 unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, 'My good man, you
9016 are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for
9017 those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner.
9018 Have you no consideration for HIS property?' He hadn't the least."
     
9019 "And refused all proposals," said my guardian.
     
9020 "Refused all proposals," returned Mr. Skimpole. "I made him business
9021 proposals. I had him into my room. I said, 'You are a man of
9022 business, I believe?' He replied, 'I am,' 'Very well,' said I, 'now
9023 let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and
9024 paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house
9025 for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until
9026 this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly
9027 and business-like. What do you want?' In reply to this, he made use
9028 of the figurative expression -- which has something Eastern about
9029 it -- that he had never seen the colour of my money. 'My amiable
9030 friend,' said I, 'I never have any money. I never know anything about
9031 money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do you offer if I give you time?'
9032 'My good fellow,' said I, 'I have no idea of time; but you say you
9033 are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a
9034 business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper -- and wafers -- I am
9035 ready to do. Don't pay yourself at another man's expense (which is
9036 foolish), but be business-like!' However, he wouldn't be, and there
9037 was an end of it."
     
9038 If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole's childhood,
9039 it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a
9040 very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including
9041 a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for
9042 anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly
9043 asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now -- a liberal
9044 one -- and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it
9045 was little enough too, all things considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce
9046 to give it him.
     
9047 It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the
9048 larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the
9049 trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind
9050 blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance!
9051 Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to
9052 alight from the coach -- a dull little town with a church-spire, and a
9053 marketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and
9054 a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men
9055 sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade.
9056 After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along
9057 the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as
9058 England could produce.
     
9059 At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open
9060 carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was
9061 overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.
     
9062 "By heaven!" said he after giving us a courteous greeting. "This a
9063 most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable
9064 public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is
9065 twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought
9066 to be put to death!"
     
9067 "IS he after his time?" said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to
9068 address himself. "You know my infirmity."
     
9069 "Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!" replied Mr. Boythorn,
9070 referring to his watch. "With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel
9071 has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes.
9072 Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his
9073 father -- and his uncle -- were the most profligate coachmen that ever
9074 sat upon a box."
     
9075 While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us
9076 into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles
9077 and pleasure.
     
9078 "I am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the
9079 carriage-door when all was ready, "that I am obliged to conduct you
9080 nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir
9081 Leicester Dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property I have sworn
9082 never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending the
9083 present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!"
9084 And here, catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of his
9085 tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little
9086 market-town.
     
9087 "Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my guardian as we drove
9088 along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.
     
9089 "Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr. Boythorn. "Ha ha ha! Sir
9090 Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels
9091 here. My Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if
9092 particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, "is
9093 expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she
9094 postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have
9095 induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head
9096 of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever
9097 baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!"
     
9098 "I suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "WE may set foot in the park
9099 while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?"
     
9100 "I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head to
9101 Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon
9102 him, "except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I
9103 cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold,
9104 which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,
9105 Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are
9106 likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an
9107 eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks
9108 in gorgeous cases that never go and never went -- Ha ha ha! -- but he
9109 will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of
9110 his friend and neighbour Boythorn!"
     
9111 "I shall not put him to the proof," said my guardian. "He is as
9112 indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the
9113 honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view
9114 of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for
9115 me."
     
9116 "Well!" said Mr. Boythorn. "I am glad of it on the whole. It's in
9117 better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying
9118 the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a
9119 Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect
9120 to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the
9121 Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised
9122 that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the
9123 shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!"
     
9124 Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our
9125 friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his
9126 attention from its master.
     
9127 It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among
9128 the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of
9129 the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over
9130 which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings
9131 were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth
9132 green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were
9133 so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how
9134 beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower,
9135 and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among
9136 the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was
9137 one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity
9138 and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To
9139 Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On
9140 everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks,
9141 fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the
9142 prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom
9143 upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.
     
9144 When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the
9145 sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.
9146 Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a
9147 bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside
9148 him.
     
9149 "That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name," said,
9150 he, "and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady
9151 Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her
9152 about her own fair person -- an honour which my young friend himself
9153 does not at all appreciate. However, he can't marry just yet, even if
9154 his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In
9155 the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time
9156 to -- fish. Ha ha ha ha!"
     
9157 "Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?" asked Ada.
     
9158 "Why, my dear Miss Clare," he returned, "I think they may perhaps
9159 understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I
9160 must learn from you on such a point -- not you from me."
     
9161 Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
9162 horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
9163 and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
     
9164 He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn
9165 in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked
9166 orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable
9167 wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything
9168 about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old
9169 lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the
9170 cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the
9171 gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested
9172 on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like
9173 profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled
9174 about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and
9175 winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and
9176 marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a
9177 vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of
9178 wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where
9179 the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such
9180 stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the
9181 old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the
9182 birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that
9183 where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still
9184 clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the
9185 changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to
9186 the common fate.
     
9187 The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden,
9188 was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored
9189 kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was
9190 the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Boythorn
9191 maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was
9192 supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large
9193 bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog
9194 established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal
9195 destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.
9196 Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to
9197 which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn
9198 warnings: "Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence
9199 Boythorn." "The blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn."
9200 "Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and
9201 night. Lawrence Boythorn." "Take notice. That any person or persons
9202 audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished
9203 with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with
9204 the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn." These he showed us
9205 from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his
9206 head, and he laughed, "Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as
9207 he pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself.
     
9208 "But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr. Skimpole in his
9209 light way, "when you are not in earnest after all."
     
9210 "Not in earnest!" returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth. "Not
9211 in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a
9212 lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the
9213 first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on
9214 my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide
9215 this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon
9216 known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest.
9217 Not more!"
     
9218 We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all
9219 set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the
9220 park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
9221 pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful
9222 trees until it brought us to the church-porch.
     
9223 The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the
9224 exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom
9225 were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There
9226 were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old
9227 coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all
9228 the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There
9229 was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome
9230 old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper
9231 towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Boythorn had told us
9232 was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her
9233 by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was
9234 of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off.
9235 One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed
9236 maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and
9237 everything there. It was a Frenchwoman's.
     
9238 As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I
9239 had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a
9240 grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it
9241 was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light
9242 that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in
9243 the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the
9244 sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working
9245 at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a
9246 gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly
9247 ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of being resolutely
9248 unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me that the great
9249 people were come and that the service was going to begin.
     
9250 "'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy
9251 sight -- '"
     
9252 Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the
9253 look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which
9254 those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and
9255 to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down -- released
9256 again, if I may say so -- on my book; but I knew the beautiful face
9257 quite well in that short space of time.
     
9258 And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
9259 associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even to
9260 the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
9261 glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen
9262 this lady's face before in all my life -- I was quite sure of
9263 it -- absolutely certain.
     
9264 It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired
9265 gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
9266 Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her
9267 face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in
9268 which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so
9269 fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her
9270 eyes, I could not think.
     
9271 I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it
9272 by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to
9273 hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered
9274 voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face
9275 accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be that it did, a
9276 little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision
9277 which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was
9278 so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that
9279 resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and
9280 haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at all, in any one. And yet I -- I,
9281 little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on
9282 whose birthday there was no rejoicing -- seemed to arise before my own
9283 eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady,
9284 whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I
9285 perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.
     
9286 It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation
9287 that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of
9288 the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here,
9289 and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the
9290 church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange
9291 emotion. After a long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It
9292 was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no
9293 heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it
9294 revive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards
9295 glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.
     
9296 The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much
9297 taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock -- though he was obliged to walk by
9298 the help of a thick stick -- and escorted her out of church to the pony
9299 carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so
9300 did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along
9301 (Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight) as if he were
9302 a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.
     
9303 "He believes he is!" said Mr. Boythorn. "He firmly believes it. So
9304 did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!"
     
9305 "Do you know," pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr.
9306 Boythorn, "it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort."
     
9307 "IS it!" said Mr. Boythorn.
     
9308 "Say that he wants to patronize me," pursued Mr. Skimpole. "Very
9309 well! I don't object."
     
9310 "I do," said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.
     
9311 "Do you really?" returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein. "But
9312 that's taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here
9313 am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I
9314 never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a
9315 mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say 'Mighty potentate,
9316 here IS my homage! It's easier to give it than to withhold it. Here
9317 it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I
9318 shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature
9319 to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.' Mighty potentate replies
9320 in effect, 'This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my
9321 digestion and my bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me the
9322 necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points
9323 outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like
9324 Milton's cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us.' That's my
9325 view of such things, speaking as a child!"
     
9326 "But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow," said Mr.
9327 Boythorn, "where there was the opposite of that fellow -- or of this
9328 fellow. How then?"
     
9329 "How then?" said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost
9330 simplicity and candour. "Just the same then! I should say, 'My
9331 esteemed Boythorn' -- to make you the personification of our imaginary
9332 friend -- 'my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate?
9333 Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system
9334 is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody's business in the social
9335 system is to be agreeable. It's a system of harmony, in short.
9336 Therefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go
9337 to dinner!'"
     
9338 "But excellent Boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and
9339 growing very red, "I'll be -- "
     
9340 "I understand," said Mr. Skimpole. "Very likely he would."
     
9341 " -- if I WILL go to dinner!" cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst and
9342 stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "And he would probably
9343 add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?'"
     
9344 "To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in his
9345 gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, "'Upon my life I
9346 have not the least idea! I don't know what it is you call by that
9347 name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find
9348 it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily.
9349 But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and
9350 I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it!' So, you see, excellent
9351 Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!"
     
9352 This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always
9353 expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other
9354 circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But
9355 he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as
9356 our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr.
9357 Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long,
9358 that matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Skimpole, who always
9359 seemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then
9360 betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never
9361 finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing
9362 scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and
9363 looking at the sky -- which he couldn't help thinking, he said, was
9364 what he was meant for; it suited him so exactly.
     
9365 "Enterprise and effort," he would say to us (on his back), "are
9366 delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the
9367 deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and
9368 think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating
9369 to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures
9370 ask, 'What is the use of a man's going to the North Pole? What good
9371 does it do?' I can't say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for
9372 the purpose -- though he don't know it -- of employing my thoughts as I
9373 lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on
9374 American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say
9375 they don't altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant
9376 experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they
9377 give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter
9378 objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I
9379 shouldn't wonder if it were!"
     
9380 I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs.
9381 Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented
9382 themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand,
9383 they rarely presented themselves at all.
     
9384 The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my
9385 heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that
9386 to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the
9387 transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the
9388 shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the
9389 air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We
9390 had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where
9391 there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped
9392 off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by
9393 thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a
9394 distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in
9395 which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through
9396 which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon
9397 the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard
9398 thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle
9399 through the leaves.
     
9400 The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm
9401 broke so suddenly -- upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot -- that
9402 before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning
9403 were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if
9404 every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for
9405 standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the
9406 moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two
9407 broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper's
9408 lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty
9409 of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy
9410 clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we
9411 had once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the fern as if it were
9412 water.
     
9413 The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only
9414 clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there
9415 and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all
9416 thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm.
9417 It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove
9418 the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn
9419 thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the
9420 tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to
9421 consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and
9422 leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage
9423 which seemed to make creation new again.
     
9424 "Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?"
     
9425 "Oh, no, Esther dear!" said Ada quietly.
     
9426 Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken.
     
9427 The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice,
9428 as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange
9429 way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable
9430 pictures of myself.
     
9431 Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there
9432 and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair with
9433 her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when I
9434 turned my head.
     
9435 "I have frightened you?" she said.
     
9436 No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!
     
9437 "I believe," said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, "I have the pleasure
9438 of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce."
     
9439 "Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would,
9440 Lady Dedlock," he returned.
     
9441 "I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local
9442 disputes of Sir Leicester's -- they are not of his seeking, however, I
9443 believe -- should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show
9444 you any attention here."
     
9445 "I am aware of the circumstances," returned my guardian with a smile,
9446 "and am sufficiently obliged."
     
9447 She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual
9448 to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a
9449 very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful,
9450 perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able
9451 to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her
9452 while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the
9453 middle of the porch between us.
     
9454 "Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester
9455 about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his
9456 power to advance in any way?" she said over her shoulder to my
9457 guardian.
     
9458 "I hope so," said he.
     
9459 She seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. There
9460 was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more
9461 familiar -- I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be -- as
9462 she spoke to him over her shoulder.
     
9463 "I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?"
     
9464 He presented Ada, in form.
     
9465 "You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,"
9466 said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder again, "if you
9467 only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me," and she
9468 turned full upon me, "to this young lady too!"
     
9469 "Miss Summerson really is my ward," said Mr. Jarndyce. "I am
9470 responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case."
     
9471 "Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" said my Lady.
     
9472 "Yes."
     
9473 "She is very fortunate in her guardian."
     
9474 Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was indeed.
9475 All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of
9476 displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.
     
9477 "Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr.
9478 Jarndyce."
     
9479 "A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you
9480 last Sunday," he returned.
     
9481 "What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one
9482 to me!" she said with some disdain. "I have achieved that reputation,
9483 I suppose."
     
9484 "You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock," said my guardian, "that
9485 you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me."
     
9486 "So much!" she repeated, slightly laughing. "Yes!"
     
9487 With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know
9488 not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than
9489 children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at
9490 the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself
9491 with her own thoughts as if she had been alone.
     
9492 "I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than
9493 you know me?" she said, looking at him again.
     
9494 "Yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned.
     
9495 "We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in
9496 common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I
9497 suppose, but it could not be helped."
     
9498 Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to
9499 pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased,
9500 the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to
9501 glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there,
9502 silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry
9503 pace.
     
9504 "The messenger is coming back, my Lady," said the keeper, "with the
9505 carriage."
     
9506 As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There
9507 alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the
9508 Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl,
9509 the Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused
9510 and hesitating.
     
9511 "What now?" said Lady Dedlock. "Two!"
     
9512 "I am your maid, my Lady, at the present," said the Frenchwoman. "The
9513 message was for the attendant."
     
9514 "I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady," said the pretty girl.
     
9515 "I did mean you, child," replied her mistress calmly. "Put that shawl
9516 on me."
     
9517 She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl
9518 lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed,
9519 looking on with her lips very tightly set.
     
9520 "I am sorry," said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, "that we are not
9521 likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send
9522 the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly."
     
9523 But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful
9524 leave of Ada -- none of me -- and put her hand upon his proffered arm,
9525 and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage
9526 with a hood.
     
9527 "Come in, child," she said to the pretty girl; "I shall want you. Go
9528 on!"
     
9529 The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she
9530 had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had
9531 alighted.
     
9532 I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride
9533 itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her
9534 retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained
9535 perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and
9536 then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her
9537 shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same
9538 direction through the wettest of the wet grass.
     
9539 "Is that young woman mad?" said my guardian.
     
9540 "Oh, no, sir!" said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after
9541 her. "Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece
9542 as the best. But she's mortal high and passionate -- powerful high and
9543 passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others
9544 put above her, she don't take kindly to it."
     
9545 "But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?" said my
9546 guardian.
     
9547 "Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!" said the man.
     
9548 "Or unless she fancies it's blood," said the woman. "She'd as soon
9549 walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own's up!"
     
9550 We passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful
9551 as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now,
9552 with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing,
9553 the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed
9554 by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like
9555 a fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly
9556 walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went
9557 Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass.
     
     
     
     
9558 CHAPTER XIX
     
9559 Moving On
     
     
9560 It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good
9561 ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed,
9562 iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing
9563 clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of
9564 ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their
9565 papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. The
9566 courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.
9567 Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might
9568 sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there,
9569 walk.
     
9570 The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even
9571 unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded
9572 proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided
9573 stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of
9574 Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation.
9575 Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and
9576 parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of
9577 grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside
9578 Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to
9579 do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over
9580 their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it
9581 thoughtfully.
     
9582 There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to
9583 sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his
9584 circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats,
9585 no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved
9586 gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the
9587 judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays
9588 from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he
9589 comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!
     
9590 The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How
9591 England can get on through four long summer months without its
9592 bar -- which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only
9593 legitimate triumph in prosperity -- is beside the question; assuredly
9594 that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The
9595 learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the
9596 unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the
9597 opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing
9598 infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The learned
9599 gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all
9600 opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French
9601 watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the
9602 smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very
9603 learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery
9604 complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in
9605 knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with
9606 legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the
9607 initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity
9608 and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same
9609 great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the
9610 second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled
9611 on the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be
9612 encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely
9613 member of the bar do flit across the waste and come upon a prowling
9614 suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety,
9615 they frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades.
     
9616 It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young
9617 clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees,
9618 pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or
9619 Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large.
9620 All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about
9621 staircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of
9622 aggravation. All the blind men's dogs in the streets draw their
9623 masters against pumps or trip them over buckets. A shop with a
9624 sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish
9625 in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to
9626 the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and
9627 keeps them simmering all night.
     
9628 There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be
9629 cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in
9630 dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those
9631 retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook's court, it is so hot that
9632 the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the
9633 pavement -- Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his
9634 cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol's Arms has
9635 discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little Swills
9636 is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out
9637 in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile
9638 complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of
9639 the most fastidious mind.
     
9640 Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of
9641 rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long
9642 vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court, Cursitor
9643 Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a
9644 sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a
9645 law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn
9646 and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at other seasons,
9647 and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it is in such hot
9648 weather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling
9649 and a-bowling right round you.
     
9650 Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon
9651 in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in
9652 contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather
9653 select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more. From
9654 Mr. Chadband's being much given to describe himself, both verbally
9655 and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers
9656 for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses
9657 it, "in the ministry." Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular
9658 denomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so
9659 very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his
9660 volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience;
9661 but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of the number. Mrs.
9662 Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel,
9663 Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she
9664 was something flushed by the hot weather.
     
9665 "My little woman," says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,
9666 "likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!"
     
9667 So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the
9668 handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of
9669 holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little
9670 drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the
9671 portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,
9672 the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision
9673 made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin
9674 slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows
9675 of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be
9676 brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is
9677 rather a consuming vessel -- the persecutors say a gorging vessel -- and
9678 can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably
9679 well.
     
9680 Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when
9681 they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his
9682 hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, "At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs.
9683 Chadband, my love?"
     
9684 "At six," says Mrs. Snagsby.
     
9685 Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that "it's gone that."
     
9686 "Perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is Mrs. Snagsby's
9687 reproachful remark.
     
9688 Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says,
9689 with his cough of mildness, "No, my dear, no. I merely named the
9690 time."
     
9691 "What's time," says Mrs. Snagsby, "to eternity?"
     
9692 "Very true, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby. "Only when a person lays in
9693 victuals for tea, a person does it with a view -- perhaps -- more to
9694 time. And when a time is named for having tea, it's better to come up
9695 to it."
     
9696 "To come up to it!" Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. "Up to it! As
9697 if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!"
     
9698 "Not at all, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby.
     
9699 Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes
9700 rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular
9701 ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr.
9702 and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner
9703 door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is
9704 admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her
9705 patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much
9706 discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)
9707 by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to
9708 announce "Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,
9709 whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.
     
9710 Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general
9711 appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.
9712 Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves
9713 softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk
9714 upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were
9715 inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a
9716 perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting
9717 up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is
9718 going to edify them.
     
9719 "My friends," says Mr. Chadband, "peace be on this house! On the
9720 master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on
9721 the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is
9722 it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and
9723 beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore,
9724 my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours."
     
9725 In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby
9726 thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received.
     
9727 "Now, my friends," proceeds Mr. Chadband, "since I am upon this
9728 theme -- "
     
9729 Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice and
9730 without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful
9731 distinctness, "Go away!"
     
9732 "Now, my friends," says Chadband, "since I am upon this theme, and in
9733 my lowly path improving it -- "
     
9734 Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred
9735 and eighty-two." The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "Go away!"
     
9736 "Now, my friends," says Mr. Chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit of
9737 love -- "
     
9738 Still Guster reiterates "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two."
     
9739 Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be
9740 persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,
9741 says, "Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!"
     
9742 "One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which
9743 he wish to know what the shilling ware for," says Guster, breathless.
     
9744 "For?" returns Mrs. Chadband. "For his fare!"
     
9745 Guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence or on
9746 summonsizzing the party." Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are
9747 proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets the
9748 tumult by lifting up his hand.
     
9749 "My friends," says he, "I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It
9750 is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to
9751 murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!"
     
9752 While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as
9753 who should say, "You hear this apostle!" and while Mr. Chadband glows
9754 with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr.
9755 Chadband's habit -- it is the head and front of his pretensions
9756 indeed -- to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the
9757 smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.
     
9758 "My friends," says Chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might justly
9759 have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown.
9760 O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"
     
9761 With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in
9762 verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,
9763 lifts up his admonitory hand.
     
9764 "My friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being
9765 spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my
9766 friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because
9767 we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of
9768 the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We
9769 cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?"
     
9770 Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to
9771 observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "No wings." But is
9772 immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.
     
9773 "I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and
9774 obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? Is it
9775 because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends,
9776 without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength,
9777 my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double
9778 up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground.
9779 Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive
9780 the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it," says Chadband,
9781 glancing over the table, "from bread in various forms, from butter
9782 which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow,
9783 from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from
9784 sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good
9785 things which are set before us!"
     
9786 The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.
9787 Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after
9788 this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their
9789 determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's
9790 experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and
9791 much admired.
     
9792 Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at
9793 Mr. Snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion
9794 of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned
9795 appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this
9796 exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be
9797 described as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or
9798 other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale
9799 scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook's Court,
9800 Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the
9801 warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.
     
9802 At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered
9803 her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means
9804 of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt -- among which
9805 may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing
9806 military music on Mr. Chadband's head with plates, and afterwards
9807 crowning that gentleman with muffins -- at which period of the
9808 entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted.
     
9809 "And being wanted in the -- not to put too fine a point upon it -- in the
9810 shop," says Mr. Snagsby, rising, "perhaps this good company will
9811 excuse me for half a minute."
     
9812 Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentices intently
9813 contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.
     
9814 "Why, bless my heart," says Mr. Snagsby, "what's the matter!"
     
9815 "This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to,
9816 won't move on -- "
     
9817 "I'm always a-moving on, sar," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy
9818 tears with his arm. "I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever
9819 since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do
9820 move!"
     
9821 "He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight
9822 professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his
9823 stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and
9824 therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate a
9825 young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on."
     
9826 "Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite
9827 desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of
9828 Mr. Snagsby's passage.
     
9829 "Don't you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of
9830 you!" says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "My
9831 instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five
9832 hundred times."
     
9833 "But where?" cries the boy.
     
9834 "Well! Really, constable, you know," says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and
9835 coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt,
9836 "really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?"
     
9837 "My instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. "My
9838 instructions are that this boy is to move on."
     
9839 Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the
9840 great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years
9841 in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand
9842 recipe remains for you -- the profound philosophical prescription -- the
9843 be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on!
9844 You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can't at
9845 all agree about that. Move on!
     
9846 Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed,
9847 but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any
9848 direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Snagsby,
9849 hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having
9850 never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.
     
9851 "The simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you know
9852 this boy. He says you do."
     
9853 Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "No he don't!"
     
9854 "My lit-tle woman!" says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. "My
9855 love, permit me! Pray have a moment's patience, my dear. I do know
9856 something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say that
9857 there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable." To whom the
9858 law-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppressing
9859 the half-crown fact.
     
9860 "Well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for
9861 what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you
9862 knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was
9863 acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if
9864 I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man don't seem
9865 inclined to keep his word, but -- Oh! Here IS the young man!"
     
9866 Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with the
9867 chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.
     
9868 "I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row
9869 going on," says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, "and as your name was
9870 mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into."
     
9871 "It was very good-natured of you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I am
9872 obliged to you." And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again
9873 suppressing the half-crown fact.
     
9874 "Now, I know where you live," says the constable, then, to Jo. "You
9875 live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a nice innocent place to live
9876 in, ain't it?"
     
9877 "I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies Jo. "They
9878 wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent
9879 place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such
9880 a reg'lar one as me!"
     
9881 "You are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable.
     
9882 "Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies Jo. "I leave
9883 you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him," says the
9884 constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting my hand
9885 upon him!"
     
9886 "They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby," says Jo, "out of a sov-ring as wos
9887 give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to
9888 my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse and the
9889 ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground
9890 wot he's berrid in. She ses to me she ses 'are you the boy at the
9891 inkwhich?' she ses. I ses 'yes' I ses. She ses to me she ses 'can you
9892 show me all them places?' I ses 'yes I can' I ses. And she ses to me
9893 'do it' and I dun it and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it. And I
9894 an't had much of the sov'ring neither," says Jo, with dirty tears,
9895 "fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd
9896 square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved
9897 another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence
9898 and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it."
     
9899 "You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the
9900 sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with
9901 ineffable disdain.
     
9902 "I don't know as I do, sir," replies Jo. "I don't expect nothink at
9903 all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it."
     
9904 "You see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience. "Well,
9905 Mr. Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you engage for
9906 his moving on?"
     
9907 "No!" cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.
     
9908 "My little woman!" pleads her husband. "Constable, I have no doubt
9909 he'll move on. You know you really must do it," says Mr. Snagsby.
     
9910 "I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo.
     
9911 "Do it, then," observes the constable. "You know what you have got to
9912 do. Do it! And recollect you won't get off so easy next time. Catch
9913 hold of your money. Now, the sooner you're five mile off, the better
9914 for all parties."
     
9915 With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as
9916 a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good
9917 afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow music for
9918 him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat
9919 in his hand for a little ventilation.
     
9920 Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has
9921 awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy,
9922 who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has
9923 been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,
9924 takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular
9925 cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by
9926 the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs
9927 and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of
9928 the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy
9929 yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into
9930 the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a
9931 witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape
9932 like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him
9933 according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such
9934 model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its
9935 being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs.
9936 Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition,
9937 but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher up in the law.
9938 During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband,
9939 being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be
9940 floated off.
     
9941 "Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "Either this boy sticks to it like
9942 cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats
9943 anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's."
     
9944 Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say
9945 so!"
     
9946 "For years!" replied Mrs. Chadband.
     
9947 "Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs. Snagsby
9948 triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. "Mrs. Chadband -- this gentleman's
9949 wife -- Reverend Mr. Chadband."
     
9950 "Oh, indeed!" says Mr. Guppy.
     
9951 "Before I married my present husband," says Mrs. Chadband.
     
9952 "Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, transferring
9953 his cross-examination.
     
9954 "No."
     
9955 "NOT a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy.
     
9956 Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.
     
9957 "Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in
9958 something, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to
9959 model his conversation on forensic principles.
     
9960 "Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke
9961 with a hard-favoured smile.
     
9962 "Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr. Guppy. "Very good. Pray,
9963 ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions
9964 (we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and
9965 Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take
9966 time, ma'am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?"
     
9967 "Neither," says Mrs. Chadband as before.
     
9968 "Oh! A child!" says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby
9969 the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British
9970 jurymen. "Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us
9971 WHAT child."
     
9972 "You have got it at last, sir," says Mrs. Chadband with another
9973 hard-favoured smile. "Well, sir, it was before your time, most
9974 likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child
9975 named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and
9976 Carboy."
     
9977 "Miss Summerson, ma'am!" cries Mr. Guppy, excited.
     
9978 "I call her Esther Summerson," says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.
9979 "There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther.
9980 'Esther, do this! Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it."
     
9981 "My dear ma'am," returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small
9982 apartment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received that
9983 young lady in London when she first came here from the establishment
9984 to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking
9985 you by the hand."
     
9986 Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed
9987 signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his
9988 pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers "Hush!"
     
9989 "My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken in moderation" (which
9990 was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) "of the
9991 comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon
9992 the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may
9993 it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it
9994 proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of
9995 anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of
9996 spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual
9997 profit? My young friend, stand forth!"
     
9998 Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch
9999 forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent
10000 Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.
     
10001 "My young friend," says Chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are to
10002 us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my
10003 young friend?"
     
10004 "I don't know," replies Jo. "I don't know nothink."
     
10005 "My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing
10006 that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young
10007 friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A
10008 fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A
10009 human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young
10010 friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom,
10011 because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now
10012 deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a
10013 stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.
     
10014    O running stream of sparkling joy
10015    To be a soaring human boy!
     
10016 And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.
10017 Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a
10018 state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because
10019 you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of
10020 bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of
10021 love, inquire."
     
10022 At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have
10023 been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his
10024 face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses
10025 her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.
     
10026 "My friends," says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding
10027 itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right that
10028 I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right
10029 that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I
10030 stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three
10031 hours' improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor
10032 has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be
10033 joyful!"
     
10034 Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.
     
10035 "My friends," says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "I will
10036 not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my
10037 young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to
10038 deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty
10039 swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the
10040 day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?"
10041 (This with a cow-like lightness.)
     
10042 Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,
10043 gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs.
10044 Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But
10045 before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken
10046 meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.
     
10047 So, Mr. Chadband -- of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he
10048 should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable
10049 nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave
10050 off, having once the audacity to begin -- retires into private life
10051 until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo
10052 moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,
10053 where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast.
     
10054 And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great
10055 cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above a
10056 red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might
10057 suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion
10058 of the great, confused city -- so golden, so high up, so far out of his
10059 reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the
10060 crowd flowing by him in two streams -- everything moving on to some
10061 purpose and to one end -- until he is stirred up and told to "move on"
10062 too.
     
     
     
     
10063 CHAPTER XX
     
10064 A New Lodger
     
     
10065 The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river
10066 very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy
10067 saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his
10068 penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into
10069 his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will,
10070 but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting
10071 nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual
10072 energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees
10073 with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool,
10074 and stab his desk, and gape.
     
10075 Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken
10076 out a shooting license and gone down to his father's, and Mr. Guppy's
10077 two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Richard
10078 Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for
10079 the time being established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes.
10080 So exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the
10081 confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce
10082 in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good
10083 enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming,
10084 he would have got it painted.
     
10085 Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool
10086 in Kenge and Carboy's office of entertaining, as a matter of course,
10087 sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants
10088 to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he
10089 shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these
10090 profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains
10091 to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of
10092 chess without any adversary.
     
10093 It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find
10094 the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and
10095 Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure
10096 can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third
10097 saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office, to
10098 wit, Young Smallweed.
     
10099 Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick
10100 Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is
10101 much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen and
10102 an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a
10103 passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery
10104 Lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another
10105 lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made
10106 article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived
10107 from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become
10108 a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman
10109 (by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds
10110 himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Guppy's particular
10111 confidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his
10112 experience, on difficult points in private life.
     
10113 Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying
10114 all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after
10115 several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of
10116 cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent
10117 drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and
10118 stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds for Mr.
10119 Smallweed's consideration the paradox that the more you drink the
10120 thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a
10121 state of hopeless languor.
     
10122 While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn,
10123 surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes
10124 conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below
10125 and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time,
10126 a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries,
10127 "Hip! Gup-py!"
     
10128 "Why, you don't mean it!" says Mr. Guppy, aroused. "Small! Here's
10129 Jobling!" Small's head looks out of window too and nods to Jobling.
     
10130 "Where have you sprung up from?" inquires Mr. Guppy.
     
10131 "From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any
10132 longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half a crown. Upon
10133 my soul, I'm hungry."
     
10134 Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to
10135 seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.
     
10136 "I say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. I
10137 want to get some dinner."
     
10138 "Will you come and dine with me?" says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the
10139 coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.
     
10140 "How long should I have to hold out?" says Jobling.
     
10141 "Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,
10142 returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head.
     
10143 "What enemy?"
     
10144 "A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?"
     
10145 "Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says Mr.
10146 Jobling.
     
10147 Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with much
10148 earnestness that he "can't stand it."
     
10149 "You shall have the paper," says Mr. Guppy. "He shall bring it down.
10150 But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and
10151 read. It's a quiet place."
     
10152 Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed
10153 supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon
10154 him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted
10155 with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy
10156 retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up.
     
10157 "Well, and how are you?" says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.
     
10158 "So, so. How are you?"
     
10159 Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling
10160 ventures on the question, "How is SHE?" This Mr. Guppy resents as a
10161 liberty, retorting, "Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind -- "
10162 Jobling begs pardon.
     
10163 "Any subject but that!" says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his
10164 injury. "For there ARE chords, Jobling -- "
     
10165 Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.
     
10166 During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the
10167 dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper,
10168 "Return immediately." This notification to all whom it may concern,
10169 he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the
10170 angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron
10171 that they may now make themselves scarce.
     
10172 Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of
10173 the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang,
10174 where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to
10175 have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it
10176 may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are
10177 nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish
10178 wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain
10179 there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he
10180 drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his
10181 collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it,
10182 whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by
10183 Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account
10184 for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices
10185 that his father was John Doe and his mother the only female member of
10186 the Roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a
10187 blue bag.
     
10188 Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window
10189 of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of
10190 peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr.
10191 Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has
10192 his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald
10193 patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of
10194 no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized "bread" or
10195 proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut.
10196 In the matter of gravy he is adamant.
     
10197 Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience,
10198 Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet, turning
10199 an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue
10200 of viands and saying "What do YOU take, Chick?" Chick, out of the
10201 profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and French
10202 beans -- and don't you forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly
10203 cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like
10204 order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the
10205 waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of
10206 Babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers.
10207 Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys
10208 intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then,
10209 amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a
10210 clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which
10211 brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more
10212 nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost
10213 of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and
10214 steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated
10215 atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break
10216 out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the
10217 legal triumvirate appease their appetites.
     
10218 Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require.
10219 His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening
10220 nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same
10221 phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at
10222 the seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed
10223 circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a
10224 shabby air.
     
10225 His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some
10226 little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and
10227 ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in
10228 theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. "Thank you, Guppy," says Mr.
10229 Jobling, "I really don't know but what I WILL take another."
     
10230 Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.
     
10231 Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half
10232 way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at
10233 his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his
10234 legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment,
10235 Mr. Guppy says, "You are a man again, Tony!"
     
10236 "Well, not quite yet," says Mr. Jobling. "Say, just born."
     
10237 "Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?"
     
10238 "Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. "I really don't know but what I
10239 WILL take summer cabbage."
     
10240 Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of
10241 "Without slugs, Polly!" And cabbage produced.
     
10242 "I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and fork
10243 with a relishing steadiness.
     
10244 "Glad to hear it."
     
10245 "In fact, I have just turned into my teens," says Mr. Jobling.
     
10246 He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as
10247 Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the
10248 ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a
10249 veal and ham and a cabbage.
     
10250 "Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, "what would you recommend about
10251 pastry?"
     
10252 "Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed instantly.
     
10253 "Aye, aye!" cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. "You're there, are
10254 you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take a marrow
10255 pudding."
     
10256 Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a pleasant
10257 humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of
10258 Mr. Smallweed, "three Cheshires," and to those "three small rums."
10259 This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts up
10260 his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to
10261 himself), leans against the wall, and says, "I am grown up now,
10262 Guppy. I have arrived at maturity."
     
10263 "What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy, "about -- you don't mind
10264 Smallweed?"
     
10265 "Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good
10266 health."
     
10267 "Sir, to you!" says Mr. Smallweed.
     
10268 "I was saying, what do you think NOW," pursues Mr. Guppy, "of
10269 enlisting?"
     
10270 "Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one
10271 thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another
10272 thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I
10273 to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr. Jobling,
10274 pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an
10275 English stable. "Ill fo manger. That's the French saying, and
10276 mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so."
     
10277 Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so."
     
10278 "If any man had told me," pursues Jobling, "even so lately as when
10279 you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over
10280 to see that house at Castle Wold -- "
     
10281 Mr. Smallweed corrects him -- Chesney Wold.
     
10282 "Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any
10283 man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time
10284 as I literally find myself, I should have -- well, I should have
10285 pitched into him," says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water
10286 with an air of desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his
10287 head."
     
10288 "Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,"
10289 remonstrates Mr. Guppy. "You were talking about nothing else in the
10290 gig."
     
10291 "Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong
10292 side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round."
     
10293 That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their
10294 being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As
10295 though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular!
     
10296 "I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all
10297 square," says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and
10298 perhaps of meaning too. "But I was disappointed. They never did. And
10299 when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people
10300 that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of
10301 borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any
10302 new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference
10303 to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what's a
10304 fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap
10305 down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of living cheap
10306 when you have got no money? You might as well live dear."
     
10307 "Better," Mr. Smallweed thinks.
     
10308 "Certainly. It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have
10309 been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr. Jobling.
10310 "They are great weaknesses -- Damme, sir, they are great. Well,"
10311 proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water,
10312 "what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?"
     
10313 Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in
10314 his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive
10315 manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than
10316 as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.
     
10317 "Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed -- "
     
10318 Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.
     
10319 " -- Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since
10320 you -- "
     
10321 "Say, got the sack!" cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. "Say it, Guppy. You
10322 mean it."
     
10323 "No-o-o! Left the Inn," Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.
     
10324 "Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy; "and I have
10325 mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately thought
10326 of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?"
     
10327 "I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr. Jobling. "He was not
10328 ours, and I am not acquainted with him."
     
10329 "He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him," Mr. Guppy
10330 retorts. "Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him
10331 through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of
10332 his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer
10333 in argument. They may -- or they may not -- have some reference to a
10334 subject which may -- or may not -- have cast its shadow on my existence."
     
10335 As it is Mr. Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his
10336 particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it,
10337 to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the
10338 human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by
10339 remaining silent.
     
10340 "Such things may be," repeats Mr. Guppy, "or they may not be. They
10341 are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and
10342 Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in
10343 busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all
10344 Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our
10345 mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?"
     
10346 Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.
     
10347 "Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr. Guppy, " -- I mean, now,
10348 Jobling -- you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.
10349 But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want
10350 time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You
10351 might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for
10352 Snagsby."
     
10353 Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed checks
10354 him with a dry cough and the words, "Hem! Shakspeare!"
     
10355 "There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy.
10356 "That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the
10357 Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy in his
10358 encouraging cross-examination-tone, "I think you know Krook, the
10359 Chancellor, across the lane?"
     
10360 "I know him by sight," says Mr. Jobling.
     
10361 "You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?"
     
10362 "Everybody knows her," says Mr. Jobling.
     
10363 "Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of
10364 late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the
10365 amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of
10366 instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her
10367 presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into
10368 a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let.
10369 You may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as
10370 quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He'll ask no questions
10371 and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me -- before the clock
10372 strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling," says
10373 Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar
10374 again, "he's an extraordinary old chap -- always rummaging among a
10375 litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and
10376 write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most
10377 extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but what it might be worth
10378 a fellow's while to look him up a bit."
     
10379 "You don't mean -- " Mr. Jobling begins.
     
10380 "I mean," returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming
10381 modesty, "that I can't make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend
10382 Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can't make
10383 him out."
     
10384 Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"
     
10385 "I have seen something of the profession and something of life,
10386 Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out, more
10387 or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret
10388 (though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now,
10389 he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him,
10390 and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a
10391 smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a
10392 money-lender -- all of which I have thought likely at different
10393 times -- it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I
10394 don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when everything else
10395 suits."
     
10396 Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on
10397 the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling.
10398 After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in
10399 their pockets, and look at one another.
     
10400 "If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy with a
10401 sigh. "But there are chords in the human mind -- "
     
10402 Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water,
10403 Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and
10404 informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack,
10405 his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound goes," will be
10406 at his disposal. "For never shall it be said," Mr. Guppy adds with
10407 emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!"
     
10408 The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that
10409 Mr. Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!" Mr.
10410 Guppy presents it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!" Mr.
10411 Jobling returns, "Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!" Mr.
10412 Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have."
     
10413 They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,
10414 "Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take another glass
10415 for old acquaintance sake."
     
10416 "Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr. Guppy in an incidental
10417 way.
     
10418 "Did he though!" says Mr. Jobling.
     
10419 "There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don't mind that?"
     
10420 "No," says Mr. Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have
10421 died somewhere else. It's devilish odd that he need go and die at MY
10422 place!" Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times
10423 returning to it with such remarks as, "There are places enough to die
10424 in, I should think!" or, "He wouldn't have liked my dying at HIS
10425 place, I dare say!"
     
10426 However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to
10427 dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,
10428 as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr.
10429 Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and
10430 conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon
10431 returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and that he
10432 has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises,
10433 sleeping "like one o'clock."
     
10434 "Then I'll pay," says Mr. Guppy, "and we'll go and see him. Small,
10435 what will it be?"
     
10436 Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one
10437 hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and
10438 hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
10439 cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six
10440 breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four
10441 half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is
10442 eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in
10443 half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!"
     
10444 Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed
10445 dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a
10446 little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to
10447 read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to
10448 himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his
10449 eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to
10450 have disappeared under the bedclothes.
     
10451 Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where
10452 they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say,
10453 breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite
10454 insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the
10455 table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle
10456 and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that
10457 even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut
10458 and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.
     
10459 "Hold up here!" says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old
10460 man another shake. "Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!"
     
10461 But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a
10462 spirituous heat smouldering in it. "Did you ever see such a stupor as
10463 he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr. Guppy.
     
10464 "If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed,
10465 "it'll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking."
     
10466 "It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr. Guppy, shaking him
10467 again. "Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty times
10468 over! Open your eyes!"
     
10469 After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his
10470 visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another,
10471 and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched
10472 lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before.
     
10473 "He is alive, at any rate," says Mr. Guppy. "How are you, my Lord
10474 Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter
10475 of business."
     
10476 The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least
10477 consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. They
10478 help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them.
     
10479 "How do you do, Mr. Krook?" says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture. "How
10480 do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope you are
10481 pretty well?"
     
10482 The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at
10483 nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against
10484 the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it,
10485 and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the
10486 movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these
10487 things recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur
10488 cap on his head and looking keenly at them.
     
10489 "Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,
10490 odd times."
     
10491 "Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr. Guppy.
     
10492 "What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the suspicious
10493 Krook.
     
10494 "Only a little," Mr. Guppy explains.
     
10495 The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,
10496 examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.
     
10497 "I say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. "Somebody's been
10498 making free here!"
     
10499 "I assure you we found it so," says Mr. Guppy. "Would you allow me to
10500 get it filled for you?"
     
10501 "Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook in high glee. "Certainly I
10502 would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next door -- Sol's Arms -- the
10503 Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!"
     
10504 He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,
10505 with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and
10506 hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in
10507 his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.
     
10508 "But, I say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting
10509 it, "this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is
10510 eighteenpenny!"
     
10511 "I thought you might like that better," says Mr. Guppy.
     
10512 "You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook with another taste, and his
10513 hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "You're a baron
10514 of the land."
     
10515 Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his
10516 friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object
10517 of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets
10518 beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time
10519 to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. "You'd
10520 like to see the room, young man?" he says. "Ah! It's a good room!
10521 Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It's
10522 worth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and
10523 such a cat to keep the mice away."
     
10524 Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them
10525 upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and
10526 also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up
10527 from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded -- for
10528 the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as he is
10529 with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other famous claims
10530 on his professional consideration -- and it is agreed that Mr. Weevle
10531 shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy then
10532 repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal
10533 introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected and (more
10534 important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are secured. They
10535 then report progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office
10536 in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, Mr. Guppy explaining
10537 that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at
10538 the play but that there are chords in the human mind which would
10539 render it a hollow mockery.
     
10540 On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears at
10541 Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself
10542 in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him
10543 in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day
10544 Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow,
10545 borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his
10546 landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and
10547 knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups,
10548 milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like
10549 a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.
     
10550 But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next
10551 after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only
10552 whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of
10553 copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities
10554 of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies
10555 of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined
10556 with capital, is capable of producing. With these magnificent
10557 portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion
10558 among the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the
10559 Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety of fancy dress,
10560 plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of
10561 dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every
10562 variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.
     
10563 But fashion is Mr. Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's, weakness. To
10564 borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening and read
10565 about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting
10566 across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable
10567 consolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and
10568 distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished
10569 feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant
10570 and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of
10571 joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty is
10572 about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy marriages are on the
10573 tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become
10574 acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle
10575 reverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated,
10576 and seems to know the originals, and to be known of them.
     
10577 For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices
10578 as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to
10579 carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of
10580 evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not
10581 visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in
10582 a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room -- where he has inherited the
10583 deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink -- and talks to
10584 Krook or is "very free," as they call it in the court, commendingly,
10585 with any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who
10586 leads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to Mrs. Perkins:
10587 firstly, that if her Johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish 'em
10588 to be identically like that young man's; and secondly, "Mark my
10589 words, Mrs. Perkins, ma'am, and don't you be surprised, Lord bless
10590 you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!"
     
     
     
     
10591 CHAPTER XXI
     
10592 The Smallweed Family
     
     
10593 In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one
10594 of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin
10595 Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as
10596 Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and
10597 its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street,
10598 always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like
10599 a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree
10600 whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of
10601 youth.
     
10602 There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several
10603 generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child,
10604 until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her
10605 intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With
10606 such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory,
10607 understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall
10608 asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother has
10609 undoubtedly brightened the family.
     
10610 Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a
10611 helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,
10612 limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held,
10613 the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of
10614 the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and
10615 other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used
10616 to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in
10617 his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life
10618 he has never bred a single butterfly.
     
10619 The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of
10620 Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting
10621 species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired
10622 into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's
10623 god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it.
10624 Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all
10625 the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke
10626 something -- something necessary to his existence, therefore it
10627 couldn't have been his heart -- and made an end of his career. As his
10628 character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a
10629 complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient
10630 people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an
10631 example of the failure of education.
     
10632 His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of
10633 "going out" early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp
10634 scrivener's office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman
10635 improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and
10636 developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the
10637 discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as
10638 his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and
10639 anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and
10640 marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed,
10641 twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this
10642 family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late
10643 to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has
10644 discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books,
10645 fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities
10646 whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born
10647 to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced
10648 have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something
10649 depressing on their minds.
     
10650 At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below
10651 the level of the street -- a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only
10652 ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest
10653 of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no
10654 bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed's
10655 mind -- seated in two black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side
10656 of the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while
10657 away the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the
10658 pots and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed's usual occupation
10659 to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a
10660 sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when
10661 it is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed's seat and guarded
10662 by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain
10663 property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with
10664 which he is always provided in order that he may have something to
10665 throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she
10666 makes an allusion to money -- a subject on which he is particularly
10667 sensitive.
     
10668 "And where's Bart?" Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's
10669 twin sister.
     
10670 "He an't come in yet," says Judy.
     
10671 "It's his tea-time, isn't it?"
     
10672 "No."
     
10673 "How much do you mean to say it wants then?"
     
10674 "Ten minutes."
     
10675 "Hey?"
     
10676 "Ten minutes." (Loud on the part of Judy.)
     
10677 "Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Ten minutes."
     
10678 Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at
10679 the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and
10680 screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "Ten
10681 ten-pound notes!"
     
10682 Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.
     
10683 "Drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man.
     
10684 The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles
10685 up Mrs. Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's chair and
10686 causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly
10687 unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr.
10688 Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter's chair like a
10689 broken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being at these times a
10690 mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not
10691 present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two
10692 operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like
10693 a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some
10694 indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and
10695 the sharer of his life's evening again fronting one another in their
10696 two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on
10697 their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.
     
10698 Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so
10699 indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two kneaded
10700 into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions,
10701 while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness
10702 to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might
10703 walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without
10704 exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing
10705 circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of
10706 brown stuff.
     
10707 Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at
10708 any game. She once or twice fell into children's company when she was
10709 about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on with Judy, and
10710 Judy couldn't get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another
10711 species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is
10712 very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen
10713 the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of
10714 anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception.
10715 If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way,
10716 modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled
10717 all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is
10718 Judy.
     
10719 And her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for his life. He knows no
10720 more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows
10721 of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog or at
10722 cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much
10723 the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an
10724 opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of
10725 Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining
10726 enchanter.
     
10727 Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron
10728 tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she
10729 puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a
10730 small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as
10731 it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is.
     
10732 "Charley, do you mean?" says Judy.
     
10733 "Hey?" from Grandfather Smallweed.
     
10734 "Charley, do you mean?"
     
10735 This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as
10736 usual at the trivets, cries, "Over the water! Charley over the water,
10737 Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the
10738 water, over the water to Charley!" and becomes quite energetic about
10739 it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently
10740 recovered his late exertion.
     
10741 "Ha!" he says when there is silence. "If that's her name. She eats a
10742 deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep."
     
10743 Judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head and purses up her
10744 mouth into no without saying it.
     
10745 "No?" returns the old man. "Why not?"
     
10746 "She'd want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less," says Judy.
     
10747 "Sure?"
     
10748 Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes
10749 the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts
10750 it into slices, "You, Charley, where are you?" Timidly obedient to
10751 the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with
10752 her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of
10753 them, appears, and curtsys.
     
10754 "What work are you about now?" says Judy, making an ancient snap at
10755 her like a very sharp old beldame.
     
10756 "I'm a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss," replies Charley.
     
10757 "Mind you do it thoroughly, and don't loiter. Shirking won't do for
10758 me. Make haste! Go along!" cries Judy with a stamp upon the ground.
10759 "You girls are more trouble than you're worth, by half."
     
10760 On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the
10761 butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother,
10762 looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens
10763 the street-door.
     
10764 "Aye, aye, Bart!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Here you are, hey?"
     
10765 "Here I am," says Bart.
     
10766 "Been along with your friend again, Bart?"
     
10767 Small nods.
     
10768 "Dining at his expense, Bart?"
     
10769 Small nods again.
     
10770 "That's right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take
10771 warning by his foolish example. That's the use of such a friend. The
10772 only use you can put him to," says the venerable sage.
     
10773 His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he
10774 might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight
10775 wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces
10776 then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs.
10777 Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the
10778 trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a
10779 large black draught.
     
10780 "Yes, yes," says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of
10781 wisdom. "That's such advice as your father would have given you,
10782 Bart. You never saw your father. More's the pity. He was my true
10783 son." Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly
10784 pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.
     
10785 "He was my true son," repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread
10786 and butter on his knee, "a good accountant, and died fifteen years
10787 ago."
     
10788 Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with
10789 "Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen
10790 hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!" Her
10791 worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately
10792 discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her
10793 chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after
10794 visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these admonitions, is
10795 particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because
10796 the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and
10797 gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters
10798 violent imprecations against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the
10799 contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure
10800 is suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if
10801 he could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family
10802 circle that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely
10803 shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is
10804 restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps
10805 with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again,
10806 ready to be bowled down like a ninepin.
     
10807 Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is
10808 sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it
10809 up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious
10810 partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth
10811 but the trivets. As thus: "If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he
10812 might have been worth a deal of money -- you brimstone chatterer! -- but
10813 just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been
10814 making the foundations for, through many a year -- you jade of a
10815 magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean! -- he took ill and
10816 died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of
10817 business care -- I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a
10818 cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of
10819 yourself! -- and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip,
10820 just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born -- you
10821 are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!"
     
10822 Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect
10823 in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups
10824 and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little
10825 charwoman's evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the
10826 iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of
10827 loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.
     
10828 "But your father and me were partners, Bart," says the old gentleman,
10829 "and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It's rare
10830 for you both that you went out early in life -- Judy to the flower
10831 business, and you to the law. You won't want to spend it. You'll get
10832 your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will
10833 go back to the flower business and you'll still stick to the law."
     
10834 One might infer from Judy's appearance that her business rather lay
10835 with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been
10836 apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A
10837 close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her
10838 brother's, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone,
10839 some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some
10840 resentful opinion that it is time he went.
     
10841 "Now, if everybody has done," says Judy, completing her preparations,
10842 "I'll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she
10843 took it by herself in the kitchen."
     
10844 Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,
10845 sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In
10846 the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed
10847 appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the
10848 remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing
10849 on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful,
10850 evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached
10851 by the oldest practitioners.
     
10852 "Now, don't stare about you all the afternoon," cries Judy, shaking
10853 her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance
10854 which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, "but take your
10855 victuals and get back to your work."
     
10856 "Yes, miss," says Charley.
     
10857 "Don't say yes," returns Miss Smallweed, "for I know what you girls
10858 are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you."
     
10859 Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so
10860 disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to
10861 gormandize, which "in you girls," she observes, is disgusting.
10862 Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the
10863 general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.
     
10864 "See who it is, and don't chew when you open it!" cries Judy.
     
10865 The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss
10866 Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the
10867 bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups
10868 into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers
10869 the eating and drinking terminated.
     
10870 "Now! Who is it, and what's wanted?" says the snappish Judy.
     
10871 It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or
10872 ceremony, Mr. George walks in.
     
10873 "Whew!" says Mr. George. "You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well!
10874 Perhaps you do right to get used to one." Mr. George makes the latter
10875 remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.
     
10876 "Ho! It's you!" cries the old gentleman. "How de do? How de do?"
     
10877 "Middling," replies Mr. George, taking a chair. "Your granddaughter I
10878 have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss."
     
10879 "This is my grandson," says Grandfather Smallweed. "You ha'n't seen
10880 him before. He is in the law and not much at home."
     
10881 "My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his
10882 sister. He is devilish like his sister," says Mr. George, laying a
10883 great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.
     
10884 "And how does the world use you, Mr. George?" Grandfather Smallweed
10885 inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.
     
10886 "Pretty much as usual. Like a football."
     
10887 He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with
10888 crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and
10889 powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to
10890 a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits
10891 forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space
10892 for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside.
10893 His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty
10894 clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is
10895 set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great
10896 moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his
10897 broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one might
10898 guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time.
     
10899 A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper
10900 was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a
10901 broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their stunted
10902 forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little
10903 narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones,
10904 are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the
10905 middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands
10906 upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he
10907 remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family
10908 and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.
     
10909 "Do you rub your legs to rub life into 'em?" he asks of Grandfather
10910 Smallweed after looking round the room.
     
10911 "Why, it's partly a habit, Mr. George, and -- yes -- it partly helps the
10912 circulation," he replies.
     
10913 "The cir-cu-la-tion!" repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
10914 chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. "Not much of that, I
10915 should think."
     
10916 "Truly I'm old, Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed. "But I can
10917 carry my years. I'm older than HER," nodding at his wife, "and see
10918 what she is? You're a brimstone chatterer!" with a sudden revival of
10919 his late hostility.
     
10920 "Unlucky old soul!" says Mr. George, turning his head in that
10921 direction. "Don't scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor
10922 cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up,
10923 ma'am. That's better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr.
10924 Smallweed," says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from assisting
10925 her, "if your wife an't enough."
     
10926 "I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?" the old man hints
10927 with a leer.
     
10928 The colour of Mr. George's face rather deepens as he replies, "Why
10929 no. I wasn't."
     
10930 "I am astonished at it."
     
10931 "So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to
10932 have been one. But I wasn't. I was a thundering bad son, that's the
10933 long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody."
     
10934 "Surprising!" cries the old man.
     
10935 "However," Mr. George resumes, "the less said about it, the better
10936 now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two
10937 months' interest! (Bosh! It's all correct. You needn't be afraid to
10938 order the pipe. Here's the new bill, and here's the two months'
10939 interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it
10940 together in my business.)"
     
10941 Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the
10942 parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black
10943 leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the
10944 document he has just received, and from the other takes another
10945 similar document which he hands to Mr. George, who twists it up for a
10946 pipelight. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every
10947 up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them
10948 from their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times
10949 over and requires Judy to say every word she utters at least twice,
10950 and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to
10951 be, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite
10952 concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and
10953 fingers from it and answers Mr. George's last remark by saying,
10954 "Afraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir.
10955 Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water
10956 for Mr. George."
     
10957 The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all
10958 this time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern
10959 cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but
10960 leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller
10961 to the parental bear.
     
10962 "And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?" says Mr. George
10963 with folded arms.
     
10964 "Just so, just so," the old man nods.
     
10965 "And don't you occupy yourself at all?"
     
10966 "I watch the fire -- and the boiling and the roasting -- "
     
10967 "When there is any," says Mr. George with great expression.
     
10968 "Just so. When there is any."
     
10969 "Don't you read or get read to?"
     
10970 The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have
10971 never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness.
10972 Folly. No, no!"
     
10973 "There's not much to choose between your two states," says the
10974 visitor in a key too low for the old man's dull hearing as he looks
10975 from him to the old woman and back again. "I say!" in a louder voice.
     
10976 "I hear you."
     
10977 "You'll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear."
     
10978 "My dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both
10979 hands to embrace him. "Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in
10980 the city that I got to lend you the money -- HE might!"
     
10981 "Oh! You can't answer for him?" says Mr. George, finishing the
10982 inquiry in his lower key with the words "You lying old rascal!"
     
10983 "My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn't trust him.
10984 He will have his bond, my dear friend."
     
10985 "Devil doubt him," says Mr. George. Charley appearing with a
10986 tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the
10987 brandy-and-water, he asks her, "How do you come here! You haven't got
10988 the family face."
     
10989 "I goes out to work, sir," returns Charley.
     
10990 The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off,
10991 with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head.
10992 "You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth
10993 as much as it wants fresh air." Then he dismisses her, lights his
10994 pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed's friend in the city -- the one
10995 solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman's imagination.
     
10996 "So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?"
     
10997 "I think he might -- I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,"
10998 says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, "twenty times."
     
10999 Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing
11000 over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers "Twenty
11001 thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty
11002 guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty -- " and is then cut
11003 short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular
11004 experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it
11005 crushes her in the usual manner.
     
11006 "You're a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion -- a brimstone scorpion!
11007 You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick
11008 witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his
11009 chair. "My dear friend, will you shake me up a little?"
     
11010 Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the
11011 other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by
11012 the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his
11013 chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or
11014 no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him
11015 into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently
11016 enough to make his head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly
11017 down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub
11018 that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.
     
11019 "O Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed. "That'll do. Thank you, my dear
11020 friend, that'll do. Oh, dear me, I'm out of breath. O Lord!" And Mr.
11021 Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear
11022 friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.
     
11023 The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and
11024 falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the
11025 philosophical reflection, "The name of your friend in the city begins
11026 with a D, comrade, and you're about right respecting the bond."
     
11027 "Did you speak, Mr. George?" inquires the old man.
     
11028 The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow
11029 on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his
11030 other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a
11031 martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr.
11032 Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of
11033 smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.
     
11034 "I take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in his
11035 position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a
11036 round, full action, "that I am the only man alive (or dead either)
11037 that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?"
     
11038 "Well," returns the old man, "it's true that I don't see company, Mr.
11039 George, and that I don't treat. I can't afford to it. But as you, in
11040 your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition -- "
     
11041 "Why, it's not for the value of it; that's no great thing. It was a
11042 fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money."
     
11043 "Ha! You're prudent, prudent, sir!" cries Grandfather Smallweed,
11044 rubbing his legs.
     
11045 "Very. I always was." Puff. "It's a sure sign of my prudence that I
11046 ever found the way here." Puff. "Also, that I am what I am." Puff. "I
11047 am well known to be prudent," says Mr. George, composedly smoking. "I
11048 rose in life that way."
     
11049 "Don't be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet."
     
11050 Mr. George laughs and drinks.
     
11051 "Ha'n't you no relations, now," asks Grandfather Smallweed with a
11052 twinkle in his eyes, "who would pay off this little principal or who
11053 would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in
11054 the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names would be
11055 sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha'n't you no such relations,
11056 Mr. George?"
     
11057 Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, "If I had, I shouldn't
11058 trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day.
11059 It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted
11060 the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he
11061 never was a credit to and live upon them, but it's not my sort. The
11062 best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my
11063 opinion."
     
11064 "But natural affection, Mr. George," hints Grandfather Smallweed.
     
11065 "For two good names, hey?" says Mr. George, shaking his head and
11066 still composedly smoking. "No. That's not my sort either."
     
11067 Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair
11068 since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice
11069 in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the
11070 usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him.
11071 For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating
11072 his late attentions.
     
11073 "Ha!" he observes when he is in trim again. "If you could have traced
11074 out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you. If
11075 when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the
11076 newspapers -- when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of
11077 my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital
11078 in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give
11079 me a lift with my little pittance -- if at that time you could have
11080 helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you."
     
11081 "I was willing enough to be 'made,' as you call it," says Mr. George,
11082 smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of
11083 Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of
11084 the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by
11085 her grandfather's chair, "but on the whole, I am glad I wasn't now."
     
11086 "Why, Mr. George? In the name of -- of brimstone, why?" says
11087 Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation.
11088 (Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Smallweed
11089 in her slumber.)
     
11090 "For two reasons, comrade."
     
11091 "And what two reasons, Mr. George? In the name of the -- "
     
11092 "Of our friend in the city?" suggests Mr. George, composedly
11093 drinking.
     
11094 "Aye, if you like. What two reasons?"
     
11095 "In the first place," returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy
11096 as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent
11097 which of the two he addresses, "you gentlemen took me in. You
11098 advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying
11099 'Once a captain, always a captain') was to hear of something to his
11100 advantage."
     
11101 "Well?" returns the old man shrilly and sharply.
     
11102 "Well!" says Mr. George, smoking on. "It wouldn't have been much to
11103 his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and
11104 judgment trade of London."
     
11105 "How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his
11106 debts or compounded for 'em. Besides, he had taken US in. He owed us
11107 immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no
11108 return. If I sit here thinking of him," snarls the old man, holding
11109 up his impotent ten fingers, "I want to strangle him now." And in a
11110 sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs.
11111 Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.
     
11112 "I don't need to be told," returns the trooper, taking his pipe from
11113 his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the
11114 progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, "that
11115 he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand
11116 many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him
11117 when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him
11118 after he had run through everything and broken down everything
11119 beneath him -- when he held a pistol to his head."
     
11120 "I wish he had let it off," says the benevolent old man, "and blown
11121 his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!"
     
11122 "That would have been a smash indeed," returns the trooper coolly;
11123 "any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone
11124 by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to
11125 a result so much to his advantage. That's reason number one."
     
11126 "I hope number two's as good?" snarls the old man.
     
11127 "Why, no. It's more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must
11128 have gone to the other world to look. He was there."
     
11129 "How do you know he was there?"
     
11130 "He wasn't here."
     
11131 "How do you know he wasn't here?"
     
11132 "Don't lose your temper as well as your money," says Mr. George,
11133 calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "He was drowned long
11134 before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship's side. Whether
11135 intentionally or accidentally, I don't know. Perhaps your friend in
11136 the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Smallweed?" he adds
11137 after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the
11138 empty pipe.
     
11139 "Tune!" replied the old man. "No. We never have tunes here."
     
11140 "That's the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it,
11141 so it's the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty
11142 granddaughter -- excuse me, miss -- will condescend to take care of this
11143 pipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good
11144 evening, Mr. Smallweed!"
     
11145 "My dear friend!" the old man gives him both his hands.
     
11146 "So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I fall
11147 in a payment?" says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant.
     
11148 "My dear friend, I am afraid he will," returns the old man, looking
11149 up at him like a pygmy.
     
11150 Mr. George laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Smallweed and a parting
11151 salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing
11152 imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.
     
11153 "You're a damned rogue," says the old gentleman, making a hideous
11154 grimace at the door as he shuts it. "But I'll lime you, you dog, I'll
11155 lime you!"
     
11156 After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting
11157 regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to
11158 it, and again he and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours, two
11159 unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.
     
11160 While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides
11161 through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough
11162 face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He
11163 stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to
11164 Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and
11165 the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye;
11166 disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful
11167 swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In the last
11168 scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and
11169 condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the
11170 Union Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.
     
11171 The theatre over, Mr. George comes across the water again and makes
11172 his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and
11173 Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent
11174 foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts,
11175 fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses,
11176 exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of
11177 sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court
11178 and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of
11179 bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of
11180 which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE'S
11181 SHOOTING GALLERY, &c.
     
11182 Into George's Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are
11183 gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for
11184 rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances,
11185 and all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these
11186 sports or exercises being pursued in George's Shooting Gallery
11187 to-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man
11188 with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the
11189 floor.
     
11190 The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize
11191 apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and
11192 begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the light before a
11193 glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is
11194 the strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he
11195 has been working. He is a little man with a face all crushed
11196 together, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance
11197 that one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of
11198 business, at some odd time or times.
     
11199 "Phil!" says the trooper in a quiet voice.
     
11200 "All right!" cries Phil, scrambling to his feet.
     
11201 "Anything been doing?"
     
11202 "Flat as ever so much swipes," says Phil. "Five dozen rifle and a
11203 dozen pistol. As to aim!" Phil gives a howl at the recollection.
     
11204 "Shut up shop, Phil!"
     
11205 As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is
11206 lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his
11207 face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black
11208 one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather
11209 sinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands
11210 that could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all
11211 the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over.
11212 He appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he
11213 had no idea what weight was. He has a curious way of limping round
11214 the gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at
11215 objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them,
11216 which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally
11217 called "Phil's mark."
     
11218 This custodian of George's Gallery in George's absence concludes his
11219 proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all
11220 the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from
11221 a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being
11222 drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed
11223 and Phil makes his.
     
11224 "Phil!" says the master, walking towards him without his coat and
11225 waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. "You
11226 were found in a doorway, weren't you?"
     
11227 "Gutter," says Phil. "Watchman tumbled over me."
     
11228 "Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning."
     
11229 "As nat'ral as possible," says Phil.
     
11230 "Good night!"
     
11231 "Good night, guv'ner."
     
11232 Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to
11233 shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his
11234 mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the
11235 rifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the
11236 skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to
11237 bed too.
     
     
     
     
11238 CHAPTER XXII
     
11239 Mr. Bucket
     
     
11240 Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln's Inn Fields, though the
11241 evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows are wide open, and
11242 the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable
11243 characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January
11244 with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long
11245 vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like
11246 peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for
11247 calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool
11248 to-night.
     
11249 Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows, and plenty more
11250 has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick
11251 everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way
11252 takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as
11253 much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law -- or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one
11254 of its trustiest representatives -- may scatter, on occasion, in the
11255 eyes of the laity.
     
11256 In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which
11257 his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth,
11258 animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of
11259 the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained
11260 man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He
11261 has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields,
11262 which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as
11263 he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken
11264 brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the
11265 echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote
11266 reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an
11267 earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant
11268 nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to
11269 find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of
11270 southern grapes.
     
11271 Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys
11272 his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and
11273 seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever,
11274 he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at
11275 that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with
11276 darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in
11277 town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his
11278 family history, and his money, and his will -- all a mystery to every
11279 one -- and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and
11280 a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was
11281 seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is
11282 supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold
11283 watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely
11284 home to the Temple and hanged himself.
     
11285 But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual
11286 length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and
11287 uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining
11288 man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him
11289 fill his glass.
     
11290 "Now, Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "to go over this odd story
11291 again."
     
11292 "If you please, sir."
     
11293 "You told me when you were so good as to step round here last
11294 night -- "
     
11295 "For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but
11296 I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person,
11297 and I thought it possible that you might -- just -- wish -- to -- "
     
11298 Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to
11299 admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr.
11300 Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, "I must ask
11301 you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure."
     
11302 "Not at all," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "You told me, Snagsby, that you
11303 put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to
11304 your wife. That was prudent I think, because it's not a matter of
11305 such importance that it requires to be mentioned."
     
11306 "Well, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby, "you see, my little woman is -- not
11307 to put too fine a point upon it -- inquisitive. She's inquisitive. Poor
11308 little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good for her to have
11309 her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it -- I should
11310 say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it
11311 concerns her or not -- especially not. My little woman has a very
11312 active mind, sir."
     
11313 Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his
11314 hand, "Dear me, very fine wine indeed!"
     
11315 "Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?" says Mr.
11316 Tulkinghorn. "And to-night too?"
     
11317 "Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in -- not
11318 to put too fine a point on it -- in a pious state, or in what she
11319 considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name
11320 they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a
11321 great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not
11322 quite favourable to his style myself. That's neither here nor there.
11323 My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to
11324 step round in a quiet manner."
     
11325 Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. "Fill your glass, Snagsby."
     
11326 "Thank you, sir, I am sure," returns the stationer with his cough of
11327 deference. "This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!"
     
11328 "It is a rare wine now," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It is fifty years
11329 old."
     
11330 "Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It
11331 might be -- any age almost." After rendering this general tribute to
11332 the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his
11333 hand for drinking anything so precious.
     
11334 "Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?" asks Mr.
11335 Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty
11336 smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.
     
11337 "With pleasure, sir."
     
11338 Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer
11339 repeats Jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On
11340 coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks
11341 off with, "Dear me, sir, I wasn't aware there was any other gentleman
11342 present!"
     
11343 Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face
11344 between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a
11345 person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he
11346 himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of
11347 the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not
11348 creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third
11349 person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in
11350 his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener.
11351 He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of
11352 about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he
11353 were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about
11354 him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.
     
11355 "Don't mind this gentleman," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.
11356 "This is only Mr. Bucket."
     
11357 "Oh, indeed, sir?" returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that
11358 he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.
     
11359 "I wanted him to hear this story," says the lawyer, "because I have
11360 half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very
11361 intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?"
     
11362 "It's very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and
11363 he's not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don't object to
11364 go down with me to Tom-all-Alone's and point him out, we can have him
11365 here in less than a couple of hours' time. I can do it without Mr.
11366 Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way."
     
11367 "Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby," says the lawyer in
11368 explanation.
     
11369 "Is he indeed, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his
11370 clump of hair to stand on end.
     
11371 "And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the
11372 place in question," pursues the lawyer, "I shall feel obliged to you
11373 if you will do so."
     
11374 In a moment's hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips down
11375 to the bottom of his mind.
     
11376 "Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy," he says. "You won't do
11377 that. It's all right as far as the boy's concerned. We shall only
11378 bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and
11379 he'll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It'll be a good
11380 job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent
11381 away all right. Don't you be afraid of hurting him; you an't going to
11382 do that."
     
11383 "Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!" cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And
11384 reassured, "Since that's the case -- "
     
11385 "Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby," resumes Bucket, taking him aside
11386 by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a
11387 confidential tone. "You're a man of the world, you know, and a man of
11388 business, and a man of sense. That's what YOU are."
     
11389 "I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion," returns
11390 the stationer with his cough of modesty, "but -- "
     
11391 "That's what YOU are, you know," says Bucket. "Now, it an't necessary
11392 to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a
11393 business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his
11394 senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in
11395 your business once) -- it an't necessary to say to a man like you that
11396 it's the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet.
11397 Don't you see? Quiet!"
     
11398 "Certainly, certainly," returns the other.
     
11399 "I don't mind telling YOU," says Bucket with an engaging appearance
11400 of frankness, "that as far as I can understand it, there seems to be
11401 a doubt whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little
11402 property, and whether this female hasn't been up to some games
11403 respecting that property, don't you see?"
     
11404 "Oh!" says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.
     
11405 "Now, what YOU want," pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on
11406 the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, "is that every
11407 person should have their rights according to justice. That's what YOU
11408 want."
     
11409 "To be sure," returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.
     
11410 "On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a -- do you call
11411 it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used
11412 to call it."
     
11413 "Why, I generally say customer myself," replies Mr. Snagsby.
     
11414 "You're right!" returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite
11415 affectionately. " -- On account of which, and at the same time to
11416 oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in
11417 confidence, to Tom-all-Alone's and to keep the whole thing quiet ever
11418 afterwards and never mention it to any one. That's about your
11419 intentions, if I understand you?"
     
11420 "You are right, sir. You are right," says Mr. Snagsby.
     
11421 "Then here's your hat," returns his new friend, quite as intimate
11422 with it as if he had made it; "and if you're ready, I am."
     
11423 They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his
11424 unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the
11425 streets.
     
11426 "You don't happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of
11427 Gridley, do you?" says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend
11428 the stairs.
     
11429 "No," says Mr. Snagsby, considering, "I don't know anybody of that
11430 name. Why?"
     
11431 "Nothing particular," says Bucket; "only having allowed his temper to
11432 get a little the better of him and having been threatening some
11433 respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have
11434 got against him -- which it's a pity that a man of sense should do."
     
11435 As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however
11436 quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some
11437 undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is
11438 going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed
11439 purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply,
11440 at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a
11441 police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the
11442 constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come
11443 towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and
11444 to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind
11445 some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair
11446 twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without
11447 glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man,
11448 looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket
11449 notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great
11450 mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not
11451 much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.
     
11452 When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone's, Mr. Bucket stops for a
11453 moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull's-eye from the
11454 constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own
11455 particular bull's-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr.
11456 Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained,
11457 unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water -- though the roads
11458 are dry elsewhere -- and reeking with such smells and sights that he,
11459 who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses.
11460 Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets
11461 and courts so infamous that Mr. Snagsby sickens in body and mind and
11462 feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal
11463 gulf.
     
11464 "Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby," says Bucket as a kind of shabby
11465 palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "Here's
11466 the fever coming up the street!"
     
11467 As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of
11468 attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible
11469 faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and
11470 with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth
11471 flits about them until they leave the place.
     
11472 "Are those the fever-houses, Darby?" Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he
11473 turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.
     
11474 Darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for
11475 months and months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have
11476 been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." Bucket
11477 observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little
11478 poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe
11479 the dreadful air.
     
11480 There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few
11481 people are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign, there is
11482 much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the
11483 Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or
11484 the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are
11485 conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some
11486 think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is
11487 produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and
11488 his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its
11489 squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever
11490 they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits
11491 about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as
11492 before.
     
11493 At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject,
11494 lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may
11495 be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the proprietress
11496 of the house -- a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring
11497 out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her
11498 private apartment -- leads to the establishment of this conclusion.
11499 Toughy has gone to the doctor's to get a bottle of stuff for a sick
11500 woman but will be here anon.
     
11501 "And who have we got here to-night?" says Mr. Bucket, opening another
11502 door and glaring in with his bull's-eye. "Two drunken men, eh? And
11503 two women? The men are sound enough," turning back each sleeper's arm
11504 from his face to look at him. "Are these your good men, my dears?"
     
11505 "Yes, sir," returns one of the women. "They are our husbands."
     
11506 "Brickmakers, eh?"
     
11507 "Yes, sir."
     
11508 "What are you doing here? You don't belong to London."
     
11509 "No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire."
     
11510 "Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?"
     
11511 "Saint Albans."
     
11512 "Come up on the tramp?"
     
11513 "We walked up yesterday. There's no work down with us at present, but
11514 we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect."
     
11515 "That's not the way to do much good," says Mr. Bucket, turning his
11516 head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.
     
11517 "It an't indeed," replies the woman with a sigh. "Jenny and me knows
11518 it full well."
     
11519 The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low
11520 that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the
11521 blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every
11522 sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted
11523 air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of
11524 table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit
11525 by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a
11526 very young child.
     
11527 "Why, what age do you call that little creature?" says Bucket. "It
11528 looks as if it was born yesterday." He is not at all rough about it;
11529 and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is
11530 strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he
11531 has seen in pictures.
     
11532 "He is not three weeks old yet, sir," says the woman.
     
11533 "Is he your child?"
     
11534 "Mine."
     
11535 The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops
11536 down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.
     
11537 "You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself," says Mr.
11538 Bucket.
     
11539 "I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died."
     
11540 "Ah, Jenny, Jenny!" says the other woman to her. "Better so. Much
11541 better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!"
     
11542 "Why, you an't such an unnatural woman, I hope," returns Bucket
11543 sternly, "as to wish your own child dead?"
     
11544 "God knows you are right, master," she returns. "I am not. I'd stand
11545 between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any
11546 pretty lady."
     
11547 "Then don't talk in that wrong manner," says Mr. Bucket, mollified
11548 again. "Why do you do it?"
     
11549 "It's brought into my head, master," returns the woman, her eyes
11550 filling with tears, "when I look down at the child lying so. If it
11551 was never to wake no more, you'd think me mad, I should take on so. I
11552 know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers -- warn't I,
11553 Jenny? -- and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this
11554 place. Look at them," glancing at the sleepers on the ground. "Look
11555 at the boy you're waiting for, who's gone out to do me a good turn.
11556 Think of the children that your business lays with often and often,
11557 and that YOU see grow up!"
     
11558 "Well, well," says Mr. Bucket, "you train him respectable, and he'll
11559 be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know."
     
11560 "I mean to try hard," she answers, wiping her eyes. "But I have been
11561 a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of
11562 all the many things that'll come in his way. My master will be
11563 against it, and he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his
11564 home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and
11565 ever so hard, there's no one to help me; and if he should be turned
11566 bad 'spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should
11567 sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an't it likely I
11568 should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as
11569 Jenny's child died!"
     
11570 "There, there!" says Jenny. "Liz, you're tired and ill. Let me take
11571 him."
     
11572 In doing so, she displaces the mother's dress, but quickly readjusts
11573 it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.
     
11574 "It's my dead child," says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses,
11575 "that makes me love this child so dear, and it's my dead child that
11576 makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken
11577 away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would
11578 I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we
11579 knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!"
     
11580 As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a
11581 step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway
11582 and says to Mr. Snagsby, "Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE
11583 do?"
     
11584 "That's Jo," says Mr. Snagsby.
     
11585 Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a
11586 magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the
11587 law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however, giving
11588 him the consolatory assurance, "It's only a job you will be paid for,
11589 Jo," he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a
11590 little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though
11591 out of breath.
     
11592 "I have squared it with the lad," says Mr. Bucket, returning, "and
11593 it's all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we're ready for you."
     
11594 First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over
11595 the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic
11596 verbal direction that "it's to be all took d'rectly." Secondly, Mr.
11597 Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for
11598 an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo
11599 by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him,
11600 without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other
11601 Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
11602 These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come
11603 out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone's.
     
11604 By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they
11605 gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and
11606 skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration
11607 of the bull's-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse
11608 of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more.
11609 Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to
11610 Mr. Snagsby's mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr.
11611 Tulkinghorn's gate.
     
11612 As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers being on
11613 the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the
11614 outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man
11615 so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the
11616 door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of
11617 preparation.
     
11618 Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,
11619 and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn's usual room -- the room where he drank his
11620 old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned
11621 candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.
     
11622 Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to
11623 Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little
11624 way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.
     
11625 "What's the matter?" says Bucket in a whisper.
     
11626 "There she is!" cries Jo.
     
11627 "Who!"
     
11628 "The lady!"
     
11629 A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,
11630 where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The
11631 front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their
11632 entrance and remains like a statue.
     
11633 "Now, tell me," says Bucket aloud, "how you know that to be the
11634 lady."
     
11635 "I know the wale," replies Jo, staring, "and the bonnet, and the
11636 gownd."
     
11637 "Be quite sure of what you say, Tough," returns Bucket, narrowly
11638 observant of him. "Look again."
     
11639 "I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look," says Jo with starting
11640 eyes, "and that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd."
     
11641 "What about those rings you told me of?" asks Bucket.
     
11642 "A-sparkling all over here," says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left
11643 hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the
11644 figure.
     
11645 The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.
     
11646 "Now, what do you say to that?" asks Bucket.
     
11647 Jo shakes his head. "Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like
11648 that."
     
11649 "What are you talking of?" says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and
11650 well pleased too.
     
11651 "Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,"
11652 returns Jo.
     
11653 "Why, you'll tell me I'm my own mother next," says Mr. Bucket. "Do
11654 you recollect the lady's voice?"
     
11655 "I think I does," says Jo.
     
11656 The figure speaks. "Was it at all like this? I will speak as long as
11657 you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this
11658 voice?"
     
11659 Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. "Not a bit!"
     
11660 "Then, what," retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, "did you
11661 say it was the lady for?"
     
11662 "Cos," says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken
11663 in his certainty, "cos that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the
11664 gownd. It is her and it an't her. It an't her hand, nor yet her
11665 rings, nor yet her woice. But that there's the wale, the bonnet, and
11666 the gownd, and they're wore the same way wot she wore 'em, and it's
11667 her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it."
     
11668 "Well!" says Mr. Bucket slightly, "we haven't got much good out of
11669 YOU. But, however, here's five shillings for you. Take care how you
11670 spend it, and don't get yourself into trouble." Bucket stealthily
11671 tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters -- which is
11672 a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of
11673 skill -- and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy's hand and
11674 takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby, not by any means
11675 comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the
11676 veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn's coming into the room, the
11677 veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is
11678 revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.
     
11679 "Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his
11680 usual equanimity. "I will give you no further trouble about this
11681 little wager."
     
11682 "You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at
11683 present placed?" says mademoiselle.
     
11684 "Certainly, certainly!"
     
11685 "And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished
11686 recommendation?"
     
11687 "By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense."
     
11688 "A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful."
     
11689 "It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle."
     
11690 "Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir."
     
11691 "Good night."
     
11692 Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr.
11693 Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the
11694 ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not
11695 without gallantry.
     
11696 "Well, Bucket?" quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.
     
11697 "It's all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an't a
11698 doubt that it was the other one with this one's dress on. The boy was
11699 exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby, I promised you
11700 as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don't say it wasn't
11701 done!"
     
11702 "You have kept your word, sir," returns the stationer; "and if I can
11703 be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman
11704 will be getting anxious -- "
     
11705 "Thank you, Snagsby, no further use," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I am
11706 quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already."
     
11707 "Not at all, sir. I wish you good night."
     
11708 "You see, Mr. Snagsby," says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door
11709 and shaking hands with him over and over again, "what I like in you
11710 is that you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what YOU are.
11711 When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it's
11712 done with and gone, and there's an end of it. That's what YOU do."
     
11713 "That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby.
     
11714 "No, you don't do yourself justice. It an't what you endeavour to
11715 do," says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the
11716 tenderest manner, "it's what you DO. That's what I estimate in a man
11717 in your way of business."
     
11718 Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused
11719 by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake
11720 and out -- doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he
11721 goes -- doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He
11722 is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable
11723 reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect
11724 beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to
11725 the police-station with official intelligence of her husband's being
11726 made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through
11727 every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little
11728 woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!
     
     
     
     
11729 CHAPTER XXIII
     
11730 Esther's Narrative
     
     
11731 We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were
11732 often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where
11733 we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper's
11734 wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on
11735 Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several
11736 beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence
11737 on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was
11738 painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me
11739 shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I
11740 know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they
11741 had done at first, to that old time of my life.
     
11742 I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady
11743 so curiously was to me, I was to her -- I mean that I disturbed her
11744 thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. But
11745 when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and
11746 unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt
11747 the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and
11748 unreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as much as I
11749 could.
     
11750 One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Boythorn's house, I
11751 had better mention in this place.
     
11752 I was walking in the garden with Ada when I was told that some one
11753 wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was
11754 waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes
11755 and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and
11756 lightened.
     
11757 "Mademoiselle," she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager
11758 eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and
11759 speaking neither with boldness nor servility, "I have taken a great
11760 liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so
11761 amiable, mademoiselle."
     
11762 "No excuse is necessary," I returned, "if you wish to speak to me."
     
11763 "That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the
11764 permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?" she said in a
11765 quick, natural way.
     
11766 "Certainly," said I.
     
11767 "Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have
11768 left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high, so very high.
11769 Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!" Her quickness anticipated what
11770 I might have said presently but as yet had only thought. "It is not
11771 for me to come here to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high,
11772 so very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that."
     
11773 "Go on, if you please," said I.
     
11774 "Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness.
11775 Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a
11776 young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good,
11777 accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour
11778 of being your domestic!"
     
11779 "I am sorry -- " I began.
     
11780 "Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!" she said with an
11781 involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. "Let me hope a
11782 moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired than
11783 that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service
11784 would be less distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I
11785 wish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I
11786 am content."
     
11787 "I assure you," said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having
11788 such an attendant, "that I keep no maid -- "
     
11789 "Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so
11790 devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so
11791 true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I wish
11792 with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present.
11793 Take me as I am. For nothing!"
     
11794 She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her.
11795 Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed
11796 herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always
11797 with a certain grace and propriety.
     
11798 "Mademoiselle, I come from the South country where we are quick and
11799 where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for me; I
11800 was too high for her. It is done -- past -- finished! Receive me as your
11801 domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you
11802 figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will -- no matter, I will
11803 do my utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you
11804 will not repent it. Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will
11805 serve you well. You don't know how well!"
     
11806 There was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me
11807 while I explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without
11808 thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so),
11809 which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets
11810 of Paris in the reign of terror.
     
11811 She heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty
11812 accent and in her mildest voice, "Hey, mademoiselle, I have received
11813 my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and seek what I
11814 have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?"
     
11815 She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take
11816 note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. "I fear I
11817 surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?" she said with
11818 a parting curtsy.
     
11819 I confessed that she had surprised us all.
     
11820 "I took an oath, mademoiselle," she said, smiling, "and I wanted to
11821 stamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will!
11822 Adieu, mademoiselle!"
     
11823 So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I
11824 supposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and
11825 nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until
11826 six weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now by
11827 saying.
     
11828 At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard was
11829 constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday and
11830 remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on
11831 horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back
11832 again early next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was
11833 very industrious, but I was not easy in my mind about him. It
11834 appeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. I could not
11835 find that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in
11836 connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much
11837 sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told
11838 us, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he
11839 and Ada were to take I don't know how many thousands of pounds must
11840 be finally established if there were any sense or justice in the
11841 Court of Chancery -- but oh, what a great IF that sounded in my
11842 ears -- and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer
11843 delayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that
11844 side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the
11845 infatuation. He had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he
11846 saw Miss Flite there daily, how they talked together, and how he did
11847 her little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied
11848 her from his heart. But he never thought -- never, my poor, dear,
11849 sanguine Richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such
11850 better things before him -- what a fatal link was riveting between his
11851 fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged
11852 birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.
     
11853 Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or
11854 did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east
11855 wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict
11856 silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to
11857 meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in
11858 waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk
11859 together. I found him there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in
11860 arm.
     
11861 "Well, Richard," said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with
11862 him, "are you beginning to feel more settled now?"
     
11863 "Oh, yes, my dear!" returned Richard. "I'm all right enough."
     
11864 "But settled?" said I.
     
11865 "How do you mean, settled?" returned Richard with his gay laugh.
     
11866 "Settled in the law," said I.
     
11867 "Oh, aye," replied Richard, "I'm all right enough."
     
11868 "You said that before, my dear Richard."
     
11869 "And you don't think it's an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it's not.
11870 Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?"
     
11871 "Yes."
     
11872 "Why, no, I can't say I am settling down," said Richard, strongly
11873 emphasizing "down," as if that expressed the difficulty, "because one
11874 can't settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled
11875 state. When I say this business, of course I mean the -- forbidden
11876 subject."
     
11877 "Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?" said I.
     
11878 "Not the least doubt of it," answered Richard.
     
11879 We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard
11880 addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: "My dear
11881 Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant
11882 sort of fellow. I don't mean constant to Ada, for I love her
11883 dearly -- better and better every day -- but constant to myself.
11884 (Somehow, I mean something that I can't very well express, but you'll
11885 make it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have
11886 held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like grim death, and
11887 should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and
11888 shouldn't be in debt, and -- "
     
11889 "ARE you in debt, Richard?"
     
11890 "Yes," said Richard, "I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken
11891 rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder's
11892 out; you despise me, Esther, don't you?"
     
11893 "You know I don't," said I.
     
11894 "You are kinder to me than I often am to myself," he returned. "My
11895 dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but
11896 how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you
11897 couldn't settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything
11898 you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to
11899 anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. I was born into this
11900 unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began
11901 to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at
11902 law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever
11903 since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a
11904 worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada."
     
11905 We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and
11906 sobbed as he said the words.
     
11907 "Oh, Richard!" said I. "Do not be so moved. You have a noble nature,
11908 and Ada's love may make you worthier every day."
     
11909 "I know, my dear," he replied, pressing my arm, "I know all that. You
11910 mustn't mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon
11911 my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and
11912 have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what
11913 the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn't do it. I am too
11914 unsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I do her
11915 wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can't last
11916 for ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in
11917 our favour, and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!"
     
11918 It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out
11919 between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me
11920 than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.
     
11921 "I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in them
11922 for months," he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment,
11923 "and you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to
11924 years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! And
11925 there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a
11926 speedy close; in fact, it's on the paper now. It will be all right at
11927 last, and then you shall see!"
     
11928 Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in the
11929 same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to be
11930 articled in Lincoln's Inn.
     
11931 "There again! I think not at all, Esther," he returned with an
11932 effort. "I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Jarndyce
11933 and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law
11934 and satisfied myself that I shouldn't like it. Besides, I find it
11935 unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of
11936 action. So what," continued Richard, confident again by this time,
11937 "do I naturally turn my thoughts to?"
     
11938 "I can't imagine," said I.
     
11939 "Don't look so serious," returned Richard, "because it's the best
11940 thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It's not as if I wanted
11941 a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination,
11942 and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is
11943 in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my
11944 temporary condition -- I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I
11945 naturally turn my thoughts to?"
     
11946 I looked at him and shook my head.
     
11947 "What," said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, "but the
11948 army!"
     
11949 "The army?" said I.
     
11950 "The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission;
11951 and -- there I am, you know!" said Richard.
     
11952 And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his
11953 pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred
11954 pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted
11955 no debt at all within a corresponding period in the army -- as to which
11956 he had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of
11957 four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years,
11958 which was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and
11959 sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time
11960 from Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired -- as in thought
11961 he always did, I know full well -- to repay her love, and to ensure her
11962 happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire
11963 the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely.
11964 For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon
11965 and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal
11966 blight that ruined everything it rested on!
     
11967 I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope
11968 I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada's sake not to
11969 put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assented,
11970 riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing
11971 the brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into -- alas,
11972 when the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long
11973 talk, but it always came back to that, in substance.
     
11974 At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed to
11975 wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman Street.
11976 Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I
11977 appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us together.
     
11978 "Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther," said Caddy, "and got the
11979 key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we can
11980 lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see
11981 your dear good face about."
     
11982 "Very well, my dear," said I. "Nothing could be better." So Caddy,
11983 after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it,
11984 locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the
11985 garden very cosily.
     
11986 "You see, Esther," said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little
11987 confidence, "after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry
11988 without Ma's knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark
11989 respecting our engagement -- though I don't believe Ma cares much for
11990 me, I must say -- I thought it right to mention your opinions to
11991 Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything you
11992 tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from
11993 Prince."
     
11994 "I hope he approved, Caddy?"
     
11995 "Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could
11996 say. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!"
     
11997 "Indeed!"
     
11998 "Esther, it's enough to make anybody but me jealous," said Caddy,
11999 laughing and shaking her head; "but it only makes me joyful, for you
12000 are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have,
12001 and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me."
     
12002 "Upon my word, Caddy," said I, "you are in the general conspiracy to
12003 keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?"
     
12004 "Well! I am going to tell you," replied Caddy, crossing her hands
12005 confidentially upon my arm. "So we talked a good deal about it, and
12006 so I said to Prince, 'Prince, as Miss Summerson -- '"
     
12007 "I hope you didn't say 'Miss Summerson'?"
     
12008 "No. I didn't!" cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the brightest
12009 of faces. "I said, 'Esther.' I said to Prince, 'As Esther is
12010 decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it to me, and
12011 always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so
12012 fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth
12013 to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think, Prince,' said I, 'that
12014 Esther thinks that I should be in a better, and truer, and more
12015 honourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.'"
     
12016 "Yes, my dear," said I. "Esther certainly does think so."
     
12017 "So I was right, you see!" exclaimed Caddy. "Well! This troubled
12018 Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but
12019 because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr. Turveydrop;
12020 and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop might break his
12021 heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting
12022 manner or other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr.
12023 Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a
12024 shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop's deportment is very beautiful, you
12025 know, Esther," said Caddy, "and his feelings are extremely
12026 sensitive."
     
12027 "Are they, my dear?"
     
12028 "Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my
12029 darling child -- I didn't mean to use the expression to you, Esther,"
12030 Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, "but I generally
12031 call Prince my darling child."
     
12032 I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on.
     
12033 "This has caused him, Esther -- "
     
12034 "Caused whom, my dear?"
     
12035 "Oh, you tiresome thing!" said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face
12036 on fire. "My darling child, if you insist upon it! This has caused
12037 him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a
12038 very anxious manner. At last he said to me, 'Caddy, if Miss
12039 Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be
12040 prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I
12041 could do it.' So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind,
12042 besides," said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, "that if
12043 you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This
12044 is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a great favour and
12045 a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant
12046 it, Esther, we should both be very grateful."
     
12047 "Let me see, Caddy," said I, pretending to consider. "Really, I think
12048 I could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. I am
12049 at your service and the darling child's, my dear, whenever you like."
     
12050 Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I believe,
12051 as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender
12052 heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two
12053 round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of
12054 gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do
12055 no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman
12056 Street direct.
     
12057 Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very
12058 hopeful pupil -- a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep
12059 voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama -- whose case was certainly
12060 not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her
12061 preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as
12062 discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her
12063 shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was
12064 taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search
12065 of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as
12066 a model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment -- the only
12067 comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his
12068 leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case,
12069 brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.
     
12070 "Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby."
     
12071 "Charmed! Enchanted!" said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his
12072 high-shouldered bow. "Permit me!" Handing chairs. "Be seated!"
12073 Kissing the tips of his left fingers. "Overjoyed!" Shutting his eyes
12074 and rolling. "My little retreat is made a paradise." Recomposing
12075 himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe.
     
12076 "Again you find us, Miss Summerson," said he, "using our little arts
12077 to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the
12078 condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and
12079 we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of
12080 his Royal Highness the Prince Regent -- my patron, if I may presume to
12081 say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under
12082 foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my
12083 dear madam."
     
12084 I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch
12085 of snuff.
     
12086 "My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "you have four schools this
12087 afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich."
     
12088 "Thank you, father," returned Prince, "I will be sure to be punctual.
12089 My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am
12090 going to say?"
     
12091 "Good heaven!" exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and
12092 Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. "What is this? Is this
12093 lunacy! Or what is this?"
     
12094 "Father," returned Prince with great submission, "I love this young
12095 lady, and we are engaged."
     
12096 "Engaged!" cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting
12097 out the sight with his hand. "An arrow launched at my brain by my own
12098 child!"
     
12099 "We have been engaged for some time, father," faltered Prince, "and
12100 Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the
12101 fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present
12102 occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you,
12103 father."
     
12104 Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.
     
12105 "No, pray don't! Pray don't, father," urged his son. "Miss Jellyby is
12106 a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to
12107 consider your comfort."
     
12108 Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.
     
12109 "No, pray don't, father!" cried his son.
     
12110 "Boy," said Mr. Turveydrop, "it is well that your sainted mother is
12111 spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir,
12112 strike home!"
     
12113 "Pray don't say so, father," implored Prince, in tears. "It goes to
12114 my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention
12115 is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our
12116 duty -- what is my duty is Caroline's, as we have often said
12117 together -- and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote
12118 ourselves to making your life agreeable."
     
12119 "Strike home," murmured Mr. Turveydrop. "Strike home!" But he seemed
12120 to listen, I thought, too.
     
12121 "My dear father," returned Prince, "we well know what little comforts
12122 you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our
12123 study and our pride to provide those before anything. If you will
12124 bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think
12125 of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we ARE
12126 married, we shall always make you -- of course -- our first
12127 consideration. You must ever be the head and master here, father; and
12128 we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it
12129 or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please
12130 you."
     
12131 Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright
12132 on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a
12133 perfect model of parental deportment.
     
12134 "My son!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "My children! I cannot resist your
12135 prayer. Be happy!"
     
12136 His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched
12137 out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and
12138 gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.
     
12139 "My children," said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with
12140 his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand
12141 gracefully on his hip. "My son and daughter, your happiness shall be
12142 my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with
12143 me" -- meaning, of course, I will always live with you -- "this house is
12144 henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long
12145 live to share it with me!"
     
12146 The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much
12147 overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon
12148 them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent
12149 sacrifice in their favour.
     
12150 "For myself, my children," said Mr. Turveydrop, "I am falling into
12151 the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the
12152 last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this
12153 weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society
12154 and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and
12155 simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet,
12156 my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge
12157 your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I
12158 charge myself with all the rest."
     
12159 They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.
     
12160 "My son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "for those little points in which you
12161 are deficient -- points of deportment, which are born with a man, which
12162 may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated -- you may
12163 still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since the days of
12164 his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not desert it now.
12165 No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father's poor position
12166 with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing
12167 to tarnish it. For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we
12168 cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be
12169 industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as
12170 possible."
     
12171 "That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,"
12172 replied Prince.
     
12173 "I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Turveydrop. "Your qualities are not
12174 shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both
12175 of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a
12176 sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I
12177 believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care
12178 of my simple wants, and bless you both!"
     
12179 Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the
12180 occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once
12181 if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a
12182 very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and during our
12183 walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr. Turveydrop's praises
12184 that I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any
12185 consideration.
     
12186 The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it
12187 was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than
12188 ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of
12189 bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the
12190 dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags,
12191 account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to
12192 understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his
12193 comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake
12194 and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into
12195 a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed
12196 to have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible.
     
12197 Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby's room (the children were all
12198 screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we
12199 found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening,
12200 reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn
12201 covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not
12202 know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed,
12203 far-off look of hers.
     
12204 "Ah! Miss Summerson!" she said at last. "I was thinking of something
12205 so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr.
12206 Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?"
     
12207 I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.
     
12208 "Why, not quite, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner.
12209 "He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of
12210 spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to
12211 think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and
12212 seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each,
12213 either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger."
     
12214 I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor
12215 going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so
12216 placid.
     
12217 "You have brought Caddy back, I see," observed Mrs. Jellyby with a
12218 glance at her daughter. "It has become quite a novelty to see her
12219 here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges
12220 me to employ a boy."
     
12221 "I am sure, Ma -- " began Caddy.
     
12222 "Now you know, Caddy," her mother mildly interposed, "that I DO
12223 employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your
12224 contradicting?"
     
12225 "I was not going to contradict, Ma," returned Caddy. "I was only
12226 going to say that surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all my
12227 life."
     
12228 "I believe, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters,
12229 casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she
12230 spoke, "that you have a business example before you in your mother.
12231 Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of
12232 the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you
12233 have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy."
     
12234 "Not if it's Africa, Ma, I have not."
     
12235 "Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged,
12236 Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a
12237 moment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she
12238 had just opened, "this would distress and disappoint me. But I have
12239 so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so
12240 necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you
12241 see."
     
12242 As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was
12243 looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I
12244 thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and
12245 to attract Mrs. Jellyby's attention.
     
12246 "Perhaps," I began, "you will wonder what has brought me here to
12247 interrupt you."
     
12248 "I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby,
12249 pursuing her employment with a placid smile. "Though I wish," and she
12250 shook her head, "she was more interested in the Borrioboolan
12251 project."
     
12252 "I have come with Caddy," said I, "because Caddy justly thinks she
12253 ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall
12254 encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don't know how) in
12255 imparting one."
     
12256 "Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation
12257 and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, "you are going
12258 to tell me some nonsense."
     
12259 Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and
12260 letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily,
12261 said, "Ma, I am engaged."
     
12262 "Oh, you ridiculous child!" observed Mrs. Jellyby with an abstracted
12263 air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; "what a goose you
12264 are!"
     
12265 "I am engaged, Ma," sobbed Caddy, "to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the
12266 academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man
12267 indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you'll give us
12268 yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never
12269 could!" sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and
12270 of everything but her natural affection.
     
12271 "You see again, Miss Summerson," observed Mrs. Jellyby serenely,
12272 "what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have
12273 this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy
12274 engaged to a dancing-master's son -- mixed up with people who have no
12275 more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has
12276 herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists
12277 of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be
12278 interested in her!"
     
12279 "Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!" sobbed Caddy.
     
12280 "Caddy, Caddy!" returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with
12281 the greatest complacency. "I have no doubt you did. How could you do
12282 otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he
12283 overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me,
12284 if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these
12285 petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I
12286 permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom
12287 I expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great African
12288 continent? No. No," repeated Mrs. Jellyby in a calm clear voice, and
12289 with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them.
12290 "No, indeed."
     
12291 I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception,
12292 though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say.
12293 Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and
12294 sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of
12295 voice and with a smile of perfect composure, "No, indeed."
     
12296 "I hope, Ma," sobbed poor Caddy at last, "you are not angry?"
     
12297 "Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned Mrs. Jellyby,
12298 "to ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation of
12299 my mind."
     
12300 "And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?" said
12301 Caddy.
     
12302 "You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,"
12303 said Mrs. Jellyby; "and a degenerate child, when you might have
12304 devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken,
12305 and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray,
12306 Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her, "don't delay me
12307 in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before
12308 the afternoon post comes in!"
     
12309 I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained
12310 for a moment by Caddy's saying, "You won't object to my bringing him
12311 to see you, Ma?"
     
12312 "Oh, dear me, Caddy," cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into that
12313 distant contemplation, "have you begun again? Bring whom?"
     
12314 "Him, Ma."
     
12315 "Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little
12316 matters. "Then you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent
12317 Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must
12318 accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss
12319 Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this
12320 silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-eight new
12321 letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details
12322 of the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need
12323 not apologize for having very little leisure."
     
12324 I was not surprised by Caddy's being in low spirits when we went
12325 downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she
12326 would far rather have been scolded than treated with such
12327 indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in
12328 clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn't
12329 know. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she
12330 would do for her unfortunate father and for Peepy when she had a home
12331 of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark
12332 kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were
12333 grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play
12334 with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I
12335 was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard
12336 loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent
12337 tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was
12338 caused by poor Mr. Jellyby's breaking away from the dining-table and
12339 making rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself
12340 into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his
12341 affairs.
     
12342 As I rode quietly home at night after the day's bustle, I thought a
12343 good deal of Caddy's engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in
12344 spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier and
12345 better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her
12346 and her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really
12347 was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be
12348 wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half
12349 ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at
12350 the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the
12351 stars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to
12352 be useful to some one in my small way.
     
12353 They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were,
12354 that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a
12355 method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from
12356 the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome,
12357 and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I
12358 suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the
12359 world.
     
12360 We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my
12361 guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on
12362 prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my
12363 own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I
12364 heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, "Come in!" and there came in
12365 a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a
12366 curtsy.
     
12367 "If you please, miss," said the little girl in a soft voice, "I am
12368 Charley."
     
12369 "Why, so you are," said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving
12370 her a kiss. "How glad am I to see you, Charley!"
     
12371 "If you please, miss," pursued Charley in the same soft voice, "I'm
12372 your maid."
     
12373 "Charley?"
     
12374 "If you please, miss, I'm a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce's
12375 love."
     
12376 I sat down with my hand on Charley's neck and looked at Charley.
     
12377 "And oh, miss," says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears
12378 starting down her dimpled cheeks, "Tom's at school, if you please,
12379 and learning so good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs. Blinder, miss,
12380 a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at school -- and
12381 Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder -- and me, I should
12382 have been here -- all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Jarndyce thought
12383 that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting
12384 first, we was so small. Don't cry, if you please, miss!"
     
12385 "I can't help it, Charley."
     
12386 "No, miss, nor I can't help it," says Charley. "And if you please,
12387 miss, Mr. Jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me now
12388 and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other
12389 once a month. And I'm so happy and so thankful, miss," cried Charley
12390 with a heaving heart, "and I'll try to be such a good maid!"
     
12391 "Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!"
     
12392 "No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. Nor yet Emma. It was all you,
12393 miss."
     
12394 "I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley."
     
12395 "Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you
12396 might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with
12397 his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to
12398 be sure to remember it."
     
12399 Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her
12400 matronly little way about and about the room and folding up
12401 everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came
12402 creeping back to my side and said, "Oh, don't cry, if you please,
12403 miss."
     
12404 And I said again, "I can't help it, Charley."
     
12405 And Charley said again, "No, miss, nor I can't help it." And so,
12406 after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.
     
     
     
     
12407 CHAPTER XXIV
     
12408 An Appeal Case
     
     
12409 As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have
12410 given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.
12411 Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise
12412 when he received the representation, though it caused him much
12413 uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted
12414 together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole
12415 days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and
12416 laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were
12417 thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable
12418 inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so
12419 constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right
12420 place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but
12421 maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost
12422 endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances
12423 that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all
12424 right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.
     
12425 We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was
12426 made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an infant and a
12427 ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of
12428 talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as
12429 a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned
12430 and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about
12431 until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered
12432 the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty
12433 years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord
12434 Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor
12435 very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing
12436 his mind -- "a pretty good joke, I think," said Richard, "from that
12437 quarter!" -- and at last it was settled that his application should be
12438 granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for
12439 an ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an
12440 agent's; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a
12441 violent course of military study and got up at five o'clock every
12442 morning to practise the broadsword exercise.
     
12443 Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We
12444 sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or out
12445 of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken
12446 to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a
12447 professor's house in London, was able to be with us less frequently
12448 than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so
12449 time passed until the commission was obtained and Richard received
12450 directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.
     
12451 He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a
12452 long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before
12453 my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting
12454 and said, "Come in, my dears!" We went in and found Richard, whom we
12455 had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking
12456 mortified and angry.
     
12457 "Rick and I, Ada," said Mr. Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind.
12458 Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"
     
12459 "You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder because
12460 you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have
12461 done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have
12462 been set right without you, sir."
     
12463 "Well, well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "I want to set you more right yet. I
12464 want to set you more right with yourself."
     
12465 "I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a fiery
12466 way, but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge about
12467 myself."
     
12468 "I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr.
12469 Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that it's
12470 quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think so. I must do my
12471 duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope
12472 you will always care for me, cool and hot."
     
12473 Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair
12474 and sat beside her.
     
12475 "It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have only
12476 had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are
12477 the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming."
     
12478 "I am not indeed, cousin John," replied Ada with a smile, "if it is
12479 to come from you."
     
12480 "Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention,
12481 without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear
12482 girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the
12483 easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little
12484 woman told me of a little love affair?"
     
12485 "It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your
12486 kindness that day, cousin John."
     
12487 "I can never forget it," said Richard.
     
12488 "And I can never forget it," said Ada.
     
12489 "So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us
12490 to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the
12491 gentleness and honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know
12492 that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that
12493 he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He
12494 has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he
12495 has planted."
     
12496 "Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am
12497 quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said
12498 Richard, "is not all I have."
     
12499 "Rick, Rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,
12500 and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have
12501 stopped his ears. "For the love of God, don't found a hope or
12502 expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
12503 grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom
12504 that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg,
12505 better to die!"
     
12506 We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his
12507 lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew
12508 that I felt too, how much he needed it.
     
12509 "Ada, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,
12510 "these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have
12511 seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start him in
12512 the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his
12513 sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the
12514 understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must
12515 go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely
12516 in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to
12517 relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship."
     
12518 "Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce
12519 all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same."
     
12520 "Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."
     
12521 "You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I HAVE, I
12522 know."
     
12523 "How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke
12524 of these things last," said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging
12525 manner. "You have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time
12526 for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now
12527 fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young,
12528 my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may
12529 come must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner."
     
12530 "You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I could
12531 have supposed you would be."
     
12532 "My dear boy," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I do
12533 anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands.
12534 Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there
12535 should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for
12536 her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what
12537 is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves."
     
12538 "Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard hastily. "It was not when we
12539 opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then."
     
12540 "I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick, but I have had
12541 experience since."
     
12542 "You mean of me, sir."
     
12543 "Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. "The time is
12544 not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right,
12545 and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin
12546 afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to
12547 write your lives in."
     
12548 Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.
     
12549 "I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther," said
12550 Mr. Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as the day,
12551 and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most
12552 earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else
12553 to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do
12554 wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you
12555 together."
     
12556 A long silence succeeded.
     
12557 "Cousin Richard," said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to
12558 his face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is
12559 left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave
12560 me here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to
12561 wish for -- quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I -- I don't
12562 doubt, cousin Richard," said Ada, a little confused, "that you are
12563 very fond of me, and I -- I don't think you will fall in love with
12564 anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as
12565 I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in
12566 me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not
12567 unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry
12568 to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know
12569 it's for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately,
12570 and often talk of you with Esther, and -- and perhaps you will
12571 sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now," said Ada,
12572 going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, "we are only
12573 cousins again, Richard -- for the time perhaps -- and I pray for a
12574 blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!"
     
12575 It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my
12576 guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he
12577 himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it
12578 was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this
12579 hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had been
12580 before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and
12581 solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them.
     
12582 In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,
12583 and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire
12584 while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He
12585 remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at
12586 such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a
12587 few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by
12588 which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would
12589 become as gay as possible.
     
12590 It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying
12591 a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would
12592 have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was
12593 perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and
12594 feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so
12595 much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that
12596 I could never have been tired if I had tried.
     
12597 There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging
12598 to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry
12599 soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing,
12600 with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much
12601 about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I
12602 was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast
12603 when he came.
     
12604 "Good morning, Mr. George," said my guardian, who happened to be
12605 alone with me. "Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss
12606 Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down."
     
12607 He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and
12608 without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across
12609 his upper lip.
     
12610 "You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr. Jarndyce.
     
12611 "Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit in
12612 me, sir. I am not at all business-like."
     
12613 "Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr.
12614 Jarndyce.
     
12615 "Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a
12616 one."
     
12617 "And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of
12618 Mr. Carstone?" said my guardian.
     
12619 "Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest
12620 and looking very large. "If Mr. Carstone was to give his full mind to
12621 it, he would come out very good."
     
12622 "But he don't, I suppose?" said my guardian.
     
12623 "He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps
12624 he has something else upon it -- some young lady, perhaps." His bright
12625 dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.
     
12626 "He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George," said I,
12627 laughing, "though you seem to suspect me."
     
12628 He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow.
12629 "No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs."
     
12630 "Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."
     
12631 If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or
12632 four quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said to
12633 my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the
12634 honour to mention the young lady's name -- "
     
12635 "Miss Summerson."
     
12636 "Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.
     
12637 "Do you know the name?" I asked.
     
12638 "No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you
12639 somewhere."
     
12640 "I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at
12641 him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that
12642 I was glad of the opportunity. "I remember faces very well."
     
12643 "So do I, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of
12644 his dark eyes and broad forehead. "Humph! What set me off, now, upon
12645 that!"
     
12646 His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by
12647 his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his
12648 relief.
     
12649 "Have you many pupils, Mr. George?"
     
12650 "They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they're but a small lot to
12651 live by."
     
12652 "And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?"
     
12653 "All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to
12654 'prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show
12655 themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of
12656 course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open."
     
12657 "People don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their
12658 practice with live targets, I hope?" said my guardian, smiling.
     
12659 "Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come
12660 for skill -- or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I
12661 beg your pardon," said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and
12662 squaring an elbow on each knee, "but I believe you're a Chancery
12663 suitor, if I have heard correct?"
     
12664 "I am sorry to say I am."
     
12665 "I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir."
     
12666 "A Chancery suitor?" returned my guardian. "How was that?"
     
12667 "Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being
12668 knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said Mr.
12669 George, "that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of
12670 taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and
12671 violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away
12672 till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by
12673 and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, 'If this
12674 practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don't
12675 altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of
12676 mind; I'd rather you took to something else.' I was on my guard for a
12677 blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part
12678 and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of
12679 friendship."
     
12680 "What was that man?" asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.
     
12681 "Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a
12682 baited bull of him," said Mr. George.
     
12683 "Was his name Gridley?"
     
12684 "It was, sir."
     
12685 Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me
12686 as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the
12687 coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.
12688 He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he
12689 called my condescension.
     
12690 "I don't know," he said as he looked at me, "what it is that sets me
12691 off again -- but -- bosh! What's my head running against!" He passed one
12692 of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken
12693 thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm
12694 akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at
12695 the ground.
     
12696 "I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley
12697 into new troubles and that he is in hiding," said my guardian.
     
12698 "So I am told, sir," returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on
12699 the ground. "So I am told."
     
12700 "You don't know where?"
     
12701 "No, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out
12702 of his reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out
12703 soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good
12704 many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last."
     
12705 Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me
12706 another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and
12707 strode heavily out of the room.
     
12708 This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure. We
12709 had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing
12710 early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when
12711 he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being
12712 again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we
12713 should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last
12714 day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my
12715 consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then
12716 sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters
12717 that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write
12718 to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where
12719 we were going and therefore was not with us.
     
12720 When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor -- the same
12721 whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln's Inn -- sitting in
12722 great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a
12723 red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little
12724 garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a
12725 long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at
12726 their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and
12727 gowns -- some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying
12728 much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in
12729 his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his
12730 forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed;
12731 some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups:
12732 all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very
12733 unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.
     
12734 To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness
12735 of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and
12736 ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it
12737 represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was
12738 raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to
12739 day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold
12740 the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him
12741 looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever
12742 heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was
12743 a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and
12744 indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little
12745 short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one -- this
12746 was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of
12747 it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I
12748 sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me;
12749 but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor
12750 little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at
12751 it.
     
12752 Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a
12753 gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification
12754 and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to
12755 us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the
12756 bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a
12757 visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it
12758 was imposing, it was imposing.
     
12759 When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress -- if I
12760 may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion -- seemed to die out
12761 of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to
12762 come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of
12763 papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said,
12764 "Jarndyce and Jarndyce." Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and
12765 a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great
12766 heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.
     
12767 I think it came on "for further directions" -- about some bill of
12768 costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.
12769 But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in
12770 it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.
12771 They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and
12772 explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way,
12773 and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely
12774 proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more
12775 buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle
12776 entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an
12777 hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut
12778 short, it was "referred back for the present," as Mr. Kenge said, and
12779 the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished
12780 bringing them in.
     
12781 I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings
12782 and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. "It
12783 can't last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!" was all he
12784 said.
     
12785 I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.
12786 Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered
12787 me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and
12788 was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.
     
12789 "I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone," said he in a whisper, "and Miss
12790 Summerson's also, but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who
12791 knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." As he
12792 spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from
12793 my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother's house.
     
12794 "How do you do, Esther?" said she. "Do you recollect me?"
     
12795 I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little
12796 altered.
     
12797 "I wonder you remember those times, Esther," she returned with her
12798 old asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and
12799 glad you are not too proud to know me." But indeed she seemed
12800 disappointed that I was not.
     
12801 "Proud, Mrs. Rachael!" I remonstrated.
     
12802 "I am married, Esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am
12803 Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you'll do well."
     
12804 Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a
12805 sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael's way through the
12806 confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we
12807 were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought
12808 together. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet
12809 in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw,
12810 coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr.
12811 George. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on,
12812 staring over their heads into the body of the court.
     
12813 "George!" said Richard as I called his attention to him.
     
12814 "You are well met, sir," he returned. "And you, miss. Could you point
12815 a person out for me, I want? I don't understand these places."
     
12816 Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we
12817 were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.
     
12818 "There's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that -- "
     
12819 I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept
12820 beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of
12821 her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by
12822 whispering in their ears, "Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!"
     
12823 "Hem!" said Mr. George. "You remember, miss, that we passed some
12824 conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley," in a low
12825 whisper behind his hand.
     
12826 "Yes," said I.
     
12827 "He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his
12828 authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her.
12829 He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as
12830 good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I
12831 sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the
12832 muffled drums."
     
12833 "Shall I tell her?" said I.
     
12834 "Would you be so good?" he returned with a glance of something like
12835 apprehension at Miss Flite. "It's a providence I met you, miss; I
12836 doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady." And he
12837 put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as
12838 I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind
12839 errand.
     
12840 "My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!"
12841 she exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the
12842 greatest pleasure."
     
12843 "He is living concealed at Mr. George's," said I. "Hush! This is Mr.
12844 George."
     
12845 "In -- deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour! A
12846 military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!" she whispered to
12847 me.
     
12848 Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a
12849 mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it
12850 was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this was at last
12851 done, and addressing Mr. George as "General," she gave him her arm,
12852 to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was
12853 so discomposed and begged me so respectfully "not to desert him" that
12854 I could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Flite was
12855 always tractable with me and as she too said, "Fitz Jarndyce, my
12856 dear, you will accompany us, of course." As Richard seemed quite
12857 willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their
12858 destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. George informed us that
12859 Gridley's mind had run on Mr. Jarndyce all the afternoon after
12860 hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in
12861 pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr. George
12862 sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and
12863 we sent it off by a ticket-porter.
     
12864 We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of
12865 Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr.
12866 George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of
12867 which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to
12868 the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair,
12869 wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a
12870 broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed
12871 him.
     
12872 "I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this George's
12873 Shooting Gallery?"
     
12874 "It is, sir," returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters
12875 in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.
     
12876 "Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes. "Thank
12877 you. Have you rung the bell?"
     
12878 "My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."
     
12879 "Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then I am
12880 here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"
     
12881 "No, sir. You have the advantage of me."
     
12882 "Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man who
12883 came for me. I am a physician and was requested -- five minutes ago -- to
12884 come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery."
     
12885 "The muffled drums," said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and
12886 gravely shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you please
12887 to walk in."
     
12888 The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking
12889 little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and
12890 dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into
12891 a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and
12892 guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all
12893 arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared
12894 to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in
12895 his place.
     
12896 "Now lookee here, George," said the man, turning quickly round upon
12897 him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You know
12898 me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man of the
12899 world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
12900 peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a
12901 long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit."
     
12902 Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.
     
12903 "Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a
12904 sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what YOU are, beyond a
12905 doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character,
12906 because you have served your country and you know that when duty
12907 calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to give
12908 trouble. If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's what YOU'D
12909 do. Phil Squod, don't you go a-sidling round the gallery like
12910 that" -- the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder
12911 against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that
12912 looked threatening -- "because I know you and won't have it."
     
12913 "Phil!" said Mr. George.
     
12914 "Yes, guv'ner."
     
12915 "Be quiet."
     
12916 The little man, with a low growl, stood still.
     
12917 "Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket, "you'll excuse anything that
12918 may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector Bucket
12919 of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where
12920 my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw him through
12921 the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,"
12922 pointing; "that's where HE is -- on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and
12923 I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me,
12924 and you know I don't want to take any uncomfortable measures. You
12925 give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier,
12926 mind you, likewise), that it's honourable between us two, and I'll
12927 accommodate you to the utmost of my power."
     
12928 "I give it," was the reply. "But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr.
12929 Bucket."
     
12930 "Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his
12931 broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it wasn't
12932 handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally
12933 good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life
12934 Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself,
12935 ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a figure
12936 of a man!"
     
12937 The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little
12938 consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called
12939 him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away
12940 to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by
12941 a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of
12942 entering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid
12943 of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a
12944 good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those
12945 rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return
12946 that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was
12947 naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and
12948 making himself generally agreeable.
     
12949 After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and
12950 Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after us.
12951 He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take
12952 a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips
12953 when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, "on the chance," he
12954 slightly observed, "of being able to do any little thing for a poor
12955 fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself." We all four went
12956 back together and went into the place where Gridley was.
     
12957 It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted
12958 wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and
12959 only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery
12960 roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had
12961 looked down. The sun was low -- near setting -- and its light came redly
12962 in above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain
12963 canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed much as we
12964 had seen him last, but so changed that at first I recognized no
12965 likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.
     
12966 He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on
12967 his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were
12968 covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of
12969 such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little
12970 mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a
12971 chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.
     
12972 His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his
12973 strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had
12974 at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form
12975 and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from
12976 Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.
     
12977 He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian.
     
12978 "Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not
12979 long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You
12980 are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you."
     
12981 They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of
12982 comfort to him.
     
12983 "It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not
12984 have liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting.
12985 But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my
12986 single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the
12987 last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so
12988 I don't mind your seeing me, this wreck."
     
12989 "You have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned
12990 my guardian.
     
12991 "Sir, I have been," with a faint smile. "I told you what would come
12992 of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us -- look at us!"
12993 He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and brought her
12994 something nearer to him.
     
12995 "This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and
12996 hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone
12997 comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
12998 suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
12999 earth that Chancery has not broken."
     
13000 "Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite in tears. "Accept my
13001 blessing!"
     
13002 "I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.
13003 Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I
13004 could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until
13005 I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have
13006 been wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I
13007 hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will
13008 lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and
13009 perseveringly, as I did through so many years."
     
13010 Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door,
13011 good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.
     
13012 "Come, come!" he said from his corner. "Don't go on in that way, Mr.
13013 Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low
13014 sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper with the
13015 whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score
13016 of warrants yet, if I have luck."
     
13017 He only shook his head.
     
13018 "Don't shake your head," said Mr. Bucket. "Nod it; that's what I want
13019 to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had
13020 together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again for
13021 contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no other
13022 purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don't you
13023 remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace
13024 was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old
13025 lady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Gridley, hold
13026 up, sir!"
     
13027 "What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.
     
13028 "I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his
13029 encouragement, he pursued aloud: "Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After
13030 dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here
13031 like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't like
13032 being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You
13033 want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what YOU want.
13034 You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I couldn't myself.
13035 Very well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of
13036 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since.
13037 What do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and
13038 having a good angry argument before the magistrates? It'll do you
13039 good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn
13040 at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your
13041 energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do that. You're half the fun of
13042 the fair in the Court of Chancery. George, you lend Mr. Gridley a
13043 hand, and let's see now whether he won't be better up than down."
     
13044 "He is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice.
     
13045 "Is he?" returned Bucket anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I
13046 don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would
13047 cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little waxy
13048 with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I
13049 shall never take advantage of it."
     
13050 The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my
13051 ears.
     
13052 "Oh, no, Gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from
13053 before her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"
     
13054 The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and
13055 the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair, one
13056 living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than the
13057 darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell words I
13058 heard it echoed: "Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits
13059 and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul
13060 alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
13061 suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
13062 earth that Chancery has not broken!"
     
     
     
     
13063 CHAPTER XXV
     
13064 Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All
     
     
13065 There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black
13066 suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's Courtiers
13067 are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr.
13068 Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.
     
13069 For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing
13070 themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.
13071 Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are
13072 Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the
13073 law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in
13074 the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles
13075 away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses
13076 in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes
13077 and stares at the kitchen wall.
     
13078 Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.
13079 Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of
13080 it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter
13081 is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and
13082 coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the
13083 surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the
13084 mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,
13085 whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal
13086 neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr.
13087 Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to
13088 be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some
13089 dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful
13090 peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at
13091 any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any
13092 entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may
13093 take air and fire, explode, and blow up -- Mr. Bucket only knows whom.
     
13094 For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many
13095 men unknown do) and says, "Is Mr. Snagsby in?" or words to that
13096 innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty
13097 breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are
13098 made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the
13099 counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they
13100 can't speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in
13101 walking into Mr. Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with
13102 unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little
13103 dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the
13104 morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his
13105 little woman shaking him and saying "What's the matter with the man!"
     
13106 The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To
13107 know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under
13108 all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,
13109 which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr.
13110 Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who
13111 has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than
13112 meet his eye.
     
13113 These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not
13114 lost upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on his
13115 mind!" And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street.
13116 From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural
13117 and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy
13118 gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was
13119 always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs.
13120 Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr.
13121 Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters; to
13122 private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and
13123 iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a
13124 general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.
     
13125 Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes
13126 ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
13127 think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster
13128 holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where
13129 they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried
13130 money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white
13131 beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said
13132 the Lord's Prayer backwards.
     
13133 "Who was Nimrod?" Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. "Who
13134 was that lady -- that creature? And who is that boy?" Now, Nimrod being
13135 as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby has
13136 appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental
13137 eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. "And who,"
13138 quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is that boy? Who
13139 is that -- !" And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with an inspiration.
     
13140 He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn't
13141 have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those contagious
13142 circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband -- why,
13143 Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears! -- to come back, and
13144 be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he
13145 never came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come.
13146 Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.
     
13147 But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly
13148 smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;
13149 and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to
13150 improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was
13151 seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to
13152 the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and
13153 unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in
13154 Cook's Court to-morrow night, "to -- mor -- row -- night," Mrs. Snagsby
13155 repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight
13156 shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and
13157 to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some
13158 one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says
13159 Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind ME!
     
13160 Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her
13161 purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury
13162 preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr.
13163 Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging
13164 vessel is replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at
13165 last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his
13166 shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the
13167 left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if
13168 it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating
13169 raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.
     
13170 Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the
13171 little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the moment he
13172 comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr. Snagsby looks at
13173 him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby sees it all? Why
13174 else should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Snagsby
13175 be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear
13176 as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy's father.
     
13177 "Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily
13178 exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My friends,
13179 why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us,
13180 because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is
13181 softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home
13182 unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My
13183 human boy, come forward!"
     
13184 Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo's
13185 arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his
13186 reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that something
13187 practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, "You let
13188 me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone."
     
13189 "No, my young friend," says Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you
13190 alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a
13191 toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are
13192 become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so
13193 employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your
13194 profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young
13195 friend, sit upon this stool."
     
13196 Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman
13197 wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got
13198 into the required position with great difficulty and every possible
13199 manifestation of reluctance.
     
13200 When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring
13201 behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "My friends!"
13202 This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The
13203 'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into
13204 a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr.
13205 Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches
13206 her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs.
13207 Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees,
13208 finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.
     
13209 It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member
13210 of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with
13211 that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved
13212 to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of
13213 inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by
13214 some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of
13215 forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present,
13216 serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's
13217 steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My
13218 friends!" has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that
13219 ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate
13220 recipient of his discourse.
     
13221 "We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and a
13222 heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on
13223 upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,"
13224 and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,
13225 bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw
13226 him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,
13227 "a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid
13228 of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious
13229 stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these
13230 possessions? Why? Why is he?" Mr. Chadband states the question as if
13231 he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and
13232 merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up.
     
13233 Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received
13234 just now from his little woman -- at about the period when Mr. Chadband
13235 mentioned the word parents -- is tempted into modestly remarking, "I
13236 don't know, I'm sure, sir." On which interruption Mrs. Chadband
13237 glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, "For shame!"
     
13238 "I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my
13239 friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so -- "
     
13240 "Ah -- h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.
     
13241 "Which says, 'I don't know.' Then I will tell you why. I say this
13242 brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of
13243 relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and
13244 of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in
13245 upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is
13246 that light?"
     
13247 Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not
13248 to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning
13249 forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly
13250 into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.
     
13251 "It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon
13252 of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth."
     
13253 Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.
13254 Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.
     
13255 "Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. "Say not to me
13256 that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a
13257 million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will
13258 proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less
13259 you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a
13260 speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it,
13261 you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you
13262 shall be flawed, you shall be smashed."
     
13263 The present effect of this flight of oratory -- much admired for its
13264 general power by Mr. Chadband's followers -- being not only to make Mr.
13265 Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Snagsby
13266 in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of
13267 brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet
13268 more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and
13269 false position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him.
     
13270 "My friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some
13271 time -- and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his
13272 pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab -- "to
13273 pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to
13274 improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to
13275 which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the
13276 'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the
13277 doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask
13278 what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of
13279 that before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young
13280 friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love),
13281 what is the common sort of Terewth -- the working clothes -- the
13282 every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?"
     
13283 "Ah -- h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.
     
13284 "Is it suppression?"
     
13285 A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.
     
13286 "Is it reservation?"
     
13287 A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby -- very long and very tight.
     
13288 "No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names
13289 belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us -- who is now, my
13290 friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set
13291 upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should
13292 have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for
13293 his sake -- when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock,
13294 and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the
13295 Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my
13296 friends, no!"
     
13297 If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters
13298 at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole
13299 tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.
     
13300 "Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level of
13301 their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his
13302 greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose,
13303 "if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there
13304 see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the
13305 mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice with me, for
13306 I have seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?"
     
13307 Mrs. Snagsby in tears.
     
13308 "Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and
13309 returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,'
13310 would THAT be Terewth?"
     
13311 Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.
     
13312 "Or put it, my juvenile friends," said Chadband, stimulated by the
13313 sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen -- for
13314 parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt -- after casting
13315 him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the
13316 young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and
13317 had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their
13318 dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and
13319 poultry, would THAT be Terewth?"
     
13320 Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an
13321 unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's
13322 Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she
13323 has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After
13324 unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is
13325 pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though
13326 much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and
13327 crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble,
13328 ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room.
     
13329 All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever
13330 picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them
13331 out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to
13332 be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good HIS trying to keep
13333 awake, for HE won't never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that
13334 there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near
13335 the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common
13336 men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the
13337 light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it
13338 unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without
13339 their modest aid -- it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from
13340 it yet!
     
13341 Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend
13342 Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend
13343 Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him
13344 talk for five minutes. "It an't no good my waiting here no longer,"
13345 thinks Jo. "Mr. Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me to-night."
13346 And downstairs he shuffles.
     
13347 But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of
13348 the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same
13349 having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby's screaming. She has her own
13350 supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to
13351 interchange a word or so for the first time.
     
13352 "Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster.
     
13353 "Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.
     
13354 "Are you hungry?"
     
13355 "Jist!" says Jo.
     
13356 "What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"
     
13357 Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan
13358 charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted
13359 him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any
13360 decent hand has been so laid upon him.
     
13361 "I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo.
     
13362 "No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms
13363 favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and
13364 vanishes down the stairs.
     
13365 "Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the
13366 step.
     
13367 "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!"
     
13368 "I didn't know you were gone -- there's another half-crown, Jo. It was
13369 quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when
13370 we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can't be too quiet,
13371 Jo."
     
13372 "I am fly, master!"
     
13373 And so, good night.
     
13374 A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer
13375 to the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he
13376 begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his
13377 own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his
13378 own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may
13379 pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs.
13380 Snagsby is there too -- bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of
13381 his shadow.
     
     
     
     
13382 CHAPTER XXVI
     
13383 Sharpshooters
     
     
13384 Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the
13385 neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to
13386 get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of
13387 times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are
13388 wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy
13389 blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less
13390 under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and
13391 false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep.
13392 Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal
13393 experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong
13394 governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear,
13395 broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers,
13396 and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath
13397 their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero,
13398 and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be
13399 in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a
13400 more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin
13401 in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or
13402 colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about
13403 bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. And in
13404 such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading
13405 the tributary channels of Leicester Square.
     
13406 But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr.
13407 George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up
13408 and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself
13409 before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out,
13410 bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon
13411 comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and
13412 exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel,
13413 blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling
13414 tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so
13415 that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive
13416 instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb -- as he rubs, and puffs,
13417 and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more
13418 conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well
13419 bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his
13420 knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for
13421 him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to
13422 take in the superfluous health his master throws off.
     
13423 When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two
13424 hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil,
13425 shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it,
13426 winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr.
13427 George's toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and
13428 marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising a
13429 powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes
13430 gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning's pipe is
13431 devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave.
     
13432 "And so, Phil," says George of the shooting gallery after several
13433 turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?"
     
13434 Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled
13435 out of bed.
     
13436 "Yes, guv'ner."
     
13437 "What was it like?"
     
13438 "I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said Phil, considering.
     
13439 "How did you know it was the country?"
     
13440 "On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil
13441 after further consideration.
     
13442 "What were the swans doing on the grass?"
     
13443 "They was a-eating of it, I expect," says Phil.
     
13444 The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of
13445 breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being
13446 limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for
13447 two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty
13448 grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the
13449 gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at
13450 once, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast
13451 is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his
13452 pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and
13453 sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit,
13454 sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his
13455 plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened
13456 hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.
     
13457 "The country," says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I
13458 suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"
     
13459 "I see the marshes once," says Phil, contentedly eating his
13460 breakfast.
     
13461 "What marshes?"
     
13462 "THE marshes, commander," returns Phil.
     
13463 "Where are they?"
     
13464 "I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner.
13465 They was flat. And miste."
     
13466 Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil,
13467 expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody
13468 but Mr. George.
     
13469 "I was born in the country, Phil."
     
13470 "Was you indeed, commander?"
     
13471 "Yes. And bred there."
     
13472 Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his
13473 master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still
13474 staring at him.
     
13475 "There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George. "Not
13476 many an English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many a tree
13477 that I couldn't climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country
13478 boy, once. My good mother lived in the country."
     
13479 "She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.
     
13480 "Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago," says Mr.
13481 George. "But I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright
13482 as me, and near as broad across the shoulders."
     
13483 "Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.
     
13484 "No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the
13485 trooper. "What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and
13486 good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes
13487 upon the country -- marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?"
     
13488 Phil shakes his head.
     
13489 "Do you want to see it?"
     
13490 "N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.
     
13491 "The town's enough for you, eh?"
     
13492 "Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with
13493 anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too old to take to
13494 novelties."
     
13495 "How old ARE you, Phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his
13496 smoking saucer to his lips.
     
13497 "I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be eighty.
13498 Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, somewheres."
     
13499 Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its
13500 contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil -- " when
13501 he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.
     
13502 "I was just eight," says Phil, "agreeable to the parish calculation,
13503 when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him
13504 a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery
13505 comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my
13506 man?' I says 'Yes,' and him and me and the fire goes home to
13507 Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up
13508 to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself,
13509 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' April Fool Day after
13510 that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' In
13511 course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight
13512 in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is
13513 how I always know there's a eight in it."
     
13514 "Ah!" says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the
13515 tinker?"
     
13516 "Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him -- in
13517 a glass-case, I HAVE heerd," Phil replies mysteriously.
     
13518 "By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?"
     
13519 "Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn't much
13520 of a beat -- round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld,
13521 and there -- poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till
13522 they're past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and
13523 lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master's earnings.
13524 But they didn't come to me. I warn't like him. He could sing 'em a
13525 good song. I couldn't! He could play 'em a tune on any sort of pot
13526 you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing
13527 with a pot but mend it or bile it -- never had a note of music in me.
13528 Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me."
     
13529 "They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd,
13530 Phil!" says the trooper with a pleasant smile.
     
13531 "No, guv'ner," returns Phil, shaking his head. "No, I shouldn't. I
13532 was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to
13533 boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I
13534 was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and
13535 swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in
13536 the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich
13537 means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older,
13538 almost whenever he was too far gone in drink -- which was almost
13539 always -- my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to
13540 since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was
13541 given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a
13542 gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at
13543 the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!"
     
13544 Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied
13545 manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking
13546 it, he says, "It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see
13547 you, commander. You remember?"
     
13548 "I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun."
     
13549 "Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall -- "
     
13550 "True, Phil -- shouldering your way on -- "
     
13551 "In a night-cap!" exclaims Phil, excited.
     
13552 "In a night-cap -- "
     
13553 "And hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries Phil, still more
13554 excited.
     
13555 "With a couple of sticks. When -- "
     
13556 "When you stops, you know," cries Phil, putting down his cup and
13557 saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to
13558 me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!' I didn't say much to
13559 you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so
13560 strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a
13561 limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you,
13562 delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was
13563 like a glass of something hot, 'What accident have you met with? You
13564 have been badly hurt. What's amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us
13565 about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you,
13566 you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and
13567 here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!" cries Phil, who has
13568 started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. "If a
13569 mark's wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers
13570 take aim at me. They can't spoil MY beauty. I'M all right. Come on!
13571 If they want a man to box at, let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me
13572 well about the head. I don't mind. If they want a light-weight to be
13573 throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em
13574 throw me. They won't hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of
13575 styles, all my life!"
     
13576 With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied
13577 by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil
13578 Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and
13579 abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his
13580 head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to
13581 clear away the breakfast.
     
13582 Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the
13583 shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery
13584 into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells,
13585 and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting "too
13586 fleshy," engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice.
13587 Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws
13588 and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small
13589 apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and
13590 undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.
     
13591 Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage,
13592 where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual
13593 company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery,
13594 bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any
13595 day in the year but the fifth of November.
     
13596 It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two
13597 bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched
13598 mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses
13599 commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England
13600 up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as
13601 the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, "O
13602 Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!" adds, "How de do, my dear friend,
13603 how de do?" Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the
13604 venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his
13605 granddaughter Judy as body-guard.
     
13606 "Mr. George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, removing
13607 his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly
13608 throttled coming along, "how de do? You're surprised to see me, my
13609 dear friend."
     
13610 "I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in
13611 the city," returns Mr. George.
     
13612 "I am very seldom out," pants Mr. Smallweed. "I haven't been out for
13613 many months. It's inconvenient -- and it comes expensive. But I longed
13614 so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"
     
13615 "I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."
     
13616 "You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr. Smallweed takes him by
13617 both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn't keep
13618 her away. She longed so much to see you."
     
13619 "Hum! She bears it calmly!" mutters Mr. George.
     
13620 "So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the
13621 corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried
13622 me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment!
13623 This," says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has
13624 been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his
13625 windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by
13626 agreement included in his fare. This person," the other bearer, "we
13627 engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence.
13628 Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of
13629 your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this
13630 person."
     
13631 Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable
13632 terror and a half-subdued "O Lord! Oh, dear me!" Nor in his
13633 apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for
13634 Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap
13635 before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air
13636 of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old
13637 bird of the crow species.
     
13638 "Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his
13639 twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."
     
13640 The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human
13641 fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London,
13642 ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for holding
13643 horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but
13644 transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and
13645 retires.
     
13646 "My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so
13647 kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and
13648 I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"
     
13649 His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by
13650 the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up,
13651 chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
     
13652 "O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My
13653 dear friend, your workman is very strong -- and very prompt. O Lord, he
13654 is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I'm being scorched in
13655 the legs," which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by
13656 the smell of his worsted stockings.
     
13657 The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the
13658 fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his
13659 overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr. Smallweed
13660 again says, "Oh, dear me! O Lord!" and looking about and meeting Mr.
13661 George's glance, again stretches out both hands.
     
13662 "My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your
13663 establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You never
13664 find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear
13665 friend?" adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.
     
13666 "No, no. No fear of that."
     
13667 "And your workman. He -- Oh, dear me! -- he never lets anything off
13668 without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?"
     
13669 "He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.
     
13670 "But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal,
13671 and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns. "He
13672 mightn't mean it -- or he even might. Mr. George, will you order him to
13673 leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?"
     
13674 Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to
13675 the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to
13676 rubbing his legs.
     
13677 "And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper, squarely
13678 standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand.
13679 "You are prospering, please the Powers?"
     
13680 Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not come
13681 to say that, I know."
     
13682 "You are so sprightly, Mr. George," returns the venerable
13683 grandfather. "You are such good company."
     
13684 "Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr. George.
     
13685 "My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It
13686 might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. George.
13687 Curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as the
13688 trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "He owes me money,
13689 and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I
13690 wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head
13691 off."
     
13692 Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old
13693 man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly,
13694 "Now for it!"
     
13695 "Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle.
13696 "Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"
     
13697 "For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his
13698 chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it
13699 and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
     
13700 This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so
13701 difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes
13702 exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent
13703 vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the
13704 visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long
13705 and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and
13706 watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to
13707 slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he
13708 becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of
13709 Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than
13710 the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him
13711 in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the
13712 science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous
13713 distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
     
13714 When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a
13715 white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out
13716 her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back. The
13717 trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed
13718 grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at
13719 the fire.
     
13720 "Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U -- u -- u -- ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed,
13721 swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!" (still clawing).
     
13722 "I tell you what," says Mr. George. "If you want to converse with me,
13723 you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go about and
13724 about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don't
13725 suit me. When you go winding round and round me," says the trooper,
13726 putting his pipe between his lips again, "damme, if I don't feel as
13727 if I was being smothered!"
     
13728 And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure
13729 himself that he is not smothered yet.
     
13730 "If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr. George,
13731 "I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether
13732 there's any property on the premises, look about you; you are
13733 welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!"
     
13734 The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her
13735 grandfather one ghostly poke.
     
13736 "You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman
13737 won't sit down like a Christian," says Mr. George with his eyes
13738 musingly fixed on Judy, "I can't comprehend."
     
13739 "She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather
13740 Smallweed. "I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some
13741 attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot"
13742 (snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but I need
13743 attention, my dear friend."
     
13744 "Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man.
13745 "Now then?"
     
13746 "My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a
13747 pupil of yours."
     
13748 "Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."
     
13749 "Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine young
13750 soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came
13751 forward and paid it all up, honourable."
     
13752 "Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the city
13753 would like a piece of advice?"
     
13754 "I think he would, my dear friend. From you."
     
13755 "I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There's
13756 no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is
13757 brought to a dead halt."
     
13758 "No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,"
13759 remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs.
13760 "Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good
13761 for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission,
13762 and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his
13763 chance in a wife, and -- oh, do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend
13764 would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?" says
13765 Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his
13766 ear like a monkey.
     
13767 Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his
13768 chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he
13769 were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has
13770 taken.
     
13771 "But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed.
13772 "'To promote the conversation,' as a joker might say. To pass, Mr.
13773 George, from the ensign to the captain."
     
13774 "What are you up to, now?" asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in
13775 stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"
     
13776 "Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."
     
13777 "Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle as he sees
13778 both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "You are
13779 there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smothered any more.
13780 Speak!"
     
13781 "My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied -- Judy, shake me
13782 up a little! -- I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my
13783 opinion still is that the captain is not dead."
     
13784 "Bosh!" observes Mr. George.
     
13785 "What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with his
13786 hand to his ear.
     
13787 "Bosh!"
     
13788 "Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr. George, of my opinion you can
13789 judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the
13790 reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the lawyer
13791 making the inquiries wants?"
     
13792 "A job," says Mr. George.
     
13793 "Nothing of the kind!"
     
13794 "Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms with an
13795 air of confirmed resolution.
     
13796 "My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see
13797 some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep it.
13798 He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his
13799 possession."
     
13800 "Well?"
     
13801 "Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning
13802 Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting
13803 him, he looked it up and came to me -- just as you did, my dear friend.
13804 WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed
13805 forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!"
     
13806 "Well, Mr. Smallweed?" says Mr. George again after going through the
13807 ceremony with some stiffness.
     
13808 "I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague
13809 pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him," says
13810 the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a
13811 prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, "I
13812 have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,"
13813 breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-adjusts the
13814 cap on his skittle-ball of a head, "you, my dear Mr. George, are
13815 likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose.
13816 Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand."
     
13817 "Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "may be, I
13818 have."
     
13819 "My dearest friend!"
     
13820 "May be, I have not."
     
13821 "Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen.
     
13822 "But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a
13823 cartridge without knowing why."
     
13824 "Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you why."
     
13825 "Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know more,
13826 and approve it."
     
13827 "Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and
13828 see the gentleman?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean
13829 old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. "I told him
13830 it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this
13831 forenoon, and it's now half after ten. Will you come and see the
13832 gentleman, Mr. George?"
     
13833 "Hum!" says he gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this should
13834 concern you so much, I don't know."
     
13835 "Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything
13836 to light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn't he owe us
13837 immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him
13838 concern more than me? Not, my dear friend," says Grandfather
13839 Smallweed, lowering his tone, "that I want YOU to betray anything.
13840 Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?"
     
13841 "Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know."
     
13842 "No, my dear Mr. George; no."
     
13843 "And you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place,
13844 wherever it is, without charging for it?" Mr. George inquires,
13845 getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.
     
13846 This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and
13847 low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his
13848 paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he
13849 unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the
13850 gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately
13851 takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it
13852 in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and Mr. Smallweed
13853 pokes Judy once.
     
13854 "I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry
13855 this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him."
     
13856 "Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr. Smallweed. "He's so
13857 very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?"
     
13858 Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away,
13859 tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts along
13860 the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old
13861 gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however,
13862 terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy
13863 takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and
13864 Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box.
     
13865 Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time
13866 to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where
13867 the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his
13868 cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and
13869 looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression
13870 of being jolted in the back.
     
     
     
     
13871 CHAPTER XXVII
     
13872 More Old Soldiers Than One
     
     
13873 Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for
13874 their destination is Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the driver stops his
13875 horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says,
13876 "What, Mr. Tulkinghorn's your man, is he?"
     
13877 "Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?"
     
13878 "Why, I have heard of him -- seen him too, I think. But I don't know
13879 him, and he don't know me."
     
13880 There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done to
13881 perfection with the trooper's help. He is borne into Mr.
13882 Tulkinghorn's great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the
13883 fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be
13884 back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus
13885 much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves.
     
13886 Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at
13887 the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates
13888 the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the
13889 boxes.
     
13890 "'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,'" Mr. George reads thoughtfully.
13891 "Ha! 'Manor of Chesney Wold.' Humph!" Mr. George stands looking at
13892 these boxes a long while -- as if they were pictures -- and comes back to
13893 the fire repeating, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of
13894 Chesney Wold, hey?"
     
13895 "Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!" whispers Grandfather Smallweed,
13896 rubbing his legs. "Powerfully rich!"
     
13897 "Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?"
     
13898 "This gentleman, this gentleman."
     
13899 "So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I'll hold a wager. Not
13900 bad quarters, either," says Mr. George, looking round again. "See the
13901 strong-box yonder!"
     
13902 This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn's arrival. There is no
13903 change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his
13904 hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry.
13905 In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually
13906 not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have
13907 warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn,
13908 after all, if everything were known.
     
13909 "Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!" he says as he comes in.
13910 "You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant."
     
13911 As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he
13912 looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper
13913 stands and says within himself perchance, "You'll do, my friend!"
     
13914 "Sit down, sergeant," he repeats as he comes to his table, which is
13915 set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. "Cold and raw
13916 this morning, cold and raw!" Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars,
13917 alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from
13918 behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a
13919 little semicircle before him.
     
13920 "Now, I can feel what I am about" (as perhaps he can in two senses),
13921 "Mr. Smallweed." The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear
13922 his part in the conversation. "You have brought our good friend the
13923 sergeant, I see."
     
13924 "Yes, sir," returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer's
13925 wealth and influence.
     
13926 "And what does the sergeant say about this business?"
     
13927 "Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his
13928 shrivelled hand, "this is the gentleman, sir."
     
13929 Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and
13930 profoundly silent -- very forward in his chair, as if the full
13931 complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.
     
13932 Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, "Well, George -- I believe your name is
13933 George?"
     
13934 "It is so, Sir."
     
13935 "What do you say, George?"
     
13936 "I ask your pardon, sir," returns the trooper, "but I should wish to
13937 know what YOU say?"
     
13938 "Do you mean in point of reward?"
     
13939 "I mean in point of everything, sir."
     
13940 This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed's temper that he suddenly
13941 breaks out with "You're a brimstone beast!" and as suddenly asks
13942 pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the
13943 tongue by saying to Judy, "I was thinking of your grandmother, my
13944 dear."
     
13945 "I supposed, sergeant," Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one
13946 side of his chair and crosses his legs, "that Mr. Smallweed might
13947 have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest
13948 compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and
13949 were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services,
13950 and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?"
     
13951 "Yes, sir, that is so," says Mr. George with military brevity.
     
13952 "Therefore you may happen to have in your possession
13953 something -- anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders,
13954 a letter, anything -- in Captain Hawdon's writing. I wish to compare
13955 his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the
13956 opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four,
13957 five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say."
     
13958 "Noble, my dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his
13959 eyes.
     
13960 "If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can
13961 demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against
13962 your inclination -- though I should prefer to have it."
     
13963 Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the
13964 painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed
13965 scratches the air.
     
13966 "The question is," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued,
13967 uninterested way, "first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon's
13968 writing?"
     
13969 "First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon's writing, sir," repeats
13970 Mr. George.
     
13971 "Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?"
     
13972 "Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it,
13973 sir," repeats Mr. George.
     
13974 "Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,"
13975 says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written
13976 paper tied together.
     
13977 "Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so," repeats Mr. George.
     
13978 All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner,
13979 looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at
13980 the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him
13981 for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but
13982 continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.
     
13983 "Well?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "What do you say?"
     
13984 "Well, sir," replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, "I
13985 would rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this."
     
13986 Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, "Why not?"
     
13987 "Why, sir," returns the trooper. "Except on military compulsion, I am
13988 not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in
13989 Scotland a ne'er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand
13990 any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr.
13991 Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of
13992 this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my
13993 sensation," says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, "at the
13994 present moment."
     
13995 With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on
13996 the lawyer's table and three strides backward to resume his former
13997 station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground
13998 and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to
13999 prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.
     
14000 Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed's favourite adjective of
14001 disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words "my
14002 dear friend" with the monosyllable "brim," thus converting the
14003 possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in
14004 his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear
14005 friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so
14006 eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace,
14007 confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr.
14008 Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, "You are the
14009 best judge of your own interest, sergeant." "Take care you do no harm
14010 by this." "Please yourself, please yourself." "If you know what you
14011 mean, that's quite enough." These he utters with an appearance of
14012 perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and
14013 prepares to write a letter.
     
14014 Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the
14015 ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr.
14016 Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again,
14017 often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.
     
14018 "I do assure you, sir," says Mr. George, "not to say it offensively,
14019 that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered
14020 fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you
14021 gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain's
14022 hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?"
     
14023 Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. "No. If you were a man of
14024 business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are
14025 confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such
14026 wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of
14027 doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest
14028 about that."
     
14029 "Aye! He is dead, sir."
     
14030 "IS he?" Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.
     
14031 "Well, sir," says the trooper, looking into his hat after another
14032 disconcerted pause, "I am sorry not to have given you more
14033 satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I
14034 should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing
14035 to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for
14036 business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to
14037 consult with him. I -- I really am so completely smothered myself at
14038 present," says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his
14039 brow, "that I don't know but what it might be a satisfaction to me."
     
14040 Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so
14041 strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking counsel
14042 with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of
14043 five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him. Mr.
14044 Tulkinghorn says nothing either way.
     
14045 "I'll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir," says the trooper,
14046 "and I'll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer
14047 in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried
14048 downstairs -- "
     
14049 "In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me
14050 speak half a word with this gentleman in private?"
     
14051 "Certainly, sir. Don't hurry yourself on my account." The trooper
14052 retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious
14053 inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.
     
14054 "If I wasn't as weak as a brimstone baby, sir," whispers Grandfather
14055 Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his
14056 coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry
14057 eyes, "I'd tear the writing away from him. He's got it buttoned in
14058 his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put it there. Speak
14059 up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say
14060 you saw him put it there!"
     
14061 This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a
14062 thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and
14063 he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him,
14064 until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken.
     
14065 "Violence will not do for me, my friend," Mr. Tulkinghorn then
14066 remarks coolly.
     
14067 "No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it's chafing and
14068 galling -- it's -- it's worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a
14069 grandmother," to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire,
14070 "to know he has got what's wanted and won't give it up. He, not to
14071 give it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the
14072 most, he has only his own way for a little while. I have him
14073 periodically in a vice. I'll twist him, sir. I'll screw him, sir. If
14074 he won't do it with a good grace, I'll make him do it with a bad one,
14075 sir! Now, my dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, winking at
14076 the lawyer hideously as he releases him, "I am ready for your kind
14077 assistance, my excellent friend!"
     
14078 Mr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting
14079 itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his
14080 back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Smallweed and
14081 acknowledging the trooper's parting salute with one slight nod.
     
14082 It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. George
14083 finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is
14084 replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the
14085 guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button -- having,
14086 in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him -- that
14087 some degree of force is necessary on the trooper's part to effect a
14088 separation. It is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in
14089 quest of his adviser.
     
14090 By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a
14091 glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in
14092 his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr. George
14093 sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that
14094 ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the
14095 bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost
14096 his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron
14097 monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares.
14098 To one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician's
14099 shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a
14100 tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music,
14101 Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from
14102 it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts
14103 tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub
14104 commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement,
14105 Mr. George says to himself, "She's as usual, washing greens. I never
14106 saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn't washing
14107 greens!"
     
14108 The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in
14109 washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr.
14110 George's approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when
14111 she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing
14112 near her. Her reception of him is not flattering.
     
14113 "George, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!"
     
14114 The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the
14115 musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon
14116 the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon
14117 it.
     
14118 "I never," she says, "George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute
14119 when you're near him. You are that restless and that roving -- "
     
14120 "Yes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am."
     
14121 "You know you are!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "What's the use of that? WHY
14122 are you?"
     
14123 "The nature of the animal, I suppose," returns the trooper
14124 good-humouredly.
     
14125 "Ah!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. "But what satisfaction
14126 will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have
14127 tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or
14128 Australey?"
     
14129 Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a
14130 little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which
14131 have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and
14132 bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from
14133 forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed
14134 (though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she
14135 stands possessed appear's to be her wedding-ring, around which her
14136 finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will
14137 never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet's dust.
     
14138 "Mrs. Bagnet," says the trooper, "I am on my parole with you. Mat
14139 will get no harm from me. You may trust me so far."
     
14140 "Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling," Mrs.
14141 Bagnet rejoins. "Ah, George, George! If you had only settled down and
14142 married Joe Pouch's widow when he died in North America, SHE'D have
14143 combed your hair for you."
     
14144 "It was a chance for me, certainly," returns the trooper half
14145 laughingly, half seriously, "but I shall never settle down into a
14146 respectable man now. Joe Pouch's widow might have done me good -- there
14147 was something in her, and something of her -- but I couldn't make up my
14148 mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat
14149 found!"
     
14150 Mrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve
14151 with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow
14152 herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr.
14153 George in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the
14154 little room behind the shop.
     
14155 "Why, Quebec, my poppet," says George, following, on invitation, into
14156 that department. "And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!"
     
14157 These young ladies -- not supposed to have been actually christened by
14158 the names applied to them, though always so called in the family from
14159 the places of their birth in barracks -- are respectively employed on
14160 three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in
14161 learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine
14162 perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail
14163 Mr. George with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing
14164 and romping plant their stools beside him.
     
14165 "And how's young Woolwich?" says Mr. George.
     
14166 "Ah! There now!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans
14167 (for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. "Would
14168 you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father,
14169 to play the fife in a military piece."
     
14170 "Well done, my godson!" cries Mr. George, slapping his thigh.
     
14171 "I believe you!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "He's a Briton. That's what
14172 Woolwich is. A Briton!"
     
14173 "And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians
14174 one and all," says Mr. George. "Family people. Children growing up.
14175 Mat's old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else,
14176 corresponded with, and helped a little, and -- well, well! To be sure,
14177 I don't know why I shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for I
14178 have not much to do with all this!"
     
14179 Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the
14180 whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and
14181 contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or
14182 dust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots
14183 and pannikins upon the dresser shelves -- Mr. George is becoming
14184 thoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet
14185 and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an
14186 ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers
14187 like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid
14188 complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all
14189 unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed
14190 there may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding,
14191 brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human
14192 orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer.
     
14193 Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due
14194 season, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet
14195 hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after
14196 dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without
14197 first partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to
14198 this invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic
14199 preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street,
14200 which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it
14201 were a rampart.
     
14202 "George," says Mr. Bagnet. "You know me. It's my old girl that
14203 advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her.
14204 Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind.
14205 Then we'll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do -- do it!"
     
14206 "I intend to, Mat," replies the other. "I would sooner take her
14207 opinion than that of a college."
     
14208 "College," returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. "What
14209 college could you leave -- in another quarter of the world -- with
14210 nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella -- to make its way home to
14211 Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!"
     
14212 "You are right," says Mr. George.
     
14213 "What college," pursues Bagnet, "could you set up in life -- with two
14214 penn'orth of white lime -- a penn'orth of fuller's earth -- a ha'porth of
14215 sand -- and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That's
14216 what the old girl started on. In the present business."
     
14217 "I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Mat."
     
14218 "The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. Has a stocking
14219 somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she's got it.
14220 Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then she'll set you up."
     
14221 "She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr. George.
     
14222 "She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be
14223 maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical
14224 abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old
14225 girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old
14226 girl said it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of flexibility;
14227 try the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster
14228 of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got
14229 another, get a living by it!"
     
14230 George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an
14231 apple.
     
14232 "The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine
14233 woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as
14234 she gets on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I never own to it
14235 before her. Discipline must be maintained!"
     
14236 Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down
14237 the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec
14238 and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs.
14239 Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the
14240 distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty,
14241 Mrs. Bagnet developes an exact system, sitting with every dish before
14242 her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of
14243 pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out
14244 complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus
14245 supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet proceeds to
14246 satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the
14247 mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly
14248 composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several
14249 parts of the world. Young Woolwich's knife, in particular, which is
14250 of the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong
14251 shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that
14252 young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the
14253 complete round of foreign service.
     
14254 The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who
14255 polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the
14256 dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away,
14257 first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor
14258 may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household
14259 cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard
14260 and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to
14261 assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old girl
14262 reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her
14263 needlework, then and only then -- the greens being only then to be
14264 considered as entirely off her mind -- Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper
14265 to state his case.
     
14266 This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address
14267 himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all
14268 the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies
14269 herself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet
14270 resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline.
     
14271 "That's the whole of it, is it, George?" says he.
     
14272 "That's the whole of it."
     
14273 "You act according to my opinion?"
     
14274 "I shall be guided," replies George, "entirely by it."
     
14275 "Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell
14276 him what it is."
     
14277 It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too
14278 deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters
14279 he does not understand -- that the plain rule is to do nothing in the
14280 dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never
14281 to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is
14282 Mr. Bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so
14283 relieves Mr. George's mind by confirming his own opinion and
14284 banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe
14285 on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with
14286 the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of
14287 experience.
     
14288 Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again
14289 rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on
14290 when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the
14291 theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his
14292 domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and
14293 insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with
14294 felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George
14295 again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields.
     
14296 "A family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small it
14297 is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that
14298 evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I am such a
14299 vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold
14300 to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I
14301 didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber
14302 nobody; that's something. I have not done that for many a long year!"
     
14303 So he whistles it off and marches on.
     
14304 Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn's stair,
14305 he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper
14306 not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark
14307 besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a
14308 bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn
14309 comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, "Who is
14310 that? What are you doing there?"
     
14311 "I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The sergeant."
     
14312 "And couldn't George, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?"
     
14313 "Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I didn't," says the trooper,
14314 rather nettled.
     
14315 "Have you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?" Mr.
14316 Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.
     
14317 "In the same mind, sir."
     
14318 "I thought so. That's sufficient. You can go. So you are the man,"
14319 says Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in whose
14320 hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?"
     
14321 "Yes, I AM the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs
14322 down. "What then, sir?"
     
14323 "What then? I don't like your associates. You should not have seen
14324 the inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your being
14325 that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow."
     
14326 With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the
14327 lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering
14328 noise.
     
14329 Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because
14330 a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and
14331 evidently applies them to him. "A pretty character to bear," the
14332 trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. "A
14333 threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!" And looking up, he sees
14334 the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp.
14335 This so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill
14336 humour. But he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home
14337 to the shooting gallery.
     
     
     
     
14338 CHAPTER XXVIII
     
14339 The Ironmaster
     
     
14340 Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the
14341 family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a
14342 figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in
14343 Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds,
14344 and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended,
14345 and eke into Sir Leicester's bones. The blazing fires of faggot and
14346 coal -- Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest -- that blaze upon the
14347 broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods,
14348 sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The
14349 hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the
14350 cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to
14351 supply the fires' deficiencies and to satisfy Sir Leicester's need.
14352 Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the
14353 listening earth that Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to
14354 town for a few weeks.
     
14355 It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor
14356 relations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair share of
14357 poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality,
14358 like inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be
14359 heard. Sir Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many
14360 murders in the respect that they "will out." Among whom there are
14361 cousins who are so poor that one might almost dare to think it would
14362 have been the happier for them never to have been plated links upon
14363 the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at
14364 first and done base service.
     
14365 Service, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not
14366 profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they
14367 visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live
14368 but shabbily when they can't, and find -- the women no husbands, and
14369 the men no wives -- and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts
14370 that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The
14371 rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the
14372 something over that nobody knows what to do with.
     
14373 Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock's side of the question and of his
14374 way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less. From my
14375 Lord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir
14376 Leicester, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of
14377 relationship. But while he is stately in the cousinship of the
14378 Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified
14379 way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present time, in
14380 despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins
14381 at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.
     
14382 Of these, foremost in the front rank stands Volumnia Dedlock, a young
14383 lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the honour to be
14384 a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great family. Miss
14385 Volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting
14386 ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar
14387 in the Spanish tongue, and propounding French conundrums in country
14388 houses, passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and
14389 forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date
14390 and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the
14391 Spanish language, she retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on
14392 an annual present from Sir Leicester and whence she makes occasional
14393 resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She has an
14394 extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with
14395 thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that
14396 dreary city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of
14397 an indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an
14398 obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird's-eggs.
     
14399 In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case
14400 for the pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and
14401 when William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name would
14402 be put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William Buffy somehow
14403 discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the
14404 times when it could be done, and this was the first clear indication
14405 Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the country was going
14406 to pieces.
     
14407 There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, who can make warm
14408 mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot
14409 than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly
14410 desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments,
14411 unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well-regulated
14412 body politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young
14413 gentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but
14414 somehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were not times
14415 in which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the
14416 second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the
14417 country was going to pieces.
     
14418 The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and
14419 capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to have
14420 done well enough in life if they could have overcome their
14421 cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and
14422 lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as
14423 much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be
14424 how to dispose of them.
     
14425 In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme.
14426 Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world
14427 (for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to
14428 pole), her influence in Sir Leicester's house, however haughty and
14429 indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. The
14430 cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir
14431 Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Bob
14432 Stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and
14433 lunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed
14434 woman in the whole stud.
     
14435 Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal
14436 night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however)
14437 might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is
14438 near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house,
14439 raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom
14440 candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins
14441 yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water
14442 tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the
14443 fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are
14444 two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of the broad hearth, my
14445 Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins,
14446 in a luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester glancing, with
14447 magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.
     
14448 "I occasionally meet on my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose
14449 thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long
14450 evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think,
14451 that I ever saw in my life."
     
14452 "A PROTEGEE of my Lady's," observes Sir Leicester.
     
14453 "I thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked
14454 that girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty
14455 perhaps," says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, "but in its
14456 way, perfect; such bloom I never saw!"
     
14457 Sir Leicester, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the
14458 rouge, appears to say so too.
     
14459 "Indeed," remarks my Lady languidly, "if there is any uncommon eye in
14460 the case, it is Mrs. Rouncewell's, and not mine. Rosa is her
14461 discovery."
     
14462 "Your maid, I suppose?"
     
14463 "No. My anything; pet -- secretary -- messenger -- I don't know what."
     
14464 "You like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower,
14465 or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle -- no, not a poodle, though -- or
14466 anything else that was equally pretty?" says Volumnia, sympathizing.
14467 "Yes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old soul Mrs.
14468 Rouncewell is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as
14469 active and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!"
     
14470 Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper
14471 of Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he
14472 has a real regard for Mrs. Rouncewell and likes to hear her praised.
14473 So he says, "You are right, Volumnia," which Volumnia is extremely
14474 glad to hear.
     
14475 "She has no daughter of her own, has she?"
     
14476 "Mrs. Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two."
     
14477 My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by
14478 Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and
14479 heaves a noiseless sigh.
     
14480 "And it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the
14481 present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening
14482 of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions," says Sir Leicester
14483 with stately gloom, "that I have been informed by Mr. Tulkinghorn
14484 that Mrs. Rouncewell's son has been invited to go into Parliament."
     
14485 Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.
     
14486 "Yes, indeed," repeats Sir Leicester. "Into Parliament."
     
14487 "I never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?"
14488 exclaims Volumnia.
     
14489 "He is called, I believe -- an -- ironmaster." Sir Leicester says it
14490 slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is
14491 called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word
14492 expressive of some other relationship to some other metal.
     
14493 Volumnia utters another little scream.
     
14494 "He has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr. Tulkinghorn
14495 be correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr. Tulkinghorn being always
14496 correct and exact; still that does not," says Sir Leicester, "that
14497 does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange
14498 considerations -- startling considerations, as it appears to me."
     
14499 Miss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester
14500 politely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and
14501 lights it at my Lady's shaded lamp.
     
14502 "I must beg you, my Lady," he says while doing so, "to remain a few
14503 moments, for this individual of whom I speak arrived this evening
14504 shortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note" -- Sir
14505 Leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it -- "I am
14506 bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour
14507 of a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of this
14508 young girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, I
14509 replied that we would see him before retiring."
     
14510 Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her
14511 hosts -- O Lud! -- well rid of the -- what is it? -- ironmaster!
     
14512 The other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir
14513 Leicester rings the bell, "Make my compliments to Mr. Rouncewell, in
14514 the housekeeper's apartments, and say I can receive him now."
     
14515 My Lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly,
14516 looks towards Mr. Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a little over
14517 fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear
14518 voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a
14519 shrewd though open face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman
14520 dressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. Has a
14521 perfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by
14522 the great presence into which he comes.
     
14523 "Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I have already apologized for
14524 intruding on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you,
14525 Sir Leicester."
     
14526 The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself
14527 and my Lady. Mr. Rouncewell quietly takes his seat there.
     
14528 "In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in
14529 progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places
14530 that we are always on the flight."
     
14531 Sir Leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that
14532 there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that
14533 quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and
14534 the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the
14535 fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the
14536 terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much
14537 the property of every Dedlock -- while he lasted -- as the house and
14538 lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose
14539 and that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters.
     
14540 "Lady Dedlock has been so kind," proceeds Mr. Rouncewell with a
14541 respectful glance and a bow that way, "as to place near her a young
14542 beauty of the name of Rosa. Now, my son has fallen in love with Rosa
14543 and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to
14544 their becoming engaged if she will take him -- which I suppose she
14545 will. I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence
14546 in my son's good sense -- even in love. I find her what he represents
14547 her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with
14548 great commendation."
     
14549 "She in all respects deserves it," says my Lady.
     
14550 "I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say so, and I need not comment on
14551 the value to me of your kind opinion of her."
     
14552 "That," observes Sir Leicester with unspeakable grandeur, for he
14553 thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, "must be quite unnecessary."
     
14554 "Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, my son is a very young man,
14555 and Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make
14556 his; and his being married at present is out of the question. But
14557 supposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty
14558 girl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a
14559 piece of candour to say at once -- I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady
14560 Dedlock, you will understand and excuse me -- I should make it a
14561 condition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. Therefore, before
14562 communicating further with my son, I take the liberty of saying that
14563 if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I
14564 will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave
14565 it precisely where it is."
     
14566 Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Leicester's
14567 old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in the iron
14568 districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower
14569 upon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his
14570 whiskers, actually stirs with indignation.
     
14571 "Am I to understand, sir," says Sir Leicester, "and is my Lady to
14572 understand" -- he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of
14573 gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on
14574 her sense -- "am I to understand, Mr. Rouncewell, and is my Lady to
14575 understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for
14576 Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?"
     
14577 "Certainly not, Sir Leicester,"
     
14578 "I am glad to hear it." Sir Leicester very lofty indeed.
     
14579 "Pray, Mr. Rouncewell," says my Lady, warning Sir Leicester off with
14580 the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly,
14581 "explain to me what you mean."
     
14582 "Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothing I could desire more."
     
14583 Addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too
14584 quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness,
14585 however habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture
14586 of resolution and perseverance, my Lady listens with attention,
14587 occasionally slightly bending her head.
     
14588 "I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my
14589 childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a
14590 century and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those
14591 examples -- perhaps as good a one as there is -- of love, and attachment,
14592 and fidelity in such a nation, which England may well be proud of,
14593 but of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole
14594 merit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides -- on
14595 the great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly."
     
14596 Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way,
14597 but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently,
14598 admits the justice of the ironmaster's proposition.
     
14599 "Pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn't have it
14600 hastily supposed," with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir
14601 Leicester, "that I am ashamed of my mother's position here, or
14602 wanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family.
14603 I certainly may have desired -- I certainly have desired, Lady
14604 Dedlock -- that my mother should retire after so many years and end
14605 her days with me. But as I have found that to sever this strong bond
14606 would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea."
     
14607 Sir Leicester very magnificent again at the notion of Mrs. Rouncewell
14608 being spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an
14609 ironmaster.
     
14610 "I have been," proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, "an
14611 apprentice and a workman. I have lived on workman's wages, years and
14612 years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife
14613 was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three
14614 daughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being
14615 fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had
14616 ourselves, we have educated them well, very well. It has been one of
14617 our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station."
     
14618 A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in
14619 his heart, "even of the Chesney Wold station." Not a little more
14620 magnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester.
     
14621 "All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the
14622 class to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal
14623 marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son
14624 will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in
14625 love, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once
14626 worked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first
14627 very possibly. It may be that he had other views for his son.
14628 However, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to
14629 be of unblemished character, he will say to his son, 'I must be quite
14630 sure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter for both of
14631 you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,' or it
14632 may be, 'I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters
14633 for such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour
14634 to see her only so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she
14635 has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair
14636 equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make
14637 you happy.' I know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, and
14638 I think they indicate to me my own course now."
     
14639 Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.
     
14640 "Mr. Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester with his right hand in the
14641 breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted
14642 in the gallery, "do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold and a -- "
14643 Here he resists a disposition to choke, "a factory?"
     
14644 "I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very
14645 different; but for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may
14646 be justly drawn between them."
     
14647 Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long
14648 drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake.
     
14649 "Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady -- my Lady -- has
14650 placed near her person was brought up at the village school outside
14651 the gates?"
     
14652 "Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and
14653 handsomely supported by this family."
     
14654 "Then, Mr. Rouncewell," returns Sir Leicester, "the application of
14655 what you have said is, to me, incomprehensible."
     
14656 "Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say," the
14657 ironmaster is reddening a little, "that I do not regard the village
14658 school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son's
14659 wife?"
     
14660 From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute,
14661 to the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of
14662 society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in
14663 consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not)
14664 not minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto
14665 which they are called -- necessarily and for ever, according to Sir
14666 Leicester's rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to
14667 find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out
14668 of THEIR stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the
14669 floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the
14670 Dedlock mind.
     
14671 "My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me, for one moment!" She has
14672 given a faint indication of intending to speak. "Mr. Rouncewell, our
14673 views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education,
14674 and our views of -- in short, ALL our views -- are so diametrically
14675 opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your
14676 feelings and repellent to my own. This young woman is honoured with
14677 my Lady's notice and favour. If she wishes to withdraw herself from
14678 that notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the
14679 influence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions -- you will allow
14680 me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I readily admit that he
14681 is not accountable for them to me -- who may, in his peculiar opinions,
14682 withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at
14683 liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which
14684 you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other,
14685 on the young woman's position here. Beyond this, we can make no
14686 terms; and here we beg -- if you will be so good -- to leave the
14687 subject."
     
14688 The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an opportunity, but she
14689 says nothing. He then rises and replies, "Sir Leicester and Lady
14690 Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe
14691 that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present
14692 inclinations. Good night!"
     
14693 "Mr. Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester with all the nature of a
14694 gentleman shining in him, "it is late, and the roads are dark. I hope
14695 your time is not so precious but that you will allow my Lady and
14696 myself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to-night at
14697 least."
     
14698 "I hope so," adds my Lady.
     
14699 "I am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night in order to
14700 reach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time
14701 in the morning."
     
14702 Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, Sir Leicester ringing
14703 the bell and my Lady rising as he leaves the room.
     
14704 When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the
14705 fire, and inattentive to the Ghost's Walk, looks at Rosa, writing in
14706 an inner room. Presently my Lady calls her.
     
14707 "Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?"
     
14708 "Oh! My Lady!"
     
14709 My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling,
14710 "Who is it? Is it Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson?"
     
14711 "Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don't know that I am in love with
14712 him -- yet."
     
14713 "Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves YOU, yet?"
     
14714 "I think he likes me a little, my Lady." And Rosa bursts into tears.
     
14715 Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing
14716 her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so
14717 full of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is!
     
14718 "Listen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are
14719 attached to me."
     
14720 "Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is nothing in the world I
14721 wouldn't do to show how much."
     
14722 "And I don't think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even
14723 for a lover?"
     
14724 "No, my Lady! Oh, no!" Rosa looks up for the first time, quite
14725 frightened at the thought.
     
14726 "Confide in me, my child. Don't fear me. I wish you to be happy, and
14727 will make you so -- if I can make anybody happy on this earth."
     
14728 Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My
14729 Lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with
14730 her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own
14731 two hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa
14732 softly withdraws; but still my Lady's eyes are on the fire.
     
14733 In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that
14734 never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life?
14735 Or does she listen to the Ghost's Walk and think what step does it
14736 most resemble? A man's? A woman's? The pattering of a little child's
14737 feet, ever coming on -- on -- on? Some melancholy influence is upon her,
14738 or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the
14739 hearth so desolate?
     
14740 Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before
14741 dinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir
14742 Leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and
14743 opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society,
14744 manifested through Mrs. Rouncewell's son. Not a cousin of the batch
14745 but is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of
14746 William Buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a
14747 stake in the country -- or the pension list -- or something -- by fraud and
14748 wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by Sir
14749 Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general
14750 rising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl
14751 necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets -- for it is one
14752 appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find
14753 it to keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets -- the cousins
14754 disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that
14755 blows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house,
14756 as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves.
     
     
     
     
14757 CHAPTER XXIX
     
14758 The Young Man
     
     
14759 Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in
14760 corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown
14761 holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock
14762 ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the
14763 house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling
14764 down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener
14765 sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full
14766 barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the
14767 shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows
14768 rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenues, veil the
14769 points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds.
14770 On all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a
14771 little church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and
14772 buried Dedlocks walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour
14773 of their graves behind them.
     
14774 But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney
14775 Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning
14776 when it mourns, excepting when a Dedlock dies -- the house in town
14777 shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as
14778 delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter
14779 as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking
14780 of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the
14781 stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir
14782 Leicester's in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir Leicester is glad to
14783 repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library,
14784 condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine
14785 arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient
14786 and modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally
14787 condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like
14788 the miscellaneous articles in a sale. As "Three high-backed chairs, a
14789 table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one
14790 Spanish female's costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg
14791 the model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote." Or "One
14792 stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian
14793 senator's dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with
14794 profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly
14795 mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very
14796 rare), and Othello."
     
14797 Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate
14798 business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady
14799 pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as
14800 indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it
14801 may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it.
14802 It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of
14803 compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the
14804 state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest
14805 for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it.
14806 Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made
14807 his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined
14808 to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed
14809 among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the
14810 splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always
14811 treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous
14812 clients -- whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my
14813 Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon
14814 her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer
14815 with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with
14816 ribbons at the knees.
     
14817 Sir Leicester sits in my Lady's room -- that room in which Mr.
14818 Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce -- particularly
14819 complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her
14820 screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because
14821 he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly
14822 on the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily
14823 to the late case that Sir Leicester has come from the library to my
14824 Lady's room expressly to read them aloud. "The man who wrote this
14825 article," he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he
14826 were nodding down at the man from a mount, "has a well-balanced
14827 mind."
     
14828 The man's mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady,
14829 who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid
14830 resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and
14831 falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at
14832 Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite
14833 unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally
14834 stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as "Very true
14835 indeed," "Very properly put," "I have frequently made the same remark
14836 myself," invariably losing his place after each observation, and
14837 going up and down the column to find it again.
     
14838 Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the
14839 door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange
14840 announcement, "The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy."
     
14841 Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, "The young
14842 man of the name of Guppy?"
     
14843 Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much
14844 discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of
14845 introduction in his manner and appearance.
     
14846 "Pray," says Sir Leicester to Mercury, "what do you mean by
14847 announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?"
     
14848 "I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see the
14849 young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir
14850 Leicester."
     
14851 With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at
14852 the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, "What do you
14853 come calling here for and getting ME into a row?"
     
14854 "It's quite right. I gave him those directions," says my Lady. "Let
14855 the young man wait."
     
14856 "By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will not
14857 interrupt you." Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather
14858 declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and
14859 majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive
14860 appearance.
     
14861 Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has
14862 left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She
14863 suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.
     
14864 "That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a
14865 little conversation," returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.
     
14866 "You are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?"
     
14867 "Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to
14868 favour me with an answer."
     
14869 "And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation
14870 unnecessary? Can you not still?"
     
14871 Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent "No!" and shakes his head.
     
14872 "You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all,
14873 that what you have to say does not concern me -- and I don't know how
14874 it can, and don't expect that it will -- you will allow me to cut you
14875 short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you
14876 please."
     
14877 My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards
14878 the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the
14879 name of Guppy.
     
14880 "With your ladyship's permission, then," says the young man, "I will
14881 now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my
14882 first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit
14883 of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention
14884 to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and
14885 in which my standing -- and I may add income -- is tolerably good. I may
14886 now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm
14887 is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln's Inn, which may not be altogether
14888 unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of
14889 Jarndyce and Jarndyce."
     
14890 My Lady's figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has
14891 ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening.
     
14892 "Now, I may say to your ladyship at once," says Mr. Guppy, a little
14893 emboldened, "it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce
14894 that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I
14895 have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive -- in fact, almost
14896 blackguardly."
     
14897 After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary,
14898 and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, "If it had been Jarndyce
14899 and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your ladyship's
14900 solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of
14901 being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn -- at least we move when we meet
14902 one another -- and if it had been any business of that sort, I should
14903 have gone to him."
     
14904 My Lady turns a little round and says, "You had better sit down."
     
14905 "Thank your ladyship." Mr. Guppy does so. "Now, your ladyship" -- Mr.
14906 Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small
14907 notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the
14908 densest obscurity whenever he looks at it -- "I -- Oh, yes! -- I place
14909 myself entirely in your ladyship's hands. If your ladyship was to
14910 make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the
14911 present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation.
14912 That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship's
14913 honour."
     
14914 My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen,
14915 assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.
     
14916 "Thank your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy; "quite satisfactory.
14917 Now -- I -- dash it! -- The fact is that I put down a head or two here of
14918 the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they're
14919 written short, and I can't quite make out what they mean. If your
14920 ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I -- "
     
14921 Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to
14922 whom he says in his confusion, "I beg your pardon, I am sure." This
14923 does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs,
14924 growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his
14925 eyes, now a long way off, "C.S. What's C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I
14926 know! Yes, to be sure!" And comes back enlightened.
     
14927 "I am not aware," says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady and
14928 his chair, "whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to
14929 see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson."
     
14930 My Lady's eyes look at him full. "I saw a young lady of that name not
14931 long ago. This past autumn."
     
14932 "Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?" asks
14933 Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and
14934 scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.
     
14935 My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.
     
14936 "No."
     
14937 "Not like your ladyship's family?"
     
14938 "No."
     
14939 "I think your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "can hardly remember Miss
14940 Summerson's face?"
     
14941 "I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?"
     
14942 "Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson's image
14943 imprinted on my 'eart -- which I mention in confidence -- I found, when I
14944 had the honour of going over your ladyship's mansion of Chesney Wold
14945 while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend,
14946 such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship's
14947 own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I
14948 didn't at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And
14949 now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often,
14950 since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your
14951 carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I
14952 never saw your ladyship so near), it's really more surprising than I
14953 thought it."
     
14954 Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies
14955 lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,
14956 when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute's
14957 purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at
14958 this moment.
     
14959 My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again
14960 what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her.
     
14961 "Your ladyship," replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, "I
14962 am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! 'Mrs. Chadband.' Yes." Mr.
14963 Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My
14964 Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of
14965 graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady
14966 gaze. "A -- stop a minute, though!" Mr. Guppy refers again. "E.S.
14967 twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on."
     
14968 Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech
14969 with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
     
14970 "Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's
14971 birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because -- which I
14972 mention in confidence -- I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge
14973 and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss
14974 Summerson's image is imprinted on my 'eart. If I could clear this
14975 mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having
14976 the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a
14977 right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make
14978 a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more
14979 dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In
14980 fact, as yet she hasn't favoured them at all."
     
14981 A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady's face.
     
14982 "Now, it's a very singular circumstance, your ladyship," says Mr.
14983 Guppy, "though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of
14984 us professional men -- which I may call myself, for though not
14985 admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge
14986 and Carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of her little
14987 income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy -- that I have
14988 encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought
14989 Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady
14990 was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship."
     
14991 Is the dead colour on my Lady's face reflected from the screen which
14992 has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if
14993 she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on
14994 her?
     
14995 "Did your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "ever happen to hear of Miss
14996 Barbary?"
     
14997 "I don't know. I think so. Yes."
     
14998 "Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship's family?"
     
14999 My Lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.
     
15000 "NOT connected?" says Mr. Guppy. "Oh! Not to your ladyship's
15001 knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes." After each of these
15002 interrogatories, she has inclined her head. "Very good! Now, this
15003 Miss Barbary was extremely close -- seems to have been extraordinarily
15004 close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least)
15005 rather given to conversation -- and my witness never had an idea
15006 whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only
15007 one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single
15008 point, and she then told her that the little girl's real name was not
15009 Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon."
     
15010 "My God!"
     
15011 Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him through,
15012 with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to
15013 the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a
15014 little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness
15015 return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water,
15016 sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees
15017 her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what
15018 he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead
15019 condition seem to have passed away like the features of those
15020 long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which,
15021 struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.
     
15022 "Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?"
     
15023 "I have heard it before."
     
15024 "Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship's family?"
     
15025 "No."
     
15026 "Now, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "I come to the last point of
15027 the case, so far as I have got it up. It's going on, and I shall
15028 gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must
15029 know -- if your ladyship don't happen, by any chance, to know
15030 already -- that there was found dead at the house of a person named
15031 Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great
15032 distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which
15033 law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But,
15034 your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer's
15035 name was Hawdon."
     
15036 "And what is THAT to me?"
     
15037 "Aye, your ladyship, that's the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer
15038 thing happened after that man's death. A lady started up, a disguised
15039 lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went
15040 to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it
15041 her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in
15042 corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any
15043 time."
     
15044 The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to have
15045 him produced.
     
15046 "Oh, I assure your ladyship it's a very queer start indeed," says Mr.
15047 Guppy. "If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on
15048 her fingers when she took her glove off, you'd think it quite
15049 romantic."
     
15050 There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My
15051 Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with
15052 that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to
15053 the young man of the name of Guppy.
     
15054 "It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind
15055 him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a
15056 bundle of old letters."
     
15057 The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never once
15058 release him.
     
15059 "They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship,
15060 they will come into my possession."
     
15061 "Still I ask you, what is this to me?"
     
15062 "Your ladyship, I conclude with that." Mr. Guppy rises. "If you think
15063 there's enough in this chain of circumstances put together -- in the
15064 undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which
15065 is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss
15066 Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson's real name to be
15067 Hawdon; in your ladyship's knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in
15068 Hawdon's dying as he did -- to give your ladyship a family interest in
15069 going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don't
15070 know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never
15071 had them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon
15072 as I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship.
15073 I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I
15074 should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint
15075 was made, and all is in strict confidence."
     
15076 Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or
15077 has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth,
15078 of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they
15079 hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he
15080 can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from
15081 telling anything.
     
15082 "You may bring the letters," says my Lady, "if you choose."
     
15083 "Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,"
15084 says Mr. Guppy, a little injured.
     
15085 "You may bring the letters," she repeats in the same tone, "if
15086 you -- please."
     
15087 "It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day."
     
15088 On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped
15089 like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her
15090 and unlocks it.
     
15091 "Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that
15092 sort," says Mr. Guppy, "and I couldn't accept anything of the kind. I
15093 wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the
15094 same."
     
15095 So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the
15096 supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave
15097 his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.
     
15098 As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper,
15099 is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make
15100 the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very
15101 portraits frown, the very armour stir?
     
15102 No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and
15103 shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered
15104 trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint
15105 vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house,
15106 going upward from a wild figure on its knees.
     
15107 "O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my
15108 cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had
15109 renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!"
     
     
     
     
15110 CHAPTER XXX
     
15111 Esther's Narrative
     
     
15112 Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a
15113 few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who,
15114 having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having
15115 written to my guardian, "by her son Allan's desire," to report that
15116 she had heard from him and that he was well "and sent his kind
15117 remembrances to all of us," had been invited by my guardian to make a
15118 visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took
15119 very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that
15120 sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew
15121 very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt
15122 it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite
15123 help it.
     
15124 She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands
15125 folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me
15126 that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being
15127 so upright and trim, though I don't think it was that, because I
15128 thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general
15129 expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an
15130 old lady. I don't know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I
15131 thought I did not then. Or at least -- but it don't matter.
     
15132 Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me
15133 into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair;
15134 and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I
15135 was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from
15136 Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right
15137 names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery
15138 with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they
15139 were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic
15140 of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.
     
15141 "So, Miss Summerson," she would say to me with stately triumph,
15142 "this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son
15143 goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but
15144 he always has what is much better -- family, my dear."
     
15145 I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in
15146 India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say
15147 it was a great thing to be so highly connected.
     
15148 "It IS, my dear, a great thing," Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. "It has
15149 its disadvantages; my son's choice of a wife, for instance, is
15150 limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is
15151 limited in much the same manner."
     
15152 Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to
15153 assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us
15154 notwithstanding.
     
15155 "Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear," she would say, and always with some
15156 emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate
15157 heart, "was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of
15158 MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal
15159 Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last
15160 representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he
15161 will set them up again and unite them with another old family."
     
15162 It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try,
15163 only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because -- but I need not be so
15164 particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.
     
15165 "My dear," she said one night, "you have so much sense and you look
15166 at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that
15167 it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of
15168 mine. You don't know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of
15169 him, I dare say, to recollect him?"
     
15170 "Yes, ma'am. I recollect him."
     
15171 "Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,
15172 and I should like to have your opinion of him."
     
15173 "Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt," said I, "that is so difficult!"
     
15174 "Why is it so difficult, my dear?" she returned. "I don't see it
15175 myself."
     
15176 "To give an opinion -- "
     
15177 "On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT'S true."
     
15178 I didn't mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a
15179 good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian.
15180 I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his
15181 profession -- we thought -- and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss
15182 Flite were above all praise.
     
15183 "You do him justice!" said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. "You
15184 define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession
15185 faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he
15186 is not without faults, love."
     
15187 "None of us are," said I.
     
15188 "Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to
15189 correct," returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. "I
15190 am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a
15191 third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself."
     
15192 I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have
15193 been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the
15194 pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.
     
15195 "You are right again, my dear," the old lady retorted, "but I don't
15196 refer to his profession, look you."
     
15197 "Oh!" said I.
     
15198 "No," said she. "I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is
15199 always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has
15200 been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really
15201 cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any
15202 harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still,
15203 it's not right, you know; is it?"
     
15204 "No," said I, as she seemed to wait for me.
     
15205 "And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear."
     
15206 I supposed it might.
     
15207 "Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more
15208 careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he
15209 has always said, 'Mother, I will be; but you know me better than
15210 anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm -- in short, mean
15211 nothing.' All of which is very true, my dear, but is no
15212 justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an
15213 indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and
15214 introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,"
15215 said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, "regarding your
15216 dear self, my love?"
     
15217 "Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?"
     
15218 "Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek
15219 his fortune and to find a wife -- when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune
15220 and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!"
     
15221 I don't think I did blush -- at all events, it was not important if I
15222 did -- and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had
15223 no wish to change it.
     
15224 "Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to
15225 come for you, my love?" said Mrs. Woodcourt.
     
15226 "If you believe you are a good prophet," said I.
     
15227 "Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very
15228 worthy, much older -- five and twenty years, perhaps -- than yourself.
15229 And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy."
     
15230 "That is a good fortune," said I. "But why is it to be mine?"
     
15231 "My dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it -- you are so busy,
15232 and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there's
15233 suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love,
15234 will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I
15235 shall."
     
15236 It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it
15237 did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night
15238 uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to
15239 confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I
15240 would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old
15241 lady's confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me
15242 the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was
15243 a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth.
15244 Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her
15245 honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after
15246 all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could
15247 not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by
15248 her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least
15249 as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless
15250 things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for
15251 I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed
15252 that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and
15253 pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in
15254 twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house,
15255 and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was
15256 better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?
15257 These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account
15258 for. At least, if I could -- but I shall come to all that by and by,
15259 and it is mere idleness to go on about it now.
     
15260 So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was
15261 relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought
15262 such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.
     
15263 First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I
15264 was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no
15265 news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy
15266 told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada
15267 and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the
15268 world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never
15269 should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy,
15270 and Caddy had so much to say to us.
     
15271 It seemed that Caddy's unfortunate papa had got over his
15272 bankruptcy -- "gone through the Gazette," was the expression Caddy
15273 used, as if it were a tunnel -- with the general clemency and
15274 commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in
15275 some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had
15276 given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should
15277 think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied
15278 every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had
15279 been honourably dismissed to "the office" to begin the world again.
15280 What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a
15281 "custom-house and general agent," and the only thing I ever
15282 understood about that business was that when he wanted money more
15283 than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found
15284 it.
     
15285 As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn
15286 lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden
15287 (where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting
15288 the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves
15289 with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr.
15290 Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had
15291 deferred to Mr. Turveydrop's deportment so submissively that they had
15292 become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus
15293 familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage, had worked up his
15294 parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being
15295 near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple
15296 commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they
15297 would.
     
15298 "And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?"
     
15299 "Oh! Poor Pa," said Caddy, "only cried and said he hoped we might get
15300 on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn't say so before Prince,
15301 he only said so to me. And he said, 'My poor girl, you have not been
15302 very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you
15303 mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder
15304 him than marry him -- if you really love him.'"
     
15305 "And how did you reassure him, Caddy?"
     
15306 "Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and
15307 hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying myself.
15308 But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped
15309 our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in
15310 of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better
15311 daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy's coming
15312 to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children
15313 were Indians."
     
15314 "Indians, Caddy?"
     
15315 "Yes," said Caddy, "wild Indians. And Pa said" -- here she began to
15316 sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world -- "that
15317 he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their
15318 being all tomahawked together."
     
15319 Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did
15320 not mean these destructive sentiments.
     
15321 "No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering in
15322 their blood," said Caddy, "but he means that they are very
15323 unfortunate in being Ma's children and that he is very unfortunate in
15324 being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems
15325 unnatural to say so."
     
15326 I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.
     
15327 "Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther," she returned. "It's impossible to
15328 say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough;
15329 and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was
15330 I don't know what -- a steeple in the distance," said Caddy with a
15331 sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says 'Oh, Caddy,
15332 Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the Borrioboola
15333 letters."
     
15334 "And about your wardrobe, Caddy?" said I. For she was under no
15335 restraint with us.
     
15336 "Well, my dear Esther," she returned, drying her eyes, "I must do the
15337 best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind
15338 remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question
15339 concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and
15340 would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor
15341 cares."
     
15342 Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,
15343 but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am
15344 afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much
15345 to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such
15346 discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a
15347 little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying
15348 with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all
15349 three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and
15350 saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of
15351 her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was,
15352 we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out
15353 again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be
15354 squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the
15355 docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my
15356 guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would
15357 be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more
15358 than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and
15359 if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat
15360 down to work.
     
15361 She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her
15362 fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help
15363 reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly
15364 with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over
15365 that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my
15366 darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town,
15367 and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.
     
15368 Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious "to learn housekeeping,"
15369 as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning
15370 housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I
15371 laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she
15372 proposed it. However, I said, "Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome
15373 to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear," and I showed
15374 her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have
15375 supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her
15376 study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my
15377 housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have
15378 thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder
15379 follower than Caddy Jellyby.
     
15380 So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and
15381 backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the
15382 three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see
15383 what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take
15384 care of my guardian.
     
15385 When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in
15386 Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where
15387 preparations were in progress too -- a good many, I observed, for
15388 enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting
15389 the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house -- but
15390 our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the
15391 wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some
15392 faint sense of the occasion.
     
15393 The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.
15394 Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the
15395 back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with
15396 waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be
15397 littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong
15398 coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by
15399 appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a
15400 decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home,
15401 he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got
15402 something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then,
15403 feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton
15404 Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down
15405 the house as they had always been accustomed to do.
     
15406 The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable
15407 condition being quite out of the question at a week's notice, I
15408 proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on
15409 her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should
15410 confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a
15411 clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of
15412 attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably
15413 since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a
15414 dustman's horse.
     
15415 Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe would be the best means
15416 of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look
15417 at it spread out on Caddy's bed in the evening after the unwholesome
15418 boy was gone.
     
15419 "My dear Miss Summerson," said she, rising from her desk with her
15420 usual sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous preparations,
15421 though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is
15422 something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being
15423 married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!"
     
15424 She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes
15425 in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to
15426 her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, "My
15427 good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have
15428 been equipped for Africa!"
     
15429 On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this
15430 troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on
15431 my replying yes, she said, "Will my room be required, my dear Miss
15432 Summerson? For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers away."
     
15433 I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted
15434 and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. "Well, my
15435 dear Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, "you know best, I dare say.
15436 But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that
15437 extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don't know
15438 which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday
15439 afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious."
     
15440 "It is not likely to occur again," said I, smiling. "Caddy will be
15441 married but once, probably."
     
15442 "That's true," Mrs. Jellyby replied; "that's true, my dear. I suppose
15443 we must make the best of it!"
     
15444 The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the
15445 occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely
15446 from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally
15447 shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior
15448 spirit who could just bear with our trifling.
     
15449 The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion
15450 in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at
15451 length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place
15452 mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which
15453 Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on
15454 by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then
15455 observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to
15456 Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.
     
15457 The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if
15458 Mrs. Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul's or
15459 Saint Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the size
15460 of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to
15461 be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it
15462 had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those
15463 preparations for Caddy's marriage, that nothing which it had been
15464 possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic
15465 object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child's knee
15466 to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate
15467 upon it.
     
15468 Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he
15469 was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he
15470 saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among
15471 all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such
15472 wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were
15473 opened -- bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby's caps,
15474 letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood,
15475 wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags,
15476 footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby's bonnets, books
15477 with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out
15478 by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells,
15479 heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds,
15480 umbrellas -- that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came
15481 regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head
15482 against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known
15483 how.
     
15484 "Poor Pa!" said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when
15485 we really had got things a little to rights. "It seems unkind to
15486 leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first
15487 knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's
15488 useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We
15489 never have a servant who don't drink. Ma's ruinous to everything."
     
15490 Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low
15491 indeed and shed tears, I thought.
     
15492 "My heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed Caddy. "I can't help
15493 thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince,
15494 and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a
15495 disappointed life!"
     
15496 "My dear Caddy!" said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the
15497 wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three
15498 words together.
     
15499 "Yes, Pa!" cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him
15500 affectionately.
     
15501 "My dear Caddy," said Mr. Jellyby. "Never have -- "
     
15502 "Not Prince, Pa?" faltered Caddy. "Not have Prince?"
     
15503 "Yes, my dear," said Mr. Jellyby. "Have him, certainly. But, never
15504 have -- "
     
15505 I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that
15506 Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after
15507 dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his
15508 mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy
15509 manner.
     
15510 "What do you wish me not to have? Don't have what, dear Pa?" asked
15511 Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.
     
15512 "Never have a mission, my dear child."
     
15513 Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and
15514 this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to
15515 expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he
15516 had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been
15517 completely exhausted long before I knew him.
     
15518 I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking
15519 over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o'clock
15520 before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it
15521 required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired
15522 out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon
15523 cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.
     
15524 In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity
15525 of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain
15526 breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But
15527 when my darling came, I thought -- and I think now -- that I never had
15528 seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet's.
     
15529 We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at
15530 the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress,
15531 and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think
15532 that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again
15533 until we brought Prince up to fetch her away -- when, I am sorry to
15534 say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in
15535 a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy
15536 and giving my guardian to understand that his son's happiness was his
15537 own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to
15538 ensure it. "My dear sir," said Mr. Turveydrop, "these young people
15539 will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation,
15540 and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have
15541 wished -- you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you
15542 remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent -- I could have
15543 wished that my son had married into a family where there was more
15544 deportment, but the will of heaven be done!"
     
15545 Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party -- Mr. Pardiggle, an
15546 obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who
15547 was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.
15548 Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair
15549 brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was
15550 also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the
15551 accepted of a young -- at least, an unmarried -- lady, a Miss Wisk, who
15552 was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, my guardian said, was to show
15553 the world that woman's mission was man's mission and that the only
15554 genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving
15555 declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.
15556 The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby's,
15557 all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned,
15558 there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the
15559 ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected
15560 home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church
15561 was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was
15562 his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms
15563 of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.
     
15564 A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly
15565 have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the
15566 domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them;
15567 indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat
15568 down to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in
15569 the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of
15570 her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a
15571 mission -- except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly
15572 said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission -- cared at all
15573 for anybody's mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only
15574 one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and
15575 applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk
15576 was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation
15577 of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the
15578 while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but
15579 Borrioboola-Gha.
     
15580 But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride
15581 home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr.
15582 Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with
15583 his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman
15584 like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig,
15585 stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the
15586 ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do
15587 it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in
15588 appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings,
15589 as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with
15590 her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all
15591 the company.
     
15592 We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of
15593 the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen
15594 upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was
15595 Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an
15596 agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports
15597 of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede
15598 to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So
15599 he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in
15600 reference to the state of his pinafore, "Oh, you naughty Peepy, what
15601 a shocking little pig you are!" was not at all discomposed. He was
15602 very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I
15603 had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first
15604 into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.
     
15605 My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his
15606 amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial
15607 company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or
15608 her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even
15609 that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my
15610 guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the
15611 honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly.
15612 What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all
15613 the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.
15614 Turveydrop -- and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,
15615 considering himself vastly superior to all the company -- it was a very
15616 unpromising case.
     
15617 At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her
15618 property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her
15619 and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging,
15620 then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's neck with
15621 the greatest tenderness.
     
15622 "I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing from dictation, Ma," sobbed
15623 Caddy. "I hope you forgive me now."
     
15624 "Oh, Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "I have told you over and over
15625 again that I have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it."
     
15626 "You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are
15627 sure before I go away, Ma?"
     
15628 "You foolish Caddy," returned Mrs. Jellyby, "do I look angry, or have
15629 I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?"
     
15630 "Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!"
     
15631 Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. "You romantic child,"
15632 said she, lightly patting Caddy's back. "Go along. I am excellent
15633 friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!"
     
15634 Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as
15635 if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the
15636 hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and
15637 sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he
15638 found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.
     
15639 And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and
15640 respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was
15641 overwhelming.
     
15642 "Thank you over and over again, father!" said Prince, kissing his
15643 hand. "I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration
15644 regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy."
     
15645 "Very," sobbed Caddy. "Ve-ry!"
     
15646 "My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "and dear daughter, I have done
15647 my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks
15648 down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my
15649 recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I
15650 believe?"
     
15651 "Dear father, never!" cried Prince.
     
15652 "Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!" said Caddy.
     
15653 "This," returned Mr. Turveydrop, "is as it should be. My children, my
15654 home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave
15655 you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an
15656 absence of a week, I think?"
     
15657 "A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week."
     
15658 "My dear child," said Mr. Turveydrop, "let me, even under the present
15659 exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly
15660 important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all
15661 neglected, are apt to take offence."
     
15662 "This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner."
     
15663 "Good!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "You will find fires, my dear Caroline,
15664 in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes,
15665 Prince!" anticipating some self-denying objection on his son's part
15666 with a great air. "You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper
15667 part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my
15668 apartment. Now, bless ye!"
     
15669 They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at
15670 Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same
15671 condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too,
15672 I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr.
15673 Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed
15674 them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his
15675 meaning that I said, quite flurried, "You are very welcome, sir. Pray
15676 don't mention it!"
     
15677 "I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian," said I when we
15678 three were on our road home.
     
15679 "I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see."
     
15680 "Is the wind in the east to-day?" I ventured to ask him.
     
15681 He laughed heartily and answered, "No."
     
15682 "But it must have been this morning, I think," said I.
     
15683 He answered "No" again, and this time my dear girl confidently
15684 answered "No" too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming
15685 flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. "Much YOU
15686 know of east winds, my ugly darling," said I, kissing her in my
15687 admiration -- I couldn't help it.
     
15688 Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a
15689 long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it
15690 gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind
15691 where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there
15692 was sunshine and summer air.
     
     
     
     
15693 CHAPTER XXXI
     
15694 Nurse and Patient
     
     
15695 I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went
15696 upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder and
15697 see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying
15698 business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen,
15699 but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated,
15700 and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into
15701 corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters
15702 Charley's young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and
15703 tottering, it so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert
15704 at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.
     
15705 "Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which
15706 it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed
15707 in all kinds of ways, "we are improving. If we only get to make it
15708 round, we shall be perfect, Charley."
     
15709 Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join
15710 Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.
     
15711 "Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time."
     
15712 Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut
15713 her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride
15714 and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.
     
15715 "Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of
15716 the name of Jenny?"
     
15717 "A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes."
     
15718 "She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said
15719 you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the young lady's little
15720 maid -- meaning you for the young lady, miss -- and I said yes, miss."
     
15721 "I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley."
     
15722 "So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to
15723 live -- she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of
15724 Liz, miss?"
     
15725 "I think I do, Charley, though not by name."
     
15726 "That's what she said!" returned Charley. "They have both come back,
15727 miss, and have been tramping high and low."
     
15728 "Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?"
     
15729 "Yes, miss." If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy
15730 as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would
15731 have been excellent. "And this poor person came about the house three
15732 or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss -- all she wanted,
15733 she said -- but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me
15734 a-going about, miss," said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest
15735 delight and pride, "and she thought I looked like your maid!"
     
15736 "Did she though, really, Charley?"
     
15737 "Yes, miss!" said Charley. "Really and truly." And Charley, with
15738 another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round
15739 again and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of
15740 seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing
15741 before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner,
15742 and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the
15743 pleasantest way.
     
15744 "And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.
     
15745 My little maid's countenance fell as she replied, "By the doctor's
15746 shop, miss." For Charley wore her black frock yet.
     
15747 I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said no. It
15748 was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to
15749 Saint Albans and was tramping he didn't know where. A poor boy,
15750 Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. "Like as Tom might
15751 have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father," said Charley,
15752 her round eyes filling with tears.
     
15753 "And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"
     
15754 "She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done as
15755 much for her."
     
15756 My little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so
15757 closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great
15758 difficulty in reading her thoughts. "Well, Charley," said I, "it
15759 appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to
15760 Jenny's and see what's the matter."
     
15761 The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and
15762 having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and
15763 made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her
15764 readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went
15765 out.
     
15766 It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The
15767 rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission
15768 for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had
15769 partly cleared, but was very gloomy -- even above us, where a few stars
15770 were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set
15771 three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and
15772 awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea
15773 stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare
15774 overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two
15775 lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an
15776 unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and
15777 on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was
15778 as solemn as might be.
     
15779 I had no thought that night -- none, I am quite sure -- of what was soon
15780 to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had
15781 stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went
15782 upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself
15783 as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then
15784 and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with
15785 that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and
15786 time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and
15787 the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.
     
15788 It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place
15789 where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than
15790 I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were
15791 burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.
     
15792 We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the
15793 patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the
15794 little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the
15795 poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported
15796 by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his
15797 arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried
15798 to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The
15799 place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar
15800 smell.
     
15801 I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was
15802 at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and
15803 stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.
     
15804 His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident
15805 that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.
     
15806 "I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "I
15807 ain't a-going there, so I tell you!"
     
15808 I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low
15809 voice, "Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head," and
15810 said to him, "Jo, Jo, what's the matter?"
     
15811 "I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy.
     
15812 "Who?"
     
15813 "The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to the
15814 berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like the
15815 name on it. She might go a-berryin ME." His shivering came on again,
15816 and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.
     
15817 "He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am," said
15818 Jenny softly. "Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo."
     
15819 "Is it?" returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm
15820 held out above his burning eyes. "She looks to me the t'other one. It
15821 ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the
15822 t'other one."
     
15823 My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and
15824 trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up
15825 to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse.
15826 Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful
15827 face, which seemed to engage his confidence.
     
15828 "I say!" said the boy. "YOU tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other
15829 lady?"
     
15830 Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him
15831 and made him as warm as she could.
     
15832 "Oh!" the boy muttered. "Then I s'pose she ain't."
     
15833 "I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. "What is the
15834 matter with you?"
     
15835 "I'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze
15836 wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and then
15837 burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head's all sleepy, and
15838 all a-going mad-like -- and I'm so dry -- and my bones isn't half so much
15839 bones as pain.
     
15840 "When did he come here?" I asked the woman.
     
15841 "This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had
15842 known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?"
     
15843 "Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.
     
15844 Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very
15845 little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it
15846 heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.
     
15847 "When did he come from London?" I asked.
     
15848 "I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and
15849 hot. "I'm a-going somewheres."
     
15850 "Where is he going?" I asked.
     
15851 "Somewheres," repeated the boy in a louder tone. "I have been moved
15852 on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t'other one
15853 give me the sov'ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she's always a-watching, and
15854 a-driving of me -- what have I done to her? -- and they're all a-watching
15855 and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time
15856 when I don't get up, to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm
15857 a-going somewheres. That's where I'm a-going. She told me, down in
15858 Tom-all-Alone's, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the
15859 Stolbuns Road. It's as good as another."
     
15860 He always concluded by addressing Charley.
     
15861 "What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside. "He
15862 could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew
15863 where he was going!"
     
15864 "I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing
15865 compassionately at him. "Perhaps the dead know better, if they could
15866 only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and I've
15867 given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will
15868 take him in (here's my pretty in the bed -- her child, but I call it
15869 mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home
15870 and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and might do him
15871 a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!"
     
15872 The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up
15873 with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the
15874 little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out
15875 of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know. There she
15876 was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living
15877 in Mrs. Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma again.
     
15878 The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from
15879 hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too
15880 early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last
15881 it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent
15882 her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it
15883 appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in
15884 evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all,
15885 she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was
15886 frightened too, "Jenny, your master's on the road home, and mine's
15887 not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for
15888 him!" They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his
15889 hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he
15890 shuffled out of the house.
     
15891 "Give me the child, my dear," said its mother to Charley, "and thank
15892 you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my
15893 master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by the kiln by and by,
15894 where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!" She
15895 hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her
15896 child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her
15897 drunken husband.
     
15898 I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should
15899 bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave
15900 the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did,
15901 and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before
15902 me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.
     
15903 I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under
15904 his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried
15905 his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went
15906 bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we
15907 called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing
15908 with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his
15909 shivering fit.
     
15910 I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some
15911 shelter for the night.
     
15912 "I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm
15913 bricks."
     
15914 "But don't you know that people die there?" replied Charley.
     
15915 "They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their
15916 lodgings -- she knows where; I showed her -- and they dies down in
15917 Tom-all-Alone's in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according
15918 to what I see." Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, "If she ain't the
15919 t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there THREE of 'em then?"
     
15920 Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at
15921 myself when the boy glared on me so.
     
15922 But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that
15923 he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It
15924 was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I
15925 doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy's
15926 steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however,
15927 and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange
15928 a thing.
     
15929 Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the
15930 window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be
15931 called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into
15932 the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Skimpole,
15933 who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice,
15934 and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing
15935 everything he wanted.
     
15936 They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had
15937 gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with
15938 Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found
15939 in a ditch.
     
15940 "This is a sorrowful case," said my guardian after asking him a
15941 question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. "What do you
15942 say, Harold?"
     
15943 "You had better turn him out," said Mr. Skimpole.
     
15944 "What do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly.
     
15945 "My dear Jarndyce," said Mr. Skimpole, "you know what I am: I am a
15946 child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional
15947 objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical
15948 man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about
15949 him."
     
15950 Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again
15951 and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood
15952 by.
     
15953 "You'll say it's childish," observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at
15954 us. "Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never
15955 pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only
15956 put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you
15957 know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or
15958 five shillings, or five pound ten -- you are arithmeticians, and I am
15959 not -- and get rid of him!"
     
15960 "And what is he to do then?" asked my guardian.
     
15961 "Upon my life," said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his
15962 engaging smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But
15963 I have no doubt he'll do it."
     
15964 "Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my guardian, to whom I
15965 had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is it
15966 not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his
15967 hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his
15968 hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken
15969 care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?"
     
15970 "My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "you'll pardon the
15971 simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is
15972 perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN'T he a prisoner
15973 then?"
     
15974 My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of
15975 amusement and indignation in his face.
     
15976 "Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should
15977 imagine," said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid. "It seems to me
15978 that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more
15979 respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into
15980 prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and
15981 consequently more of a certain sort of poetry."
     
15982 "I believe," returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that
15983 there is not such another child on earth as yourself."
     
15984 "Do you really?" said Mr. Skimpole. "I dare say! But I confess I
15985 don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to
15986 invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt
15987 born with an appetite -- probably, when he is in a safer state of
15988 health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young
15989 friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young
15990 friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will you have the
15991 goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?' Society, which has taken
15992 upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and
15993 professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that
15994 spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You really must excuse
15995 me if I seize it.' Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected
15996 energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain
15997 amount of romance; and I don't know but what I should be more
15998 interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case,
15999 than merely as a poor vagabond -- which any one can be."
     
16000 "In the meantime," I ventured to observe, "he is getting worse."
     
16001 "In the meantime," said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, "as Miss Summerson,
16002 with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse.
16003 Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still
16004 worse."
     
16005 The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.
     
16006 "Of course, little woman," observed my guardian, turning to me, "I
16007 can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there
16008 to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his
16009 condition, that is necessary. But it's growing late, and is a very
16010 bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the
16011 wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till
16012 morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We'll do that."
     
16013 "Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as
16014 we moved away. "Are you going back to our young friend?"
     
16015 "Yes," said my guardian.
     
16016 "How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!" returned Mr. Skimpole
16017 with playful admiration. "You don't mind these things; neither does
16018 Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do
16019 anything. Such is will! I have no will at all -- and no won't -- simply
16020 can't."
     
16021 "You can't recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?" said my
16022 guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half
16023 angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an accountable
16024 being.
     
16025 "My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his
16026 pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take it. You
16027 can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he
16028 sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it
16029 is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss
16030 Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the
16031 administration of detail that she knows all about it."
     
16032 We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to
16033 do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with
16034 the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at
16035 what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants
16036 compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,
16037 we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house
16038 carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to
16039 observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a
16040 general impression among them that frequently calling him "Old Chap"
16041 was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed the operations and
16042 went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little
16043 stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My
16044 guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and
16045 reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on
16046 the boy's behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at
16047 day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to
16048 sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of
16049 his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any
16050 noise without being heard.
     
16051 Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all
16052 this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic
16053 airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with
16054 great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the
16055 drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come
16056 into his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a
16057 peasant boy,
     
16058    "Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,
16059     Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home."
     
16060 quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told
16061 us.
     
16062 He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely
16063 chirped -- those were his delighted words -- when he thought by what a
16064 happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass
16065 of negus, "Better health to our young friend!" and supposed and gaily
16066 pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become
16067 Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the
16068 Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little
16069 annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he
16070 said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his
16071 way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole was, Harold
16072 Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he
16073 first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his
16074 failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the
16075 bargain; and he hoped we would do the same.
     
16076 Charley's last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from
16077 my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went
16078 to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.
     
16079 There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before
16080 daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my
16081 window and asked one of our men who had been among the active
16082 sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the
16083 house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.
     
16084 "It's the boy, miss," said he.
     
16085 "Is he worse?" I inquired.
     
16086 "Gone, miss.
     
16087 "Dead!"
     
16088 "Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off."
     
16089 At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed
16090 hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and
16091 the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he
16092 had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty
16093 cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and
16094 it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was
16095 missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to
16096 the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and
16097 that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary
16098 horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of
16099 us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in
16100 his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend
16101 that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him,
16102 and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off.
     
16103 Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The
16104 brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women
16105 were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and
16106 nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for
16107 some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit
16108 of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and
16109 stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the
16110 boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing
16111 was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when
16112 he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.
     
16113 The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even
16114 then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very
16115 memorable to me.
     
16116 As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as
16117 I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up,
16118 I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.
     
16119 "Charley," said I, "are you so cold?"
     
16120 "I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I can't
16121 hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss.
16122 Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill."
     
16123 I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of
16124 communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked
16125 it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the
16126 key.
     
16127 Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest. Go
16128 away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently." Ah!
16129 It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions
16130 again.
     
16131 Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my
16132 room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I
16133 told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I
16134 should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above
16135 all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and
16136 even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter
16137 saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she
16138 loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than
16139 the garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than
16140 she had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet
16141 voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love
16142 it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and
16143 replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it
16144 afterwards, when the harder time came!
     
16145 They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door
16146 wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated
16147 that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There
16148 was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they
16149 would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night
16150 without the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to
16151 choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could
16152 trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out
16153 to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting
16154 Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than
16155 in any other respect.
     
16156 And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy
16157 danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day
16158 and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such
16159 a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her
16160 head in my arms -- repose would come to her, so, when it would come to
16161 her in no other attitude -- I silently prayed to our Father in heaven
16162 that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught
16163 me.
     
16164 I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would
16165 change and be disfigured, even if she recovered -- she was such a child
16166 with her dimpled face -- but that thought was, for the greater part,
16167 lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind
16168 rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and the little
16169 children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my
16170 arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the
16171 wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to
16172 think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby
16173 who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their
16174 need was dead!
     
16175 There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me,
16176 telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was
16177 sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would
16178 speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could
16179 to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was
16180 the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler's
16181 daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And
16182 Charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and
16183 prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and
16184 given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get
16185 better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come
16186 into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show
16187 Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on
16188 earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven!
     
16189 But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there
16190 was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And
16191 there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high
16192 belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on
16193 the part of her poor despised father.
     
16194 And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the
16195 dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend.
16196 The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being
16197 in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged;
16198 and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish
16199 likeness again.
     
16200 It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood
16201 out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at
16202 last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I
16203 felt that I was stricken cold.
     
16204 Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed
16205 again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her
16206 illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at
16207 tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was
16208 rapidly following in Charley's steps.
     
16209 I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to
16210 return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk
16211 with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that
16212 I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside
16213 myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at
16214 times -- with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too
16215 large altogether.
     
16216 In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare
16217 Charley, with which view I said, "You're getting quite strong,
16218 Charley, are you not?'
     
16219 "Oh, quite!" said Charley.
     
16220 "Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?"
     
16221 "Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley. But Charley's
16222 face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY
16223 face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom,
16224 and said "Oh, miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!" and a great deal
16225 more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.
     
16226 "Now, Charley," said I after letting her go on for a little while,
16227 "if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And
16228 unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for
16229 yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley."
     
16230 "If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. "Oh, my
16231 dear, my dear! If you'll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my
16232 dear!" -- how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she
16233 clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears -- "I'll be good."
     
16234 So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.
     
16235 "Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley quietly. "I am
16236 listening to everything you say."
     
16237 "It's very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor
16238 to-night that I don't think I am well and that you are going to nurse
16239 me."
     
16240 For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. "And in the
16241 morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be
16242 quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley,
16243 and say I am asleep -- that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep.
16244 At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one
16245 come."
     
16246 Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the
16247 doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask
16248 relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I
16249 have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day,
16250 and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first
16251 morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.
     
16252 On the second morning I heard her dear voice -- Oh, how dear
16253 now! -- outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech
16254 being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer
16255 softly, "Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!"
     
16256 "How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired.
     
16257 "Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain.
     
16258 "But I know she is very beautiful this morning."
     
16259 "She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. "Still looking up
16260 at the window."
     
16261 With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when
16262 raised like that!
     
16263 I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.
     
16264 "Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way
16265 into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the
16266 last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for
16267 one moment as I lie here, I shall die."
     
16268 "I never will! I never will!" she promised me.
     
16269 "I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a
16270 little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you,
16271 Charley; I am blind."
     
     
     
     
16272 CHAPTER XXXII
     
16273 The Appointed Time
     
     
16274 It is night in Lincoln's Inn -- perplexed and troublous valley of the
16275 shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day -- and
16276 fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down
16277 the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine
16278 o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are
16279 shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of
16280 sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows
16281 clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a
16282 fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
16283 the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
16284 patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and
16285 conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes
16286 of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an
16287 acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their
16288 species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,
16289 for every day, some good account at last.
     
16290 In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and
16291 bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and
16292 supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged
16293 with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been
16294 lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and
16295 scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of
16296 passengers -- Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged
16297 congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on
16298 a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and
16299 the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the
16300 testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of
16301 their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the
16302 Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano
16303 through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and
16304 where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar
16305 like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a
16306 concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to
16307 "Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.
16308 Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of
16309 professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who
16310 has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,
16311 Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year
16312 and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,
16313 and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every
16314 night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.
16315 "Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my
16316 living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the
16317 same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public
16318 applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.
16319 Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms
16320 appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that
16321 tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.
16322 Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was
16323 fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to
16324 bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court
16325 and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen
16326 in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,
16327 the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be
16328 suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis
16329 that every one is either robbing or being robbed.
     
16330 It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there
16331 is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming
16332 night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the
16333 sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the
16334 registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the
16335 air -- there is plenty in it -- or it may be something in himself that is
16336 in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He
16337 comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty
16338 times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since
16339 the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,
16340 Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight
16341 velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all
16342 proportion), oftener than before.
     
16343 It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for
16344 he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the
16345 secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a
16346 partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what
16347 seems to be its fountain-head -- the rag and bottle shop in the court.
16348 It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by
16349 the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out
16350 at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated
16351 after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back
16352 again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.
     
16353 "What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are YOU
16354 there?"
     
16355 "Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."
     
16356 "Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer
16357 inquires.
     
16358 "Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not
16359 very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.
     
16360 "Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to
16361 sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,
16362 that you're -- not to put too fine a point upon it -- that you're rather
16363 greasy here, sir?"
     
16364 "Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in
16365 the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the
16366 Sol's Arms."
     
16367 "Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes
16368 again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at
16369 the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir!
16370 And I don't think" -- Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then
16371 spits and wipes his mouth -- "I don't think -- not to put too fine a
16372 point upon it -- that they were quite fresh when they were shown the
16373 gridiron."
     
16374 "That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."
     
16375 "It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find it
16376 sinking to the spirits."
     
16377 "By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.
     
16378 "Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,
16379 with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby, looking
16380 in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling
16381 back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room
16382 alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an
16383 evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and
16384 stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you
16385 didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference."
     
16386 "I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.
     
16387 "It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough
16388 of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it
16389 in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."
     
16390 "I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."
     
16391 "You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.
16392 "Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the
16393 law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby with his
16394 apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the profession I
16395 get my living by."
     
16396 Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the
16397 stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a
16398 star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his
16399 way out of this conversation.
     
16400 "It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,
16401 "that he should have been -- "
     
16402 "Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.
     
16403 "The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and
16404 right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on
16405 the button.
     
16406 "Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of
16407 the subject. "I thought we had done with him."
     
16408 "I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should
16409 have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that
16410 you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which
16411 there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"
16412 says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have
16413 unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, "because
16414 I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done
16415 really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir," adds Mr.
16416 Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.
     
16417 "It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more
16418 glancing up and down the court.
     
16419 "Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.
     
16420 "There does."
     
16421 "Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "Quite
16422 a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid
16423 you good night" -- Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go,
16424 though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since
16425 he stopped to speak -- "my little woman will be looking for me else.
16426 Good night, sir!"
     
16427 If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of
16428 looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His
16429 little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this
16430 time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over
16431 her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching
16432 glance as she goes past.
     
16433 "You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to
16434 himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you
16435 are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER
16436 coming!"
     
16437 This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his
16438 finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.
16439 Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is
16440 he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they
16441 speak low.
     
16442 "I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,"
16443 says Tony.
     
16444 "Why, I said about ten."
     
16445 "You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten.
16446 But according to my count, it's ten times ten -- it's a hundred
16447 o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"
     
16448 "What has been the matter?"
     
16449 "That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here have I
16450 been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the
16451 horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-looking
16452 candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his
16453 table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
     
16454 "That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers
16455 in hand.
     
16456 "IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been
16457 smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."
     
16458 "Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy, looking
16459 at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the
16460 table.
     
16461 "William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this
16462 unbearably dull, suicidal room -- and old Boguey downstairs, I
16463 suppose." Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with
16464 his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,
16465 and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his
16466 head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy
16467 attitude.
     
16468 "Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"
     
16469 "Yes, and he -- yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the
16470 construction of his sentence.
     
16471 "On business?"
     
16472 "No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."
     
16473 "I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well
16474 that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."
     
16475 "There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an
16476 instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to
16477 commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"
     
16478 Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the
16479 conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the
16480 room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey
16481 with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she
16482 is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a
16483 vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious
16484 piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of
16485 fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
     
16486 "That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking
16487 likeness."
     
16488 "I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I
16489 should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."
     
16490 Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a
16491 more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and
16492 remonstrates with him.
     
16493 "Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for
16494 no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I
16495 do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who
16496 has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are bounds
16497 to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will
16498 acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the
16499 present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."
     
16500 "This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.
     
16501 "Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly
16502 when I use it."
     
16503 Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy
16504 to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the
16505 advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured
16506 remonstrance.
     
16507 "No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be
16508 careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited
16509 image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those
16510 chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in
16511 yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the
16512 taste. It is not -- happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I
16513 could say the same -- it is not your character to hover around one
16514 flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry
16515 you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound
16516 even your feelings without a cause!"
     
16517 Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying
16518 emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with
16519 the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."
     
16520 "And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle
16521 of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have
16522 appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"
     
16523 "Very. What did he do it for?"
     
16524 "What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his
16525 birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll
16526 have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."
     
16527 "He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"
     
16528 "Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him
16529 to-night, about eight -- helped him to shut up his shop -- and he had got
16530 the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed 'em
16531 me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his
16532 cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I
16533 heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming
16534 like the wind, the only song he knows -- about Bibo, and old Charon,
16535 and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been
16536 as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."
     
16537 "And you are to go down at twelve?"
     
16538 "At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a
16539 hundred."
     
16540 "Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs
16541 crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"
     
16542 "Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and
16543 he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on
16544 that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to
16545 acquire the knack of it now -- and too drunk."
     
16546 "Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do
16547 you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"
     
16548 "He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has
16549 and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye
16550 alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and
16551 asked me what it meant."
     
16552 "Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,
16553 "should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"
     
16554 "A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's -- slopes a good deal, and the end of
16555 the letter 'n,' long and hasty."
     
16556 Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,
16557 generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he
16558 is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It
16559 takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.
     
16560 "Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is
16561 there a chimney on fire?"
     
16562 "Chimney on fire!"
     
16563 "Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my
16564 arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow
16565 off -- smears like black fat!"
     
16566 They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a
16567 little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says
16568 it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to
16569 Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
     
16570 "And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable
16571 aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before
16572 the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads
16573 very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle
16574 of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"
     
16575 "That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his
16576 whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable
16577 William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and
16578 advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."
     
16579 The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed
16580 by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and
16581 his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears
16582 to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.
     
16583 "You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and
16584 to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's
16585 the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting
16586 his thumb-nail.
     
16587 "You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."
     
16588 "I tell you what, Tony -- "
     
16589 "You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his
16590 sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
     
16591 "I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another
16592 packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one
16593 while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."
     
16594 "And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with
16595 his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely
16596 than not," suggests Tony.
     
16597 "Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never
16598 did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands -- a legal friend
16599 of yours -- for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible,
16600 won't they?"
     
16601 "Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.
     
16602 "Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt
16603 William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"
     
16604 "I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the
16605 other gravely.
     
16606 "And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little;
16607 but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't
16608 speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all,
16609 forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"
     
16610 "I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in
16611 secrecy, a pair of conspirators."
     
16612 "Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of
16613 noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's
16614 the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"
     
16615 "Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable,
16616 after all."
     
16617 Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the
16618 mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the
16619 honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that
16620 friend in those chords of the human mind which -- which need not be
16621 called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion -- your friend
16622 is no fool. What's that?"
     
16623 "It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and
16624 you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."
     
16625 Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,
16626 resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than
16627 their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
16628 mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of
16629 whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,
16630 haunted by the ghosts of sound -- strange cracks and tickings, the
16631 rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of
16632 dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter
16633 snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full
16634 of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one
16635 consent to see that the door is shut.
     
16636 "Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting
16637 his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"
     
16638 "It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in
16639 the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."
     
16640 "But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."
     
16641 "May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see how
16642 YOU like it."
     
16643 "As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,
16644 "there have been dead men in most rooms."
     
16645 "I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and -- and
16646 they let you alone," Tony answers.
     
16647 The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to
16648 the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he
16649 hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring
16650 the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been
16651 stirred instead.
     
16652 "Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let
16653 us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."
     
16654 He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in
16655 and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to
16656 admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking
16657 up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of
16658 distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir
16659 of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping
16660 on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy
16661 tone.
     
16662 "By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger of
16663 that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather
16664 of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."
     
16665 "I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."
     
16666 "And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really
16667 has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to
16668 you, since you have been such allies?"
     
16669 Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get through
16670 this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better
16671 informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't
16672 know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking
16673 them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and
16674 what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be
16675 the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a
16676 monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been
16677 going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should
16678 judge, from what he tells me."
     
16679 "How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question,"
16680 Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic
16681 meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought, where
16682 papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd
16683 head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are
16684 worth something."
     
16685 "Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may
16686 have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got,
16687 and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and
16688 hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.
     
16689 Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing
16690 all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap
16691 it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily
16692 draws his hand away.
     
16693 "What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
     
16694 A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch
16695 and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil
16696 with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
     
16697 "What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of
16698 window?"
     
16699 "I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been
16700 here!" cries the lodger.
     
16701 And yet look here -- and look here! When he brings the candle here,
16702 from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away
16703 down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
     
16704 "This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window.
16705 "Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."
     
16706 He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he
16707 has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood
16708 silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and
16709 all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various
16710 heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet
16711 again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last. Shall I
16712 go?"
     
16713 Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not
16714 with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.
     
16715 He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the
16716 fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the
16717 stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.
     
16718 "Have you got them?"
     
16719 "Got them! No. The old man's not there."
     
16720 He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his
16721 terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,
16722 "What's the matter?"
     
16723 "I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked
16724 in. And the burning smell is there -- and the soot is there, and the
16725 oil is there -- and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.
     
16726 Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and
16727 holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has
16728 retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something
16729 on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in
16730 the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room
16731 and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and
16732 table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as
16733 usual. On one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.
     
16734 "Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these
16735 objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last,
16736 he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung
16737 his cap on the back of the chair -- his coat was there already, for he
16738 had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up -- and I left
16739 him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that
16740 crumbled black thing is upon the floor."
     
16741 Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
     
16742 "See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a
16743 dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went
16744 round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,
16745 before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it
16746 fall."
     
16747 "What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"
     
16748 "Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."
     
16749 They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains
16750 where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground
16751 before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the
16752 light.
     
16753 Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a
16754 little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to
16755 be steeped in something; and here is -- is it the cinder of a small
16756 charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
16757 coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,
16758 striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,
16759 is all that represents him.
     
16760 Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty will
16761 come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true
16762 to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord
16763 chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under
16764 all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice
16765 is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute
16766 it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you
16767 will, it is the same death eternally -- inborn, inbred, engendered
16768 in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that
16769 only -- spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that
16770 can be died.
     
     
     
     
16771 CHAPTER XXXIII
     
16772 Interlopers
     
     
16773 Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons
16774 who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in
16775 the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly
16776 fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute
16777 perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and
16778 write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note
16779 down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery
16780 Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the
16781 most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and
16782 horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be
16783 remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the
16784 public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the
16785 first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general
16786 marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits,
16787 far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable
16788 coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be
16789 recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a
16790 well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question
16791 on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr.
16792 James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible)
16793 how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was
16794 observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical
16795 occurrence which forms the subject of that present account
16796 transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr.
16797 Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby,
16798 has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M.
16799 Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise
16800 engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called
16801 Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at
16802 the Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of
16803 George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously
16804 affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression
16805 at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he
16806 hadn't a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is
16807 entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in
16808 the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and
16809 Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded
16810 them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook,
16811 the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two
16812 gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy
16813 catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the
16814 court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's
16815 Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about
16816 it.
     
16817 The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night,
16818 and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the
16819 ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued
16820 from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a
16821 bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts
16822 its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for
16823 the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house
16824 has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in
16825 brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard
16826 what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his
16827 shoulders and said, "There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry,
16828 young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph
16829 at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to
16830 that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and
16831 torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all
16832 chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in
16833 company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in
16834 charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of
16835 sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid
16836 form.
     
16837 Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and
16838 are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only
16839 stay there. "This is not a time," says Mr. Bogsby, "to haggle about
16840 money," though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter;
16841 "give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever
16842 you put a name to."
     
16843 Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names
16844 to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to
16845 put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to
16846 all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of
16847 what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile,
16848 one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing
16849 it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from
16850 outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well
16851 know what they are up to in there.
     
16852 Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of
16853 bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated,
16854 still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little
16855 money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating
16856 steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an
16857 executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire
16858 that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh,
16859 whether or no.
     
16860 And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court
16861 has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen
16862 drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors
16863 instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court
16864 itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and
16865 beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half
16866 dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who
16867 are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do
16868 to keep the door.
     
16869 "Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's this
16870 I hear!"
     
16871 "Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is.
16872 Now move on here, come!"
     
16873 "Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly
16874 backed away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven
16875 o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here."
     
16876 "Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next
16877 door then. Now move on here, some of you."
     
16878 "Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.
     
16879 "Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"
     
16880 Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his
16881 troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle
16882 languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him
16883 of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
     
16884 "And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What
16885 a fate there seems in all this! And my lit -- "
     
16886 Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the
16887 words "my little woman." For to see that injured female walk into the
16888 Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the
16889 beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,
16890 strikes him dumb.
     
16891 "My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you
16892 take anything? A little -- not to put too fine a point upon it -- drop of
16893 shrub?"
     
16894 "No," says Mrs. Snagsby.
     
16895 "My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
     
16896 "Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their
16897 presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.
     
16898 The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.
16899 Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
     
16900 "My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do
16901 it."
     
16902 "I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I
16903 wouldn't."
     
16904 Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you
16905 really, my dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and
16906 says, "This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully
16907 disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
     
16908 "It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful
16909 mystery."
     
16910 "My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for
16911 goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me
16912 in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good
16913 Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any
16914 person, my dear?"
     
16915 "I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.
     
16916 On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't
16917 say" either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have
16918 had something to do with it. He has had something -- he don't know
16919 what -- to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it
16920 is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the
16921 present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his
16922 handkerchief and gasps.
     
16923 "My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections
16924 to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your
16925 conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"
     
16926 "Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.
     
16927 "My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has
16928 happened to the venerable party who has been -- combusted." Mr. Snagsby
16929 has made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have related
16930 them to you, my love, over your French roll."
     
16931 "I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."
     
16932 "Every -- my lit -- "
     
16933 "I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his
16934 increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would
16935 come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than
16936 anywhere else."
     
16937 "My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to
16938 go."
     
16939 Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.
16940 Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with
16941 which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the
16942 Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible
16943 for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of
16944 the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs.
16945 Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are
16946 so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up
16947 to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with
16948 the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.
     
16949 Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into
16950 Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as
16951 many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.
     
16952 "There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says
16953 Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the
16954 square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must,
16955 with very little delay, come to an understanding."
     
16956 "Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his
16957 companion with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you
16958 needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that,
16959 and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire
16960 next or blowing up with a bang."
     
16961 This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy
16962 that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have
16963 thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson
16964 to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived." To which
16965 Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should have thought it would have
16966 been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you
16967 lived." To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?" To which Mr.
16968 Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "No, I
16969 am not." To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" To which
16970 Mr. Guppy retorts, "Who says so?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "I
16971 say so!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Oh, indeed?" To which Mr.
16972 Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both being now in a heated state,
16973 they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.
     
16974 "Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of
16975 flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is
16976 hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all
16977 that is calculated to charm the eye -- "
     
16978 "Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what
16979 you have got to say!"
     
16980 Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy
16981 only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of
16982 injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on
16983 which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite
16984 apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is
16985 professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what
16986 facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that
16987 we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the
16988 death of this unfortunate old mo -- gentleman?" (Mr. Guppy was going to
16989 say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the
16990 circumstances.)
     
16991 "What facts? THE facts."
     
16992 "The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are" -- Mr. Guppy tells them
16993 off on his fingers -- "what we knew of his habits, when you saw him
16994 last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and
16995 how we made it."
     
16996 "Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."
     
16997 "We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric
16998 way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you
16999 were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on
17000 account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with
17001 you, was called down -- and so forth. The inquiry being only into the
17002 circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary
17003 to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"
     
17004 "No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."
     
17005 "And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
     
17006 "No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I
17007 withdraw the observation."
     
17008 "Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him
17009 slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you
17010 have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live
17011 at that place?"
     
17012 "What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.
     
17013 "Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your
17014 continuing to live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on
17015 again.
     
17016 "At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and
17017 bottle shop.
     
17018 Mr. Guppy nods.
     
17019 "Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that
17020 you could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.
     
17021 "Do you mean it though, Tony?"
     
17022 "Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,"
17023 says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.
     
17024 "Then the possibility or probability -- for such it must be
17025 considered -- of your never being disturbed in possession of those
17026 effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no
17027 relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find
17028 out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at
17029 all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy,
17030 biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.
     
17031 "Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?"
17032 cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."
     
17033 "Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived
17034 there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got
17035 one."
     
17036 "You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and -- ugh! -- you may make
17037 yourself at home in it."
     
17038 "Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up
17039 the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"
     
17040 "You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said
17041 a truer word in all your life. I do!"
     
17042 While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square,
17043 on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to
17044 the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the
17045 multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach
17046 stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs.
17047 Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.
     
17048 An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall
17049 hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed
17050 the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How
17051 de do, sir! How de do!"
     
17052 "What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning,
17053 I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.
     
17054 "My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a
17055 favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me
17056 into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring
17057 their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn,
17058 sir?"
     
17059 Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The
17060 public-house in the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable
17061 burden to the Sol's Arms.
     
17062 "There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce
17063 grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more,
17064 and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy
17065 with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't
17066 squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my
17067 bones!"
     
17068 It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an
17069 apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With
17070 no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of
17071 divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he
17072 fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman
17073 is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
     
17074 "Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from
17075 an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and
17076 pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling
17077 poll-parrot! Sit down!"
     
17078 This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a
17079 propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds
17080 herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects,
17081 accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A
17082 nervous affection has probably as much to do with these
17083 demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but
17084 on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion
17085 with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is
17086 seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held
17087 her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with
17088 great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw,"
17089 repeated a surprising number of times.
     
17090 "My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr.
17091 Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either
17092 of you?"
     
17093 "Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
     
17094 "You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!"
     
17095 The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the
17096 compliment.
     
17097 "My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his
17098 hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy
17099 office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."
     
17100 "Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.
     
17101 "Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend -- her only relation. We were
17102 not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on
17103 terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric -- he was very
17104 eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I
17105 shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look
17106 after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I
17107 have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air
17108 towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the
17109 property."
     
17110 "I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have
17111 mentioned that the old man was your uncle."
     
17112 "You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to
17113 be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye.
17114 "Besides, I wasn't proud of him."
     
17115 "Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or
17116 not," says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.
     
17117 "He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't
17118 know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!"
     
17119 "No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old
17120 gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property -- to
17121 look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make
17122 good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn,
17123 of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as
17124 my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye.
17125 Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but
17126 Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of
17127 your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years
17128 of age."
     
17129 Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,
17130 "Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of
17131 money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of
17132 bank-notes!"
     
17133 "Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated
17134 husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within
17135 his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody
17136 hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat,
17137 you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the
17138 highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her
17139 grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin
17140 at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping
17141 into his chair in a heap.
     
17142 "Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from
17143 within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I
17144 have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the
17145 police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the
17146 property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the
17147 property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch
17148 the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and
17149 putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and
17150 punching, he still repeats like an echo, "The -- the property! The
17151 property! Property!"
     
17152 Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having
17153 relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited
17154 countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.
17155 But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed
17156 interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew in
17157 the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is
17158 answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that
17159 the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due
17160 time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert
17161 his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next
17162 house and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks
17163 like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.
     
17164 The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court
17165 still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.
17166 Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there
17167 really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be
17168 made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members
17169 of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the
17170 foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump
17171 and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings
17172 take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson
17173 enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that
17174 these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals
17175 and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up "The popular song of King
17176 Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the
17177 great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that "J.
17178 G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in
17179 consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the
17180 bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a
17181 late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation." There is
17182 one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is
17183 particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin
17184 should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the
17185 undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that
17186 he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general
17187 solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr.
17188 Smallweed's conduct does him great honour.
     
17189 Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable
17190 excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and
17191 carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same
17192 intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and
17193 phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of
17194 these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that
17195 the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being
17196 reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence
17197 for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical
17198 Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical
17199 jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess
17200 Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of
17201 Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard
17202 of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the
17203 testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who
17204 WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative
17205 testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once
17206 upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a
17207 case occurred and even to write an account of it -- still they regard
17208 the late Mr. Krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such
17209 by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the
17210 court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the
17211 greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms.
17212 Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground
17213 and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish
17214 coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in
17215 Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws
17216 in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in fact,
17217 considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being
17218 permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts
17219 that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high,
17220 at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two
17221 gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist
17222 at the philosophical disputations -- go everywhere and listen to
17223 everybody -- and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour and
17224 writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
     
17225 At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that
17226 the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and
17227 tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that
17228 would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined
17229 house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't
17230 account for!" After which the six-footer comes into action and is
17231 much admired.
     
17232 In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when
17233 he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual
17234 and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the
17235 mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of
17236 bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings
17237 draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the
17238 catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady
17239 Dedlock.
     
17240 For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense
17241 of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's Arms
17242 have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at
17243 the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests
17244 to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner;
17245 don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage
17246 at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.
     
17247 Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a
17248 fellow-gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his
17249 instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the
17250 young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young
17251 man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.
     
17252 Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering
17253 everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or
17254 wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it -- ? No, it's no ghost, but
17255 fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.
     
17256 "I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very
17257 downcast. "This is an inconvenient time -- "
     
17258 "I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking
17259 straight at him as on the last occasion.
     
17260 "Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."
     
17261 "You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.
     
17262 "I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down
17263 and detaining you, for I -- I have not got the letters that I mentioned
17264 when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."
     
17265 "Have you come merely to say so?"
     
17266 "Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy besides being depressed,
17267 disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the
17268 splendour and beauty of her appearance.
     
17269 She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a
17270 grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and
17271 coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least
17272 perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also
17273 that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and
17274 further from her.
     
17275 She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.
     
17276 "In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent
17277 thief, "the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a
17278 sudden end, and -- " He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the
17279 sentence.
     
17280 "And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
     
17281 Mr. Guppy would say no if he could -- as he is unable to hide.
     
17282 "I believe so, your ladyship."
     
17283 If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he
17284 could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly
17285 put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.
     
17286 He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.
     
17287 "Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard
17288 him out -- or as nearly out as he can stumble.
     
17289 Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.
     
17290 "You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this
17291 being the last time you will have the opportunity."
     
17292 Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present,
17293 by any means.
     
17294 "That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!"
17295 And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy
17296 out.
     
17297 But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old
17298 man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his
17299 quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the
17300 handle of the door -- comes in -- and comes face to face with the young
17301 man as he is leaving the room.
     
17302 One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the
17303 blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks
17304 out. Another instant, close again.
     
17305 "I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times.
17306 It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the
17307 room was empty. I beg your pardon!"
     
17308 "Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am
17309 going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
     
17310 The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes
17311 that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
     
17312 "Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent
17313 brows, though he has no need to look again -- not he. "From Kenge and
17314 Carboy's, surely?"
     
17315 "Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
     
17316 "To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"
     
17317 "Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of
17318 the profession."
     
17319 "Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"
     
17320 Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his
17321 old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her
17322 down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and
17323 rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.
     
     
     
     
17324 CHAPTER XXXIV
     
17325 A Turn of the Screw
     
     
17326 "Now, what," says Mr. George, "may this be? Is it blank cartridge or
17327 ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?"
     
17328 An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it
17329 seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's length, brings
17330 it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left
17331 hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that
17332 side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy
17333 himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and
17334 thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it
17335 every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won't
17336 do. "Is it," Mr. George still muses, "blank cartridge or ball?"
     
17337 Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the
17338 distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time
17339 and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to
17340 the girl he left behind him.
     
17341 "Phil!" The trooper beckons as he calls him.
     
17342 Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were
17343 going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a
17344 bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon
17345 his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the
17346 brush.
     
17347 "Attention, Phil! Listen to this."
     
17348 "Steady, commander, steady."
     
17349 "'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for
17350 my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date
17351 drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the
17352 sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become
17353 due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same
17354 on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.' What do you make of that,
17355 Phil?"
     
17356 "Mischief, guv'ner."
     
17357 "Why?"
     
17358 "I think," replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle
17359 in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious
17360 consequences is always meant when money's asked for."
     
17361 "Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "First and
17362 last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in
17363 interest and one thing and another."
     
17364 Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very
17365 unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the
17366 transaction as being made more promising by this incident.
     
17367 "And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature
17368 conclusions with a wave of his hand. "There has always been an
17369 understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it
17370 has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?"
     
17371 "I say that I think the times is come to a end at last."
     
17372 "You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself."
     
17373 "Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?"
     
17374 "The same."
     
17375 "Guv'ner," says Phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his
17376 dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his
17377 twistings, and a lobster in his claws."
     
17378 Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after
17379 waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of
17380 him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has
17381 in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium
17382 that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George,
17383 having folded the letter, walks in that direction.
     
17384 "There IS a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him, "of
17385 settling this."
     
17386 "Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could."
     
17387 Phil shakes his head. "No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS
17388 a way," says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; "what I'm
17389 a-doing at present."
     
17390 "Whitewashing."
     
17391 Phil nods.
     
17392 "A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the
17393 Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my
17394 old scores? YOU'RE a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing him
17395 in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you are,
17396 Phil!"
     
17397 Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting
17398 earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush
17399 and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,
17400 that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much
17401 as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when
17402 steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice
17403 is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil, with a look at
17404 his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the guv'ner, Mrs. Bagnet!
17405 Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet,
17406 appears.
     
17407 The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the
17408 year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very
17409 clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so
17410 interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from
17411 another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an
17412 umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of
17413 the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in
17414 this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a
17415 metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model
17416 of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a
17417 pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious
17418 capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article
17419 long associated with the British army. The old girl's umbrella is of
17420 a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays -- an
17421 appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a
17422 series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet
17423 bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her
17424 well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the
17425 instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or
17426 bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of
17427 tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a
17428 sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad.
17429 Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest
17430 sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs.
17431 Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in George's Shooting
17432 Gallery.
     
17433 "Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do YOU do, this
17434 sunshiny morning?"
     
17435 Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long
17436 breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a
17437 faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such
17438 positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench,
17439 unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms,
17440 and looks perfectly comfortable.
     
17441 Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and
17442 with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod
17443 and smile.
     
17444 "Now, George," said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, "here we are, Lignum and
17445 myself" -- she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on
17446 account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old
17447 regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment
17448 to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy -- "just
17449 looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that
17450 security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it
17451 like a man."
     
17452 "I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper reluctantly.
     
17453 "Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out
17454 early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and
17455 came to you instead -- as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so close now,
17456 and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what's
17457 the matter, George?" asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk.
17458 "You don't look yourself."
     
17459 "I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little
17460 put out, Mrs. Bagnet."
     
17461 Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "George!" holding up
17462 her forefinger. "Don't tell me there's anything wrong about that
17463 security of Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the
17464 children!"
     
17465 The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.
     
17466 "George," says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and
17467 occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "If you
17468 have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's, and
17469 if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of
17470 being sold up -- and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as
17471 print -- you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly.
17472 I tell you, cruelly, George. There!"
     
17473 Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his
17474 large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from
17475 a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.
     
17476 "George," says that old girl, "I wonder at you! George, I am ashamed
17477 of you! George, I couldn't have believed you would have done it! I
17478 always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I
17479 never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was
17480 for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a
17481 hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta
17482 and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had
17483 the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!" Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her
17484 cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, "How could you do
17485 it?"
     
17486 Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if
17487 the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. George, who
17488 has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and
17489 straw bonnet.
     
17490 "Mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still
17491 looking at his wife, "I am sorry you take it so much to heart,
17492 because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have,
17493 this morning, received this letter" -- which he reads aloud -- "but I
17494 hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you
17495 say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody's
17496 way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it's
17497 impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family
17498 better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust you'll look upon me as
17499 forgivingly as you can. Don't think I've kept anything from you. I
17500 haven't had the letter more than a quarter of an hour."
     
17501 "Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, "will you tell
17502 him my opinion?"
     
17503 "Oh! Why didn't he marry," Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and
17504 half crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America? Then he wouldn't
17505 have got himself into these troubles."
     
17506 "The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "puts it correct -- why didn't you?"
     
17507 "Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the
17508 trooper. "Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe
17509 Pouch's widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me.
17510 It's not mine; it's yours. Give the word, and I'll sell off every
17511 morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum
17512 wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. Don't believe that I'll leave you
17513 or yours in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell myself first. I only wish," says
17514 the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, "that I
17515 knew of any one who'd buy such a second-hand piece of old stores."
     
17516 "Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind."
     
17517 "George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on
17518 full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the
17519 means."
     
17520 "And that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his
17521 head. "Like me, I know."
     
17522 "Silence! The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "is correct -- in her way of
17523 giving my opinions -- hear me out!"
     
17524 "That was when you never ought to have asked for the security,
17525 George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things
17526 considered. But what's done can't be undone. You are always an
17527 honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power,
17528 though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can't admit but what
17529 it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our
17530 heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and
17531 forgive all round!"
     
17532 Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her
17533 husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and holds
17534 them while he speaks.
     
17535 "I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge
17536 this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has
17537 gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough
17538 here, Phil and I. But the gallery don't quite do what was expected of
17539 it, and it's not -- in short, it's not the mint. It was wrong in me to
17540 take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step,
17541 and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to
17542 overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very
17543 much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself." With these
17544 concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake to each of the hands he
17545 holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a
17546 broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession
17547 and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours.
     
17548 "George, hear me out!" says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. "Old
17549 girl, go on!"
     
17550 Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to
17551 observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that
17552 it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.
17553 Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold
17554 harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George, entirely
17555 assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to
17556 the enemy's camp.
     
17557 "Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs. Bagnet,
17558 patting him on the shoulder. "I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am
17559 sure you'll bring him through it."
     
17560 The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring
17561 Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,
17562 basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of
17563 her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of
17564 mollifying Mr. Smallweed.
     
17565 Whether there are two people in England less likely to come
17566 satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.
17567 George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.
17568 Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square
17569 shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits
17570 two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Smallweedy
17571 affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the
17572 streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing
17573 his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer
17574 to Mrs. Bagnet's late sally.
     
17575 "George, you know the old girl -- she's as sweet and as mild as milk.
17576 But touch her on the children -- or myself -- and she's off like
17577 gunpowder."
     
17578 "It does her credit, Mat!"
     
17579 "George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old
17580 girl -- can't do anything -- that don't do her credit. More or less. I
17581 never say so. Discipline must be maintained."
     
17582 "She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper.
     
17583 "In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's
17584 weight -- is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight -- in any
17585 metal -- for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is
17586 far more precious -- than the preciousest metal. And she's ALL metal!"
     
17587 "You are right, Mat!"
     
17588 "When she took me -- and accepted of the ring -- she 'listed under me and
17589 the children -- heart and head, for life. She's that earnest," says Mr.
17590 Bagnet, "and true to her colours -- that, touch us with a finger -- and
17591 she turns out -- and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires
17592 wide -- once in a way -- at the call of duty -- look over it, George. For
17593 she's loyal!"
     
17594 "Why, bless her, Mat," returns the trooper, "I think the higher of
17595 her for it!"
     
17596 "You are right!" says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though
17597 without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "Think as high of
17598 the old girl -- as the rock of Gibraltar -- and still you'll be thinking
17599 low -- of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline
17600 must be maintained."
     
17601 These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather
17602 Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,
17603 having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but
17604 indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she
17605 consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred
17606 to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words
17607 on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus
17608 privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the
17609 drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs.
17610 Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing.
     
17611 "My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean
17612 affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "How de do? How de do? Who
17613 is our friend, my dear friend?"
     
17614 "Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at
17615 first, "is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours,
17616 you know."
     
17617 "Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!" The old man looks at him under his hand.
     
17618 "Hope you're well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air,
17619 sir!"
     
17620 No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet and
17621 one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of
17622 bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.
     
17623 "Judy," says Mr. Smallweed, "bring the pipe."
     
17624 "Why, I don't know," Mr. George interposes, "that the young woman
17625 need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not
17626 inclined to smoke it to-day."
     
17627 "Ain't you?" returns the old man. "Judy, bring the pipe."
     
17628 "The fact is, Mr. Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself in
17629 rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your
17630 friend in the city has been playing tricks."
     
17631 "Oh, dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "He never does that!"
     
17632 "Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be
17633 HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter."
     
17634 Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the
17635 letter.
     
17636 "What does it mean?" asks Mr. George.
     
17637 "Judy," says the old man. "Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did
17638 you say what does it mean, my good friend?"
     
17639 "Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed," urges the trooper,
17640 constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he
17641 can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad
17642 knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot of money has passed
17643 between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are
17644 both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am
17645 prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to
17646 keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you
17647 before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning,
17648 because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of
17649 the money -- "
     
17650 "I DON'T know it, you know," says the old man quietly.
     
17651 "Why, con-found you -- it, I mean -- I tell you so, don't I?"
     
17652 "Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. "But I
17653 don't know it."
     
17654 "Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "I know it."
     
17655 Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah! That's quite
17656 another thing!" And adds, "But it don't matter. Mr. Bagnet's
17657 situation is all one, whether or no."
     
17658 The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair
17659 comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his
17660 own terms.
     
17661 "That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here's Matthew
17662 Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his
17663 good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I'm a
17664 harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence
17665 come natural to, why he's a steady family man, don't you see? Now,
17666 Mr. Smallweed," says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds
17667 in his soldierly mode of doing business, "although you and I are good
17668 friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I
17669 can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely."
     
17670 "Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George."
17671 (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed
17672 to-day.)
     
17673 "And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as
17674 your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"
     
17675 "Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner
17676 and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's natural gravity
17677 is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.
     
17678 "Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be
17679 pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend
17680 Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you
17681 please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend
17682 Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just
17683 mention to him what our understanding is."
     
17684 Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good
17685 gracious! Oh!" Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found
17686 to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin
17687 has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr.
17688 Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.
     
17689 "But I think you asked me, Mr. George" -- old Smallweed, who all this
17690 time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now -- "I think you
17691 asked me, what did the letter mean?"
     
17692 "Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I
17693 don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."
     
17694 Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's
17695 head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.
     
17696 "That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble
17697 you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"
     
17698 The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity
17699 has now attained its profoundest point.
     
17700 "Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your
17701 pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon,
17702 too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before)
17703 and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend,
17704 there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these
17705 blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!"
     
17706 He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on
17707 the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his
17708 amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is
17709 instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr.
17710 George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect
17711 abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window
17712 like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving
17713 something in his mind.
     
17714 "Come, Mat," says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, "we must
17715 try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?"
     
17716 Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,
17717 replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my
17718 old girl had been here -- I'd have told him!" Having so discharged
17719 himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and
17720 marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.
     
17721 When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn
17722 is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them,
17723 for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell
17724 being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings
17725 forth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has
17726 nothing to say to them and they had better not wait. They do wait,
17727 however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the
17728 bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr.
17729 Tulkinghorn's room.
     
17730 The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell,
17731 housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a
17732 fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated
17733 with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to
17734 show her through the outer office and to let her out. The old lady is
17735 thanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in
17736 waiting.
     
17737 "I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?"
     
17738 The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr. George
17739 not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr. Bagnet
17740 takes upon himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am. Formerly."
     
17741 "I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the
17742 sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you,
17743 gentlemen! You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went
17744 for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold
17745 way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask
17746 your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!"
     
17747 "Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.
     
17748 There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady's
17749 voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. But
17750 Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place
17751 (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look
17752 round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her.
     
17753 "George," Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the
17754 almanac at last. "Don't be cast down! 'Why, soldiers, why -- should we
17755 be melancholy, boys?' Cheer up, my hearty!"
     
17756 The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there
17757 and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,
17758 "Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the
17759 painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.
     
17760 "Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I
17761 saw you that I don't desire your company here."
     
17762 Sergeant replies -- dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual
17763 manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage -- that he has
17764 received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and has
17765 been referred there.
     
17766 "I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. "If you get
17767 into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have
17768 no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?"
     
17769 Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.
     
17770 "Very well! Then the other man -- this man, if this is he -- must pay it
17771 for you."
     
17772 Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the
17773 money either.
     
17774 "Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued
17775 for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it.
17776 You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and pence and
17777 escape scot-free."
     
17778 The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr. George
17779 hopes he will have the goodness to -- "I tell you, sergeant, I have
17780 nothing to say to you. I don't like your associates and don't want
17781 you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is
17782 not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs
17783 to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech's in
17784 Clifford's Inn."
     
17785 "I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for pressing
17786 myself upon you with so little encouragement -- which is almost as
17787 unpleasant to me as it can be to you -- but would you let me say a
17788 private word to you?"
     
17789 Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into
17790 one of the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste." In the
17791 midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp
17792 look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the
17793 light and to have the other with his face towards it.
     
17794 "Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party
17795 implicated in this unfortunate affair -- nominally, only nominally -- and
17796 my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account.
17797 He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the
17798 Royal Artillery -- "
     
17799 "My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal
17800 Artillery establishment -- officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,
17801 guns, and ammunition."
     
17802 "'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and
17803 family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through
17804 this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any
17805 other consideration what you wanted of me the other day."
     
17806 "Have you got it here?"
     
17807 "I have got it here, sir."
     
17808 "Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far
17809 more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make
17810 up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have
17811 finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re-open it.
17812 Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you
17813 have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you
17814 choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you -- I
17815 can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far
17816 besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet
17817 shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded
17818 against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the
17819 creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you
17820 decided?"
     
17821 The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long
17822 breath, "I must do it, sir."
     
17823 So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes
17824 the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who
17825 has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand
17826 on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems
17827 exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his
17828 sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded
17829 paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's elbow.
17830 "'Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from
17831 him."
     
17832 Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression,
17833 and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn
17834 when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his
17835 desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.
     
17836 Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same
17837 frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go. Show
17838 these men out, there!" Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet's
17839 residence to dine.
     
17840 Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former
17841 repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal
17842 in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that
17843 rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a
17844 hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot
17845 of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow
17846 of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first
17847 Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to
17848 restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their
17849 existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome
17850 acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to
17851 deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.
     
17852 But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed.
17853 During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr.
17854 Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at
17855 dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his
17856 pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay
17857 by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.
     
17858 Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the
17859 invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, "Old
17860 girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the matter.
     
17861 "Why, George!" says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. "How
17862 low you are!"
     
17863 "Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not."
     
17864 "He ain't at all like Bluffy, mother!" cries little Malta.
     
17865 "Because he ain't well, I think, mother," adds Quebec.
     
17866 "Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the
17867 trooper, kissing the young damsels. "But it's true," with a sigh,
17868 "true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!"
     
17869 "George," says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross
17870 enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife -- who
17871 could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it
17872 almost -- said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't say to you
17873 now."
     
17874 "My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "Not a morsel of
17875 it."
     
17876 "Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was
17877 that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through it.
17878 And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!"
     
17879 "Thankee, my dear!" says George. "I am glad of your good opinion."
     
17880 In giving Mrs. Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly
17881 shake -- for she took her seat beside him -- the trooper's attention is
17882 attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she
17883 plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in
17884 the corner, and beckons that fifer to him.
     
17885 "See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the mother's
17886 hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for you! All
17887 bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the
17888 weather through following your father about and taking care of you,
17889 but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree."
     
17890 Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies,
17891 the highest approbation and acquiescence.
     
17892 "The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair of
17893 your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and
17894 re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then. Take
17895 care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I never
17896 whitened a hair of her dear head -- I never marked a sorrowful line in
17897 her face!' For of all the many things that you can think of when you
17898 are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!"
     
17899 Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside
17900 his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him,
17901 that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.
     
     
     
     
17902 CHAPTER XXXV
     
17903 Esther's Narrative
     
     
17904 I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life
17905 became like an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of time
17906 so much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness
17907 and inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been confined to it many
17908 days, everything else seemed to have retired into a remote distance
17909 where there was little or no separation between the various stages of
17910 my life which had been really divided by years. In falling ill, I
17911 seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my
17912 experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy
17913 shore.
     
17914 My housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to
17915 think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest
17916 of the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when I went
17917 home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish
17918 shadow at my side, to my godmother's house. I had never known before
17919 how short life really was and into how small a space the mind could
17920 put it.
     
17921 While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became
17922 confused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a
17923 child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I
17924 was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each
17925 station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile
17926 them. I suppose that few who have not been in such a condition can
17927 quite understand what I mean or what painful unrest arose from this
17928 source.
     
17929 For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my
17930 disorder -- it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both
17931 nights and days in it -- when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever
17932 striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in
17933 a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew
17934 perfectly at intervals, and I think vaguely at most times, that I was
17935 in my bed; and I talked with Charley, and felt her touch, and knew
17936 her very well; yet I would find myself complaining, "Oh, more of
17937 these never-ending stairs, Charley -- more and more -- piled up to the
17938 sky', I think!" and labouring on again.
     
17939 Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in
17940 great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry
17941 circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my
17942 only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such
17943 inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?
     
17944 Perhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious
17945 and the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make
17946 others unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering
17947 them. It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we
17948 might be the better able to alleviate their intensity.
     
17949 The repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful
17950 rest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself
17951 and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying, with no
17952 other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind -- this
17953 state can be perhaps more widely understood. I was in this state when
17954 I first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me once more, and
17955 knew with a boundless joy for which no words are rapturous enough
17956 that I should see again.
     
17957 I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard her
17958 calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had heard her
17959 praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me and to
17960 leave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I could speak,
17961 "Never, my sweet girl, never!" and I had over and over again reminded
17962 Charley that she was to keep my darling from the room whether I lived
17963 or died. Charley had been true to me in that time of need, and with
17964 her little hand and her great heart had kept the door fast.
     
17965 But now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every
17966 day more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my
17967 dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my
17968 lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could
17969 see my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two
17970 rooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to Ada from
17971 the open window again. I could understand the stillness in the house
17972 and the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all those who had
17973 always been so good to me. I could weep in the exquisite felicity of
17974 my heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever I had been in my
17975 strength.
     
17976 By and by my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with so
17977 strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done
17978 for some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a little,
17979 and so on to a little more and much more, until I became useful to
17980 myself, and interested, and attached to life again.
     
17981 How well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed
17982 with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with
17983 Charley! The little creature -- sent into the world, surely, to
17984 minister to the weak and sick -- was so happy, and so busy, and stopped
17985 so often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and
17986 fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was so
17987 glad, that I was obliged to say, "Charley, if you go on in this way,
17988 I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I thought I
17989 was!" So Charley became as quiet as a mouse and took her bright face
17990 here and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade into
17991 the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while I
17992 watched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded and
17993 the pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its
17994 white cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and
17995 beautifully arranged for me by Ada downstairs, was ready at the
17996 bedside, I felt sure I was steady enough to say something to Charley
17997 that was not new to my thoughts.
     
17998 First I complimented Charley on the room, and indeed it was so fresh
17999 and airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I had
18000 been lying there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face was
18001 brighter than before.
     
18002 "Yet, Charley," said I, looking round, "I miss something, surely,
18003 that I am accustomed to?"
     
18004 Poor little Charley looked round too and pretended to shake her head
18005 as if there were nothing absent.
     
18006 "Are the pictures all as they used to be?" I asked her.
     
18007 "Every one of them, miss," said Charley.
     
18008 "And the furniture, Charley?"
     
18009 "Except where I have moved it about to make more room, miss."
     
18010 "And yet," said I, "I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it
18011 is, Charley! It's the looking-glass."
     
18012 Charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten
18013 something, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there.
     
18014 I had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I could
18015 thank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called Charley back,
18016 and when she came -- at first pretending to smile, but as she drew
18017 nearer to me, looking grieved -- I took her in my arms and said, "It
18018 matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do without my old face
18019 very well."
     
18020 I was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great
18021 chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on
18022 Charley. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too,
18023 but what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that.
     
18024 My guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was
18025 now no good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He came
18026 one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his
18027 embrace and say, "My dear, dear girl!" I had long known -- who could
18028 know better? -- what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his
18029 heart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to
18030 fill such a place in it? "Oh, yes!" I thought. "He has seen me, and
18031 he loves me better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of
18032 me than he was before; and what have I to mourn for!"
     
18033 He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a
18034 little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed
18035 it, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been, there
18036 never can be, a pleasanter manner.
     
18037 "My little woman," said he, "what a sad time this has been. Such an
18038 inflexible little woman, too, through all!"
     
18039 "Only for the best, guardian," said I.
     
18040 "For the best?" he repeated tenderly. "Of course, for the best. But
18041 here have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has
18042 your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early; here has
18043 every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has
18044 even poor Rick been writing -- to ME too -- in his anxiety for you!"
     
18045 I had read of Caddy in Ada's letters, but not of Richard. I told him
18046 so.
     
18047 "Why, no, my dear," he replied. "I have thought it better not to
18048 mention it to her."
     
18049 "And you speak of his writing to YOU," said I, repeating his
18050 emphasis. "As if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian; as
18051 if he could write to a better friend!"
     
18052 "He thinks he could, my love," returned my guardian, "and to many a
18053 better. The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while
18054 unable to write to you with any hope of an answer -- wrote coldly,
18055 haughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we
18056 must look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Jarndyce and
18057 Jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes.
18058 I have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If two
18059 angels could be concerned in it, I believe it would change their
18060 nature."
     
18061 "It has not changed yours, guardian."
     
18062 "Oh, yes, it has, my dear," he said laughingly. "It has made the
18063 south wind easterly, I don't know how often. Rick mistrusts and
18064 suspects me -- goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect
18065 me. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his
18066 and what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of the
18067 mountains of wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so
18068 long bestowed (which I can't) or could level them by the extinction
18069 of my own original right (which I can't either, and no human power
18070 ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have we got), I would do
18071 it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick his proper nature
18072 than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken, heart
18073 and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed with the
18074 Accountant-General -- and that's money enough, my dear, to be cast into
18075 a pyramid, in memory of Chancery's transcendent wickedness."
     
18076 "IS it possible, guardian," I asked, amazed, "that Richard can be
18077 suspicious of you?"
     
18078 "Ah, my love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of such
18079 abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects
18080 lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS fault."
     
18081 "But it is a terrible misfortune, guardian."
     
18082 "It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within
18083 the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater. By
18084 little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed,
18085 and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything
18086 around him. But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient with
18087 poor Rick and not blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts like
18088 his have I seen in my time turned by the same means!"
     
18089 I could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that
18090 his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little.
     
18091 "We must not say so, Dame Durden," he cheerfully replied; "Ada is the
18092 happier, I hope, and that is much. I did think that I and both these
18093 young creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes and that
18094 we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong for it. But
18095 it was too much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was the curtain of
18096 Rick's cradle."
     
18097 "But, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach
18098 him what a false and wretched thing it is?"
     
18099 "We WILL hope so, my Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and that it may not
18100 teach him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him. There
18101 are not many grown and matured men living while we speak, good men
18102 too, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors would
18103 not be vitally changed and depreciated within three years -- within
18104 two -- within one. How can we stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so
18105 unfortunate," here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking
18106 aloud, "cannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it
18107 is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his
18108 interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates,
18109 disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and
18110 patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers
18111 after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well,
18112 well, well! Enough of this, my dear!"
     
18113 He had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness
18114 was so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and
18115 loved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind in
18116 this little pause, by some means, to see Richard when I grew strong
18117 and try to set him right.
     
18118 "There are better subjects than these," said my guardian, "for such a
18119 joyful time as the time of our dear girl's recovery. And I had a
18120 commission to broach one of them as soon as I should begin to talk.
18121 When shall Ada come to see you, my love?"
     
18122 I had been thinking of that too. A little in connexion with the
18123 absent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl would be
18124 changed by no change in my looks.
     
18125 "Dear guardian," said I, "as I have shut her out so long -- though
18126 indeed, indeed, she is like the light to me -- "
     
18127 "I know it well, Dame Durden, well."
     
18128 He was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and
18129 affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my
18130 heart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. "Yes,
18131 yes, you are tired," said he. "Rest a little."
     
18132 "As I have kept Ada out so long," I began afresh after a short while,
18133 "I think I should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian.
18134 It would be best to be away from here before I see her. If Charley
18135 and I were to go to some country lodging as soon as I can move, and
18136 if I had a week there in which to grow stronger and to be revived by
18137 the sweet air and to look forward to the happiness of having Ada with
18138 me again, I think it would be better for us."
     
18139 I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used
18140 to my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear girl I longed so
18141 ardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I was
18142 sure; but I was not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing, I knew
18143 he would pass it over.
     
18144 "Our spoilt little woman," said my guardian, "shall have her own way
18145 even in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears
18146 downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of chivalry,
18147 breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before,
18148 that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he having already
18149 turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth
18150 he'll pull it down and not leave one brick standing on another!"
     
18151 And my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary
18152 beginning such as "My dear Jarndyce," but rushing at once into the
18153 words, "I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and take
18154 possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one
18155 o'clock, P.M.," and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most
18156 emphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration he had
18157 quoted. We did not appreciate the writer the less for laughing
18158 heartily over it, and we settled that I should send him a letter of
18159 thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a most agreeable
18160 one to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I should have
18161 liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.
     
18162 "Now, little housewife," said my guardian, looking at his watch, "I
18163 was strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be tired
18164 too soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. I have one
18165 other petition. Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour that you were
18166 ill, made nothing of walking down here -- twenty miles, poor soul, in a
18167 pair of dancing shoes -- to inquire. It was heaven's mercy we were at
18168 home, or she would have walked back again."
     
18169 The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!
     
18170 "Now, pet," said my guardian, "if it would not be irksome to you to
18171 admit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save
18172 Boythorn's otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you
18173 would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I -- though
18174 my eminent name is Jarndyce -- could do in a lifetime."
     
18175 I have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image
18176 of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle lesson
18177 on my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not
18178 tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always
18179 pitied her, never so much as now. I had always been glad of my little
18180 power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so
18181 glad before.
     
18182 We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out by the coach and share
18183 my early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my face away upon
18184 my couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such
18185 blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had to
18186 undergo. The childish prayer of that old birthday when I had aspired
18187 to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some
18188 one and win some love to myself if I could came back into my mind
18189 with a reproachful sense of all the happiness I had since enjoyed and
18190 all the affectionate hearts that had been turned towards me. If I
18191 were weak now, what had I profited by those mercies? I repeated the
18192 old childish prayer in its old childish words and found that its old
18193 peace had not departed from it.
     
18194 My guardian now came every day. In a week or so more I could walk
18195 about our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind the
18196 window-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the courage
18197 to look at the dear face, though I could have done so easily without
18198 her seeing me.
     
18199 On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The poor little creature ran
18200 into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from
18201 her very heart of hearts, "My dear Fitz Jarndyce!" fell upon my neck
18202 and kissed me twenty times.
     
18203 "Dear me!" said she, putting her hand into her reticule, "I have
18204 nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a
18205 pocket handkerchief."
     
18206 Charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it,
18207 for she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so, shedding
18208 tears for the next ten minutes.
     
18209 "With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce," she was careful to explain.
18210 "Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at
18211 having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder
18212 of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court
18213 regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs -- "
     
18214 Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the
18215 place where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me and looked
18216 unwilling to pursue the suggestion.
     
18217 "Ve-ry right!" said Miss Flite, "Ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly
18218 indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am
18219 afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn't think it) a
18220 little -- rambling you know," said Miss Flite, touching her forehead.
18221 "Nothing more."
     
18222 "What were you going to tell me?" said I, smiling, for I saw she
18223 wanted to go on. "You have roused my curiosity, and now you must
18224 gratify it."
     
18225 Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis, who
18226 said, "If you please, ma'am, you had better tell then," and therein
18227 gratified Miss Flite beyond measure.
     
18228 "So sagacious, our young friend," said she to me in her mysterious
18229 way. "Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it's a pretty
18230 anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow
18231 us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very
18232 ungenteel bonnet -- "
     
18233 "Jenny, if you please, miss," said Charley.
     
18234 "Just so!" Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. "Jenny.
18235 Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that there has
18236 been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz
18237 Jarndyce's health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little
18238 keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce's! Now, you
18239 know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!"
     
18240 "If you please, miss," said Charley, to whom I looked in some
18241 astonishment, "Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a
18242 handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the
18243 baby's little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was
18244 yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby."
     
18245 "Diminutive," whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about
18246 her own forehead to express intellect in Charley. "But exceedingly
18247 sagacious! And so dear! My love, she's clearer than any counsel I
18248 ever heard!"
     
18249 "Yes, Charley," I returned. "I remember it. Well?"
     
18250 "Well, miss," said Charley, "and that's the handkerchief the lady
18251 took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away
18252 with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and
18253 left some money instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you please,
18254 miss!"
     
18255 "Why, who can she be?" said I.
     
18256 "My love," Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with
18257 her most mysterious look, "in MY opinion -- don't mention this to our
18258 diminutive friend -- she's the Lord Chancellor's wife. He's married,
18259 you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his
18260 lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the
18261 jeweller!"
     
18262 I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an
18263 impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was diverted
18264 by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and who,
18265 our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in
18266 arraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and
18267 a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought
18268 down in a paper parcel. I had to preside, too, over the
18269 entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a
18270 sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant
18271 to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did
18272 honour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else.
     
18273 When we had finished and had our little dessert before us,
18274 embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the
18275 superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Flite
18276 was so very chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her
18277 own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I began
18278 by saying "You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss
18279 Flite?"
     
18280 "Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment.
18281 Shortly."
     
18282 There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful if
18283 I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no
18284 more about it.
     
18285 "My father expected a judgment," said Miss Flite. "My brother. My
18286 sister. They all expected a judgment. The same that I expect."
     
18287 "They are all -- "
     
18288 "Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear," said she.
     
18289 As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable
18290 to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it.
     
18291 "Would it not be wiser," said I, "to expect this judgment no more?"
     
18292 "Why, my dear," she answered promptly, "of course it would!"
     
18293 "And to attend the court no more?"
     
18294 "Equally of course," said she. "Very wearing to be always in
18295 expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I
18296 assure you, to the bone!"
     
18297 She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.
     
18298 "But, my dear," she went on in her mysterious way, "there's a
18299 dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention it to our
18300 diminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With
18301 good reason. There's a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN'T leave
18302 it. And you MUST expect."
     
18303 I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently
18304 and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.
     
18305 "Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry
18306 absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To
18307 the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years,
18308 and I have noticed. It's the mace and seal upon the table."
     
18309 What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.
     
18310 "Draw," returned Miss Flite. "Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out
18311 of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities
18312 out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night.
18313 Cold and glittering devils!"
     
18314 She tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly
18315 as if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to
18316 fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful
18317 secrets to me.
     
18318 "Let me see," said she. "I'll tell you my own case. Before they ever
18319 drew me -- before I had ever seen them -- what was it I used to do?
18320 Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at
18321 tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder's business.
18322 We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father
18323 was drawn -- slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he
18324 was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind
18325 look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was
18326 drawn to a debtors' prison. There he died. Then our brother was
18327 drawn -- swiftly -- to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister
18328 was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in misery, and
18329 heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of
18330 Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then
18331 I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there."
     
18332 Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she
18333 had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon
18334 her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.
     
18335 "You don't quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day.
18336 I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new
18337 faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal
18338 in these many years. As my father's came there. As my brother's. As
18339 my sister's. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge and the rest of
18340 them say to the new faces, 'Here's little Miss Flite. Oh, you are new
18341 here; and you must come and be presented to little Miss Flite!' Ve-ry
18342 good. Proud I am sure to have the honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz
18343 Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I know, far better than they do,
18344 when the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them
18345 begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my love,"
18346 speaking low again, "I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in
18347 Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he'll be drawn to ruin."
     
18348 She looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually
18349 softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy,
18350 and seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said politely
18351 as she sipped her glass of wine, "Yes, my dear, as I was saying, I
18352 expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know,
18353 and confer estates."
     
18354 I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard and by the sad
18355 meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its
18356 way through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite
18357 complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles.
     
18358 "But, my dear," she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon
18359 mine. "You have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not
18360 once, yet!"
     
18361 I was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant.
     
18362 "My physician, Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly
18363 attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite
18364 gratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that
18365 will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal."
     
18366 "Mr. Woodcourt is so far away, now," said I, "that I thought the time
18367 for such congratulation was past, Miss Flite."
     
18368 "But, my child," she returned, "is it possible that you don't know
18369 what has happened?"
     
18370 "No," said I.
     
18371 "Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!"
     
18372 "No," said I. "You forget how long I have been here."
     
18373 "True! My dear, for the moment -- true. I blame myself. But my memory
18374 has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned.
18375 Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a
18376 terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas."
     
18377 "Mr. Woodcourt shipwrecked!"
     
18378 "Don't be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all
18379 shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness.
18380 Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it
18381 all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything.
18382 Saved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped
18383 naked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to
18384 do, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the
18385 poor survivors safely off at last! My dear, the poor emaciated
18386 creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his feet when
18387 they got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with
18388 it. Stay! Where's my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you
18389 shall read it, you shall read it!"
     
18390 And I DID read all the noble history, though very slowly and
18391 imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see the
18392 words, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down
18393 the long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so
18394 triumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous and
18395 gallant deeds, I felt such glowing exultation in his renown, I so
18396 admired and loved what he had done, that I envied the storm-worn
18397 people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their preserver.
18398 I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and blessed him
18399 in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I felt that
18400 no one -- mother, sister, wife -- could honour him more than I. I did,
18401 indeed!
     
18402 My poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when as
18403 the evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest she
18404 should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still full
18405 of the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to
18406 understand in all its details.
     
18407 "My dear," said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves,
18408 "my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. And no
18409 doubt he will. You are of that opinion?"
     
18410 That he well deserved one, yes. That he would ever have one, no.
     
18411 "Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?" she asked rather sharply.
     
18412 I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men
18413 distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless
18414 occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very
18415 large amount of money.
     
18416 "Why, good gracious," said Miss Flite, "how can you say that? Surely
18417 you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in
18418 knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every
18419 sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and
18420 consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don't
18421 know that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the
18422 land!"
     
18423 I am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when
18424 she was very mad indeed.
     
18425 And now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to
18426 keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr. Woodcourt loved me and that
18427 if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved me
18428 before he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done
18429 so, I should have been glad of it. But how much better it was now
18430 that this had never happened! What should I have suffered if I had
18431 had to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had known as
18432 mine was quite gone from me and that I freely released him from his
18433 bondage to one whom he had never seen!
     
18434 Oh, it was so much better as it was! With a great pang mercifully
18435 spared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all
18436 he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone:
18437 no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please
18438 God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler
18439 way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey,
18440 I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than
18441 he had thought me when I found some favour in his eyes, at the
18442 journey's end.
     
     
     
     
18443 CHAPTER XXXVI
     
18444 Chesney Wold
     
     
18445 Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into
18446 Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of
18447 me until I was safe in Mr. Boythorn's house, so he accompanied us,
18448 and we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and
18449 every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every
18450 passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful
18451 to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my
18452 illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of
18453 delight for me.
     
18454 My guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our
18455 way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter,
18456 of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our
18457 arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early
18458 summer-time.
     
18459 If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand,
18460 and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not
18461 have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for
18462 me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little
18463 tastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen
18464 times before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than that,
18465 however, by showing them all to Charley instead. Charley's delight
18466 calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and Charley
18467 had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, I was as
18468 tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort to
18469 be able to say to myself after tea, "Esther, my dear, I think you are
18470 quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to
18471 your host." He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own
18472 face, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his
18473 highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him
18474 in London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were
18475 looking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the
18476 honours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how,
18477 after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my
18478 little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage,
18479 but whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and
18480 sent off to the post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and
18481 arranging; and I sent Charley to bed in good time and told her I
18482 should want her no more that night.
     
18483 For I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my
18484 own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be
18485 overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh
18486 when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone,
18487 and therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, "Esther, if you are
18488 to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted,
18489 you must keep your word, my dear." I was quite resolved to keep it,
18490 but I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my
18491 blessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little more.
     
18492 My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than
18493 once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and
18494 went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little
18495 muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment
18496 looking through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing
18497 else. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the
18498 mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. I was very
18499 much changed -- oh, very, very much. At first my face was so strange to
18500 me that I think I should have put my hands before it and started back
18501 but for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very soon it became more
18502 familiar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration in it better
18503 than I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, but I
18504 had expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would
18505 have surprised me.
     
18506 I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I had
18507 been very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so
18508 good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears and
18509 could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.
     
18510 One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I
18511 went to sleep. I had kept Mr. Woodcourt's flowers. When they were
18512 withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of.
18513 Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right
18514 to preserve what he had sent to one so different -- whether it was
18515 generous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even
18516 in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because
18517 I could have loved him -- could have been devoted to him. At last I
18518 came to the conclusion that I might keep them if I treasured them
18519 only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to
18520 be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not
18521 seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.
     
18522 I took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass
18523 when Charley came in on tiptoe.
     
18524 "Dear, dear, miss!" cried Charley, starting. "Is that you?"
     
18525 "Yes, Charley," said I, quietly putting up my hair. "And I am very
18526 well indeed, and very happy."
     
18527 I saw it was a weight off Charley's mind, but it was a greater weight
18528 off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I shall not
18529 conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but
18530 they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed
18531 by me faithfully.
     
18532 Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits
18533 before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with
18534 Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out
18535 before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again
18536 before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea,
18537 and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and
18538 explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As to
18539 restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Boythorn's good
18540 housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or
18541 drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the
18542 park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful
18543 face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent
18544 nourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby
18545 pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could
18546 canter -- when he would -- so easily and quietly that he was a treasure.
18547 In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I called
18548 him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such
18549 a capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and
18550 rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and
18551 said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter when you know how much
18552 I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting
18553 stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake or
18554 two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh
18555 with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don't know
18556 who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as
18557 naturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and
18558 drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but
18559 all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take
18560 it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of
18561 tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his
18562 ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped
18563 to think about it. I suppose he came to the decision that it was not
18564 to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until I gave the reins
18565 to Charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy
18566 sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his
18567 ear against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, "Now, Stubbs, I
18568 feel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride
18569 a little while," for the moment I left him, he stood stock still
18570 again. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in
18571 this order we returned home, to the great delight of the village.
     
18572 Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I
18573 am sure, for in a week's time the people were so glad to see us go
18574 by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were
18575 faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown
18576 people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple
18577 began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends
18578 was an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and
18579 whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on
18580 its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This old lady had a
18581 grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her and
18582 drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him
18583 up and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was
18584 considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the
18585 world, but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in
18586 which he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way
18587 to America, and from America would write again, I got all the credit
18588 that ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested
18589 with the merit of the whole system.
     
18590 Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many
18591 children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so
18592 many cottages, going on with Charley's education, and writing long
18593 letters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that
18594 little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of
18595 it at odd moments now and then, I had only to be busy and forget it.
18596 I felt it more than I had hoped I should once when a child said,
18597 "Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?"
18598 But when I found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft
18599 hand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch,
18600 that soon set me up again. There were many little occurrences which
18601 suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle
18602 hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of
18603 these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little
18604 church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had
18605 to sign the register.
     
18606 The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross
18607 for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had
18608 known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl
18609 in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the
18610 school, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She
18611 came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and
18612 admiration stood in her bright eyes, "He's a dear good fellow, miss;
18613 but he can't write yet -- he's going to learn of me -- and I wouldn't
18614 shame him for the world!" Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when
18615 there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man's daughter!
     
18616 The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown,
18617 and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my
18618 old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so
18619 rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole
18620 night.
     
18621 There was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold
18622 where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had
18623 been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the
18624 bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at
18625 least once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the
18626 Ghost's Walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the
18627 startling name, and the old legend in the Dedlock family which I had
18628 heard from Mr. Boythorn accounting for it, mingled with the view and
18629 gave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real
18630 charms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for
18631 violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley's to gather wild
18632 flowers, she took as much to the spot as I did.
     
18633 It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house
18634 or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my
18635 arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or
18636 uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this
18637 place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a
18638 footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the
18639 lonely Ghost's Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock
18640 had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the
18641 house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure
18642 were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they
18643 repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no
18644 reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my
18645 story now arrives.
     
18646 I was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and Charley
18647 was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been
18648 looking at the Ghost's Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off
18649 and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it
18650 when I became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The
18651 perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of
18652 the branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye,
18653 that at first I could not discern what figure it was. By little and
18654 little it revealed itself to be a woman's -- a lady's -- Lady Dedlock's.
18655 She was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step, I
18656 observed to my surprise, than was usual with her.
     
18657 I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost
18658 within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to
18659 continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so
18660 much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick
18661 advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in
18662 her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a
18663 something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was
18664 a little child, something I had never seen in any face, something I
18665 had never seen in hers before.
     
18666 A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady
18667 Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I
18668 had known her.
     
18669 "Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you," she said, now
18670 advancing slowly. "You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very
18671 ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it."
     
18672 I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I could
18673 have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand, and
18674 its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of
18675 her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot
18676 say what was in my whirling thoughts.
     
18677 "You are recovering again?" she asked kindly.
     
18678 "I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock."
     
18679 "Is this your young attendant?"
     
18680 "Yes."
     
18681 "Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?"
     
18682 "Charley," said I, "take your flowers home, and I will follow you
18683 directly."
     
18684 Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went
18685 her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat beside
18686 me.
     
18687 I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw
18688 in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.
     
18689 I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I
18690 could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and
18691 wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she
18692 caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me,
18693 and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and
18694 cried to me, "Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy
18695 mother! Oh, try to forgive me!" -- when I saw her at my feet on the
18696 bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my tumult
18697 of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was
18698 so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of
18699 likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her
18700 and remotely think of any near tie between us.
     
18701 I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before
18702 me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken, incoherent
18703 words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her
18704 at MY feet. I told her -- or I tried to tell her -- that if it were for
18705 me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive
18706 her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I told her that my
18707 heart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which
18708 nothing in the past had changed or could change. That it was not for
18709 me, then resting for the first time on my mother's bosom, to take her
18710 to account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless
18711 her and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that
18712 I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, and
18713 she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the
18714 summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that
18715 was not at peace.
     
18716 "To bless and receive me," groaned my mother, "it is far too late. I
18717 must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will.
18718 From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way
18719 before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought
18720 upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it."
     
18721 Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of
18722 proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off
18723 again.
     
18724 "I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly
18725 for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that
18726 I am!"
     
18727 These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more
18728 terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her
18729 hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I
18730 should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any
18731 endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no,
18732 no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful
18733 everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only
18734 natural moments of her life.
     
18735 My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly
18736 frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She could
18737 not have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me
18738 down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could
18739 associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time
18740 forth could interchange another word on earth. She put into my hands
18741 a letter she had written for my reading only and said when I had read
18742 it and destroyed it -- but not so much for her sake, since she asked
18743 nothing, as for her husband's and my own -- I must evermore consider
18744 her as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in
18745 which I saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to do that, for
18746 then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she
18747 suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help.
18748 Whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be
18749 discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she
18750 had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection
18751 could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid.
     
18752 "But is the secret safe so far?" I asked. "Is it safe now, dearest
18753 mother?"
     
18754 "No," replied my mother. "It has been very near discovery. It was
18755 saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident -- to-morrow,
18756 any day."
     
18757 "Do you dread a particular person?"
     
18758 "Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of
18759 these tears," said my mother, kissing my hands. "I dread one person
18760 very much."
     
18761 "An enemy?"
     
18762 "Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir
18763 Leicester Dedlock's lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment,
18764 and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being
18765 master of the mysteries of great houses."
     
18766 "Has he any suspicions?"
     
18767 "Many."
     
18768 "Not of you?" I said alarmed.
     
18769 "Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a
18770 standstill, but I can never shake him off."
     
18771 "Has he so little pity or compunction?"
     
18772 "He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his
18773 calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding
18774 possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent
18775 in it."
     
18776 "Could you trust in him?"
     
18777 "I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years
18778 will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the
18779 end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,
18780 nothing turns me."
     
18781 "Dear mother, are you so resolved?"
     
18782 "I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with
18783 pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived
18784 many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie
18785 it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these
18786 woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course
18787 through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one."
     
18788 "Mr. Jarndyce -- " I was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired,
18789 "Does HE suspect?"
     
18790 "No," said I. "No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!" And I told
18791 her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. "But he
18792 is so good and sensible," said I, "that perhaps if he knew -- "
     
18793 My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,
18794 raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.
     
18795 "Confide fully in him," she said after a little while. "You have my
18796 free consent -- a small gift from such a mother to her injured
18797 child! -- but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet."
     
18798 I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now -- for my
18799 agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely
18800 understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother's
18801 voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I
18802 had never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep
18803 with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired
18804 by, made an enduring impression on my memory -- I say I explained, or
18805 tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr. Jarndyce, who had been
18806 the best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and
18807 support to her. But my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one
18808 could help her. Through the desert that lay before her, she must go
18809 alone.
     
18810 "My child, my child!" she said. "For the last time! These kisses for
18811 the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall
18812 meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have
18813 been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady
18814 Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched
18815 mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the
18816 reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering
18817 within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And
18818 then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which
18819 it never can!"
     
18820 We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that
18821 she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with
18822 a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me
18823 into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun
18824 and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which
18825 there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw
18826 it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of
18827 my mother's misery.
     
18828 Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in
18829 my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of
18830 discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took
18831 such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had been
18832 crying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation
18833 that there was upon me to be careful and collected. It was not a
18834 little while before I could succeed or could even restrain bursts of
18835 grief, but after an hour or so I was better and felt that I might
18836 return. I went home very slowly and told Charley, whom I found at the
18837 gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk after
18838 Lady Dedlock had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie
18839 down. Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from
18840 it -- and that was much then -- that I had not been abandoned by my
18841 mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood,
18842 discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead,
18843 had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I
18844 should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my
18845 mother's face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I
18846 hold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had
18847 never, to my own mother's knowledge, breathed -- had been buried -- had
18848 never been endowed with life -- had never borne a name. When she had
18849 first seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of
18850 what would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on,
18851 but that was all then.
     
18852 What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has
18853 its own times and places in my story.
     
18854 My first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume
18855 even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me
18856 that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared.
18857 That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for
18858 many people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of
18859 myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and
18860 of a proud family name. That I was so confused and shaken as to be
18861 possessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that I
18862 should die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that I
18863 should be then alive.
     
18864 These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out, and
18865 when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world
18866 with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened
18867 of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the
18868 owner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old
18869 words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, "Your
18870 mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will
18871 come -- and soon enough -- when you will understand this better, and will
18872 feel it too, as no one save a woman can." With them, those other
18873 words returned, "Pray daily that the sins of others be not visited
18874 upon your head." I could not disentangle all that was about me, and I
18875 felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation
18876 had come down.
     
18877 The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still
18878 contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after walking
18879 a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees
18880 and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me,
18881 was attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not
18882 have gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it
18883 was, I took the path that led close by it.
     
18884 I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the
18885 terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its
18886 well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it
18887 was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights
18888 of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the
18889 trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone
18890 pedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling. Then the
18891 way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers
18892 and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque
18893 monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening
18894 gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path
18895 wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the
18896 principal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables
18897 where none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of
18898 the wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall,
18899 or in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of
18900 the dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. So, encountering
18901 presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could hear, I
18902 turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there
18903 above me were the balustrades of the Ghost's Walk and one lighted
18904 window that might be my mother's.
     
18905 The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps
18906 from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping
18907 to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing
18908 quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted
18909 window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind
18910 that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost's Walk,
18911 that it was I who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and
18912 that my warning feet were haunting it even then. Seized with an
18913 augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran from myself
18914 and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never
18915 paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and
18916 black behind me.
     
18917 Not before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again
18918 been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and
18919 thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on the
18920 morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation
18921 that I must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my
18922 guardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden,
18923 if I should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most
18924 pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and
18925 ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in
18926 and about the house declared it was not the same house and was
18927 becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together made me
18928 think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought
18929 to be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me,
18930 as it ought to have done before, into a better condition.
     
18931 For I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I
18932 should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved
18933 for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked
18934 together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were
18935 sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I
18936 had in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my
18937 birth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should
18938 not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. I had had
18939 experience, in the shock of that very day, that I could, even thus
18940 soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on
18941 me. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them,
18942 pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling
18943 that the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my
18944 sleep; and when the next day's light awoke me, it was gone.
     
18945 My dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in the afternoon. How to
18946 help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a
18947 long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so
18948 Charley and I and Stubbs -- Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him
18949 after the one great occasion -- made a long expedition along that road
18950 and back. On our return, we held a great review of the house and
18951 garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and
18952 had the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment.
     
18953 There were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could
18954 come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I
18955 was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so
18956 well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any
18957 one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined -- I am
18958 quite certain I did not, that day -- but, I thought, would she be
18959 wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little
18960 shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she
18961 expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and not find her?
18962 Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again?
     
18963 I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl's face so well, and
18964 it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure
18965 beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I
18966 considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings,
18967 which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?
     
18968 Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to
18969 wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such
18970 bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and meet
18971 her.
     
18972 So I said to Charley, "Charley, I will go by myself and walk along
18973 the road until she comes." Charley highly approving of anything that
18974 pleased me, I went and left her at home.
     
18975 But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many
18976 palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was
18977 not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back
18978 and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the
18979 coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would,
18980 nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of the way
18981 to avoid being overtaken.
     
18982 Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice
18983 thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it
18984 instead of the best.
     
18985 At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more
18986 yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the
18987 garden, "Here she comes, miss! Here she is!"
     
18988 I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid
18989 myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my
18990 darling calling as she came upstairs, "Esther, my dear, my love,
18991 where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!"
     
18992 She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel
18993 girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection.
18994 Nothing else in it -- no, nothing, nothing!
     
18995 Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful
18996 girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely
18997 cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a
18998 child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and
18999 pressing me to her faithful heart.
     
     
     
     
19000 CHAPTER XXXVII
     
19001 Jarndyce and Jarndyce
     
     
19002 If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to
19003 Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and I did
19004 not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless
19005 some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my
19006 present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my
19007 dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though
19008 often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my
19009 mother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield
19010 to it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be -- except, of
19011 course, in that particular of which I have said enough and which I
19012 have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help it.
     
19013 The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening
19014 when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house,
19015 and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock
19016 had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great.
19017 Greater still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied
19018 that she had been kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting
19019 her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her
19020 imperious chilling air. But Charley helped me through, unconsciously,
19021 by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the house two
19022 nights on her way from London to visit at some other great house in
19023 the next county and that she had left early on the morning after we
19024 had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the adage
19025 about little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and
19026 doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month.
     
19027 We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn's. My pet had scarcely been
19028 there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after
19029 we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and
19030 just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very
19031 important air behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the
19032 room.
     
19033 "Oh! If you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes
19034 at their roundest and largest. "You're wanted at the Dedlock Arms."
     
19035 "Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the
19036 public-house?"
     
19037 "I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward and
19038 folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron, which she
19039 always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential,
19040 "but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please
19041 to come without saying anything about it."
     
19042 "Whose compliments, Charley?"
     
19043 "His'n, miss," returned Charley, whose grammatical education was
19044 advancing, but not very rapidly.
     
19045 "And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?"
     
19046 "I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little
19047 maid. "It was W. Grubble, miss."
     
19048 "And who is W. Grubble, Charley?"
     
19049 "Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. "Don't you know, miss? The
19050 Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she were
19051 slowly spelling out the sign.
     
19052 "Aye? The landlord, Charley?"
     
19053 "Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but
19054 she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother's the
19055 sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll drink
19056 himself to death entirely on beer," said Charley.
     
19057 Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive
19058 now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Charley
19059 be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put them
19060 on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at
19061 home as in Mr. Boythorn's garden.
     
19062 Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very
19063 clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both
19064 hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an
19065 iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded
19066 passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in
19067 it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline,
19068 several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in
19069 glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I
19070 don't know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his
19071 ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often
19072 standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man
19073 who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own
19074 fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat
19075 except at church.
     
19076 He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it
19077 looked, backed out of the room -- unexpectedly to me, for I was going
19078 to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour
19079 being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears I
19080 thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room in
19081 which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard!
     
19082 "My dear Esther!" he said. "My best friend!" And he really was so
19083 warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of
19084 his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him that
19085 Ada was well.
     
19086 "Answering my very thoughts -- always the same dear girl!" said
19087 Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.
     
19088 I put my veil up, but not quite.
     
19089 "Always the same dear girl!" said Richard just as heartily as before.
     
19090 I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve
19091 and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind
19092 welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because of
19093 the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to
19094 him.
     
19095 "My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a greater
19096 wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me."
     
19097 "And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand
19098 some one else."
     
19099 "Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard, " -- I
19100 suppose you mean him?"
     
19101 "Of course I do."
     
19102 "Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that
19103 subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind -- you, my
19104 dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody."
     
19105 I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.
     
19106 "Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that now. I
19107 want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my
19108 arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty
19109 to John Jarndyce will allow that?"
     
19110 "My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily
19111 welcome at his house -- your home, if you will but consider it so; and
19112 you are as heartily welcome here!"
     
19113 "Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard gaily.
     
19114 I asked him how he liked his profession.
     
19115 "Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. "It's all right. It does
19116 as well as anything else, for a time. I don't know that I shall care
19117 about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out then
19118 and -- however, never mind all that botheration at present."
     
19119 So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite
19120 of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that
19121 passed over him, so dreadfully like her!
     
19122 "I am in town on leave just now," said Richard.
     
19123 "Indeed?"
     
19124 "Yes. I have run over to look after my -- my Chancery interests before
19125 the long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh. "We are
19126 beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you."
     
19127 No wonder that I shook my head!
     
19128 "As you say, it's not a pleasant subject." Richard spoke with the
19129 same shade crossing his face as before. "Let it go to the four winds
19130 for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?"
     
19131 "Was it Mr. Skimpole's voice I heard?"
     
19132 "That's the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a
19133 fascinating child it is!"
     
19134 I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He
19135 answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old
19136 infant -- so he called Mr. Skimpole -- and the dear old infant had told
19137 him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on
19138 coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come
19139 too; and so he had brought him. "And he is worth -- not to say his
19140 sordid expenses -- but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard. "He is
19141 such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and
19142 green-hearted!"
     
19143 I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole's worldliness in
19144 his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about
19145 that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was charmed
19146 to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and
19147 sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so
19148 happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the mixture
19149 of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated health
19150 the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it might be
19151 in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B happier in
19152 looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to make D better
19153 satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking.
     
19154 "My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr.
19155 Skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he
19156 evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that's delightful, that's
19157 inspiriting, that's full of poetry! In old times the woods and
19158 solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping
19159 and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our
19160 pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune
19161 and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment
19162 from the bench. That's very pleasant, you know! Some ill-conditioned
19163 growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of these legal and
19164 equitable abuses? How do you defend them?' I reply, 'My growling
19165 friend, I DON'T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There
19166 is a shepherd -- youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into
19167 something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don't say it is for
19168 this that they exist -- for I am a child among you worldly grumblers,
19169 and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything -- but it
19170 may be so.'"
     
19171 I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a
19172 worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he
19173 most required some right principle and purpose he should have this
19174 captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy
19175 dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I
19176 could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced in
19177 the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and
19178 contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr.
19179 Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour;
19180 but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or
19181 that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole's idle turn quite as well as any
19182 other part, and with less trouble.
     
19183 They both walked back with me, and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the
19184 gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, "Ada, my love, I have
19185 brought a gentleman to visit you." It was not difficult to read the
19186 blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I
19187 knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins
19188 only.
     
19189 I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions,
19190 but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her
19191 very much -- any one must have done that -- and I dare say would have
19192 renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but
19193 that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still
19194 I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even
19195 here, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this
19196 as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind.
19197 Ah me! What Richard would have been without that blight, I never
19198 shall know now!
     
19199 He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make
19200 any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too
19201 implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he
19202 had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for
19203 the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear
19204 old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an
19205 appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through
19206 the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk
19207 with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this was arranged. Mr.
19208 Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. He
19209 particularly requested to see little Coavinses (meaning Charley) and
19210 told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father
19211 all the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers
19212 would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he
19213 should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.
     
19214 "For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr. Skimpole,
19215 looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am
19216 constantly being bailed out -- like a boat. Or paid off -- like a ship's
19217 company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it, you know, for
19218 I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody's
19219 means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me
19220 who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell you. Let us drink to
19221 somebody. God bless him!"
     
19222 Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for
19223 him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy
19224 and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the
19225 sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see;
19226 the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since
19227 yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so
19228 massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of
19229 every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory
19230 of that day.
     
19231 "This is a lovely place," said Richard, looking round. "None of the
19232 jar and discord of law-suits here!"
     
19233 But there was other trouble.
     
19234 "I tell you what, my dear girl," said Richard, "when I get affairs in
19235 general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest."
     
19236 "Would it not be better to rest now?" I asked.
     
19237 "Oh, as to resting NOW," said Richard, "or as to doing anything very
19238 definite NOW, that's not easy. In short, it can't be done; I can't do
19239 it at least."
     
19240 "Why not?" said I.
     
19241 "You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house,
19242 liable to have the roof put on or taken off -- to be from top to bottom
19243 pulled down or built up -- to-morrow, next day, next week, next month,
19244 next year -- you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now?
19245 There's no now for us suitors."
     
19246 I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor
19247 little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the darkened
19248 look of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of
19249 that unfortunate man who had died.
     
19250 "My dear Richard," said I, "this is a bad beginning of our
19251 conversation."
     
19252 "I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden."
     
19253 "And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once
19254 never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse."
     
19255 "There you come back to John Jarndyce!" said Richard impatiently.
19256 "Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of
19257 what I have to say, and it's as well at once. My dear Esther, how can
19258 you be so blind? Don't you see that he is an interested party and
19259 that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the
19260 suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well
19261 for me?"
     
19262 "Oh, Richard," I remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever have
19263 seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof
19264 and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place
19265 where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?"
     
19266 He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of
19267 reproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied in a
19268 subdued voice, "Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean
19269 fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being
19270 poor qualities in one of my years."
     
19271 "I know it very well," said I. "I am not more sure of anything."
     
19272 "That's a dear girl," retorted Richard, "and like you, because it
19273 gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all
19274 this business, for it's a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion
19275 to tell you."
     
19276 "I know perfectly," said I. "I know as well, Richard -- what shall I
19277 say? as well as you do -- that such misconstructions are foreign to
19278 your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it."
     
19279 "Come, sister, come," said Richard a little more gaily, "you will be
19280 fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that
19281 influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a
19282 little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an honourable man,
19283 out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it
19284 taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him
19285 say so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?"
     
19286 "Because," said I, "his is an uncommon character, and he has
19287 resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard."
     
19288 "Oh, because and because!" replied Richard in his vivacious way. "I
19289 am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to
19290 preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties
19291 interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die
19292 off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things
19293 may smoothly happen that are convenient enough."
     
19294 I was so touched with pity for Richard that I could not reproach him
19295 any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian's gentleness
19296 towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment he
19297 had spoken of them.
     
19298 "Esther," Richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that I have come
19299 here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only
19300 come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well and we
19301 got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same
19302 suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look
19303 into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce
19304 discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I don't amend
19305 that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I
19306 don't mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold
19307 John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he
19308 has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I
19309 must maintain my rights and Ada's. I have been thinking about it a
19310 good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to."
     
19311 Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal.
19312 His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too plainly.
     
19313 "So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him
19314 about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at
19315 issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his
19316 protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our
19317 roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should
19318 take much more than he. I don't mean to say that it is the one to be
19319 established, but there it is, and it has its chance."
     
19320 "I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard," said I, "of your
19321 letter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry word."
     
19322 "Indeed?" replied Richard, softening. "I am glad I said he was an
19323 honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say
19324 that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these
19325 views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you
19326 tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the
19327 case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I
19328 did when I was at Kenge's, if you only knew what an accumulation of
19329 charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions,
19330 they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison."
     
19331 "Perhaps so," said I. "But do you think that, among those many
19332 papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?"
     
19333 "There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther -- "
     
19334 "Or was once, long ago," said I.
     
19335 "Is -- is -- must be somewhere," pursued Richard impetuously, "and must
19336 be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is
19337 not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John
19338 Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who
19339 has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side when I
19340 resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end."
     
19341 "All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no
19342 others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier
19343 because of so many failures?"
     
19344 "It can't last for ever," returned Richard with a fierceness kindling
19345 in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. "I am
19346 young and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders
19347 many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I
19348 devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life."
     
19349 "Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!"
     
19350 "No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned affectionately.
19351 "You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your
19352 prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good
19353 Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so
19354 convenient, we were not on natural terms."
     
19355 "Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?"
     
19356 "No, I don't say that. I mean that all this business puts us on
19357 unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See
19358 another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it's over that I
19359 have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am
19360 free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-day. Very well.
19361 Then I shall acknowledge it and make him reparation."
     
19362 Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in
19363 confusion and indecision until then!
     
19364 "Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to
19365 understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John
19366 Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish
19367 to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great
19368 esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften
19369 the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and -- and in
19370 short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words,
19371 "I -- I don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious,
19372 doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada."
     
19373 I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than
19374 in anything he had said yet.
     
19375 "Why," acknowledged Richard, "that may be true enough, my love. I
19376 rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play
19377 by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don't you be afraid."
     
19378 I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada.
     
19379 "Not quite," said Richard. "I am bound not to withhold from her that
19380 John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me
19381 as 'My dear Rick,' trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling
19382 me that they should make no difference in him. (All very well of
19383 course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know that if I
19384 see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as
19385 my own -- we two being in the same boat exactly -- and that I hope she
19386 will not suppose from any flying rumours she may hear that I am at
19387 all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking
19388 forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that
19389 direction. Being of age now and having taken the step I have taken, I
19390 consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce; but
19391 Ada being still a ward of the court, I don't yet ask her to renew our
19392 engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself
19393 once more and we shall both be in very different worldly
19394 circumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage
19395 of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind
19396 service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on
19397 the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak
19398 House."
     
19399 "Richard," said I, "you place great confidence in me, but I fear you
19400 will not take advice from me?"
     
19401 "It's impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any
19402 other, readily."
     
19403 As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and
19404 character were not being dyed one colour!
     
19405 "But I may ask you a question, Richard?"
     
19406 "I think so," said he, laughing. "I don't know who may not, if you
19407 may not."
     
19408 "You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life."
     
19409 "How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!"
     
19410 "Are you in debt again?"
     
19411 "Why, of course I am," said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.
     
19412 "Is it of course?"
     
19413 "My dear child, certainly. I can't throw myself into an object so
19414 completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don't know,
19415 that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It's only a
19416 question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within
19417 the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl," said Richard,
19418 quite amused with me, "I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my
19419 dear!"
     
19420 I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I
19421 tried, in Ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every fervent
19422 means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some
19423 of his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and
19424 gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least
19425 effect. I could not wonder at this after the reception his
19426 preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's letter, but I determined
19427 to try Ada's influence yet.
     
19428 So when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went
19429 home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give
19430 her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was
19431 losing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made
19432 her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater
19433 reliance on his correcting his errors than I could have -- which was so
19434 natural and loving in my dear! -- and she presently wrote him this
19435 little letter:
     
     
19436    My dearest cousin,
     
19437    Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I
19438    write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that
19439    she said to you and to let you know how sure I am that
19440    you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern
19441    of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply,
19442    deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so
19443    much wrong.
     
19444    I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next,
19445    but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have
19446    some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for
19447    my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for
19448    yourself -- and if for yourself, for me. In case this should
19449    be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me
19450    in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg
19451    you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will
19452    make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon
19453    the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry
19454    with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my
19455    sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for
19456    that source of trouble which had its share in making us
19457    both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it
19458    go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that
19459    there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing
19460    to be got from it but sorrow.
     
19461    My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you
19462    are quite free and that it is very likely you may find
19463    some one whom you will love much better than your first
19464    fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that
19465    the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow
19466    your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and
19467    see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen
19468    way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very
19469    rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost
19470    of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of
19471    your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my
19472    saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or
19473    experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own
19474    heart.
     
19475    Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate
     
19476    Ada
     
     
19477 This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little change
19478 in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who
19479 was wrong -- he would show us -- we should see! He was animated and
19480 glowing, as if Ada's tenderness had gratified him; but I could only
19481 hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect
19482 upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then.
     
19483 As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to
19484 return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking
19485 to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and
19486 I delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging
19487 Richard.
     
19488 "Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?" he repeated, catching at
19489 the word with the pleasantest smile. "I am the last man in the world
19490 for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life -- I can't be."
     
19491 "I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I timidly enough, he
19492 being so much older and more clever than I.
     
19493 "No, really?" said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most
19494 agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be
19495 solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took
19496 a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so
19497 much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of
19498 counting. Call it four and ninepence -- call it four pound nine. They
19499 tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as
19500 much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don't stop, why
19501 should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that's
19502 responsibility, I am responsible."
     
19503 The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and
19504 looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been
19505 mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me
19506 feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.
     
19507 "Now, when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "I am disposed to
19508 say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should
19509 consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me
19510 to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my
19511 dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole
19512 little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined
19513 to say to myself -- in fact I do say to myself very often -- THAT'S
19514 responsibility!"
     
19515 It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I
19516 persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not
19517 confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.
     
19518 "Most willingly," he retorted, "if I could. But, my dear Miss
19519 Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and
19520 leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after
19521 fortune, I must go. If he says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!' I must
19522 join it. Common sense wouldn't, I know, but I have NO common sense."
     
19523 It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said.
     
19524 "Do you think so!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "Don't say that, don't say
19525 that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense -- an
19526 excellent man -- a good deal wrinkled -- dreadfully practical -- change for
19527 a ten-pound note in every pocket -- ruled account-book in his
19528 hand -- say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear
19529 Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with
19530 poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,
19531 'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very
19532 beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape
19533 to come at it!' The respectable companion instantly knocks him down
19534 with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that
19535 he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud,
19536 horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that's a painful
19537 change -- sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but
19538 disagreeable. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled account-book, I
19539 have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not
19540 at all respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it
19541 is!"
     
19542 It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and
19543 Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole in
19544 despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and
19545 whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were
19546 such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone,
19547 he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their
19548 hands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and
19549 put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the
19550 chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir
19551 Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke,
19552 flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full
19553 action between his horse's two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how
19554 little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented
19555 as having evidently been, in life, what he called "stuffed people" -- a
19556 large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on
19557 their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from
19558 animation, and always in glass cases.
     
19559 I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I
19560 felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise,
19561 hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly
19562 towards us.
     
19563 "Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "Vholes!"
     
19564 We asked if that were a friend of Richard's.
     
19565 "Friend and legal adviser," said Mr. Skimpole. "Now, my dear Miss
19566 Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and
19567 respectability, all united -- if you want an exemplary man -- Vholes is
19568 THE man."
     
19569 We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman
19570 of that name.
     
19571 "When he emerged from legal infancy," returned Mr. Skimpole, "he
19572 parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe,
19573 with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to
19574 Vholes."
     
19575 "Had you known him long?" asked Ada.
     
19576 "Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with
19577 him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had
19578 done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner -- taken
19579 proceedings, I think, is the expression -- which ended in the
19580 proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and
19581 pay the money -- something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the
19582 pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it
19583 struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody
19584 fourpence -- and after that I brought them together. Vholes asked me
19585 for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it," he
19586 looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the
19587 discovery, "Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and
19588 called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think
19589 it MUST have been a five-pound note!"
     
19590 His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard's
19591 coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.
19592 Vholes -- a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were
19593 cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,
19594 about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in
19595 black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so
19596 remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had
19597 of looking at Richard.
     
19598 "I hope I don't disturb you, ladies," said Mr. Vholes, and now I
19599 observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of
19600 speaking. "I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know
19601 when his cause was in the Chancellor's paper, and being informed by
19602 one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather
19603 unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach
19604 early this morning and came down to confer with him."
     
19605 "Yes," said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me,
19606 "we don't do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now!
19607 Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in,
19608 and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!"
     
19609 "Anything you please, sir," returned Mr. Vholes. "I am quite at your
19610 service."
     
19611 "Let me see," said Richard, looking at his watch. "If I run down to
19612 the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or
19613 a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour then before
19614 starting. I'll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take
19615 care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?"
     
19616 He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the
19617 dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.
     
19618 "Is Mr. Carstone's presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?" said I. "Can
19619 it do any good?"
     
19620 "No, miss," Mr. Vholes replied. "I am not aware that it can."
     
19621 Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to
19622 be disappointed.
     
19623 "Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own
19624 interests," said Mr. Vholes, "and when a client lays down his own
19625 principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it
19626 out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with
19627 three daughters -- Emma, Jane, and Caroline -- and my desire is so to
19628 discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This
19629 appears to be a pleasant spot, miss."
     
19630 The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we
19631 walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.
     
19632 "Indeed?" said Mr. Vholes. "I have the privilege of supporting an
19633 aged father in the Vale of Taunton -- his native place -- and I admire
19634 that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so
19635 attractive here."
     
19636 To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to
19637 live altogether in the country.
     
19638 "There, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string. My health
19639 is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only
19640 myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially
19641 as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into
19642 contact with general society, and particularly with ladies' society,
19643 which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters,
19644 Emma, Jane, and Caroline -- and my aged father -- I cannot afford to be
19645 selfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother
19646 who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render
19647 it indispensable that the mill should be always going."
     
19648 It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward
19649 speaking and his lifeless manner.
     
19650 "You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. "They
19651 are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little
19652 independence, as well as a good name."
     
19653 We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all
19654 prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried
19655 shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes's chair, whispered
19656 something in his ear. Mr. Vholes replied aloud -- or as nearly aloud I
19657 suppose as he had ever replied to anything -- "You will drive me, will
19658 you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am
19659 quite at your service."
     
19660 We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left
19661 until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already
19662 paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard
19663 and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we
19664 politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock Arms
19665 and retire when the night-travellers were gone.
     
19666 Richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went
19667 out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had
19668 ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern
19669 standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed
19670 to it.
     
19671 I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's
19672 light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his
19673 hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking
19674 at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. I have
19675 before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer
19676 lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows and high
19677 trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and the driving
19678 away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
     
19679 My dear girl told me that night how Richard's being thereafter
19680 prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this
19681 difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging
19682 heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;
19683 how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would think
19684 of him at all times -- never of herself if she could devote herself to
19685 him, never of her own delights if she could minister to his.
     
19686 And she kept her word?
     
19687 I look along the road before me, where the distance already shortens
19688 and the journey's end is growing visible; and true and good above the
19689 dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore,
19690 I think I see my darling.
     
     
     
     
19691 CHAPTER XXXVIII
     
19692 A Struggle
     
     
19693 When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were
19694 punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I
19695 was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my
19696 housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if
19697 I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more, duty,
19698 duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more
19699 than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you
19700 ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, my dear!"
     
19701 The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business,
19702 devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to
19703 and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so
19704 many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new
19705 beginning altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when
19706 these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid
19707 a visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had
19708 destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own
19709 mind.
     
19710 I made Caddy Jellyby -- her maiden name was so natural to me that I
19711 always called her by it -- the pretext for this visit and wrote her a
19712 note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business
19713 expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London
19714 by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the
19715 day before me.
     
19716 Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so
19717 affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her
19718 husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad -- I mean as good;
19719 and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any
19720 possibility of doing anything meritorious.
     
19721 The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was
19722 milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an
19723 apprentice -- it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the
19724 trade of dancing -- was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law
19725 was extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived
19726 most happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she
19727 meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good
19728 lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were
19729 poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)
     
19730 "And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I.
     
19731 "Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I see
19732 very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma
19733 thinks there is something absurd in my having married a
19734 dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her."
     
19735 It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural
19736 duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope
19737 in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions
19738 against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this
19739 to myself.
     
19740 "And your papa, Caddy?"
     
19741 "He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of
19742 sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him."
     
19743 Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Jellyby's
19744 head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found
19745 such a resting-place for it.
     
19746 "And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?"
     
19747 "Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you a
19748 grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's health
19749 is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with
19750 schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices,
19751 he really has too much to do, poor fellow!"
     
19752 The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked
19753 Caddy if there were many of them.
     
19754 "Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are
19755 very good children; only when they get together they WILL
19756 play -- children-like -- instead of attending to their work. So the
19757 little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen,
19758 and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can."
     
19759 "That is only for their steps, of course?" said I.
     
19760 "Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, so
19761 many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They
19762 dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five
19763 every morning."
     
19764 "Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed.
     
19765 "I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-door
19766 apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room,
19767 not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the window and
19768 see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under
19769 their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps."
     
19770 All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure.
19771 Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully
19772 recounted the particulars of her own studies.
     
19773 "You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the
19774 piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently
19775 I have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of
19776 our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had
19777 some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any;
19778 and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must
19779 allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery -- I have
19780 to thank Ma for that, at all events -- and where there's a will there's
19781 a way, you know, Esther, the world over." Saying these words, Caddy
19782 laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really
19783 rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly
19784 and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself,
19785 said, "Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!"
     
19786 I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and
19787 praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed,
19788 dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in
19789 her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural,
19790 wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite
19791 as good as a mission.
     
19792 "My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me.
19793 I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes, Esther, even
19794 in my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so
19795 unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching
19796 people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!"
     
19797 Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back,
19798 preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy
19799 informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet,
19800 I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away
19801 then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I
19802 made one in the dance.
     
19803 The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the
19804 melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone
19805 in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little
19806 limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such
19807 a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her
19808 sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean
19809 little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles,
19810 and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and
19811 feet -- and heels particularly.
     
19812 I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for
19813 them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed for
19814 teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble
19815 circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer
19816 shop.
     
19817 We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing
19818 wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be
19819 some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy,
19820 while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon
19821 him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which,
19822 united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She
19823 already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young
19824 people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the
19825 figure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The
19826 affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys,
19827 was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock.
     
19828 When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready
19829 to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go
19830 out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating
19831 the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put
19832 on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as I judged from
19833 the nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned
19834 and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold
19835 bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The
19836 little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and
19837 put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy
19838 bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked
19839 dancing by replying, "Not with boys," tied it across her chin, and
19840 went home contemptuous.
     
19841 "Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not
19842 finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you
19843 before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther."
     
19844 I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it
19845 necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.
     
19846 "It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is very
19847 much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to
19848 support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an
19849 evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested."
     
19850 There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his
19851 deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if
19852 he brought her papa out much.
     
19853 "No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks to
19854 Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course
19855 I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get
19856 on together delightfully. You can't think what good companions they
19857 make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one
19858 pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to
19859 his nose and taking it away again all the evening."
     
19860 That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of
19861 life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha
19862 appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.
     
19863 "As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I was most
19864 afraid of -- next to having any family of my own, Esther -- as an
19865 inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to
19866 that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets
19867 him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of
19868 his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he
19869 tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy
19870 cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to
19871 be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?"
     
19872 "To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to say to
19873 the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on
19874 the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I
19875 think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house."
     
19876 "Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,"
19877 returned Caddy.
     
19878 To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy's
19879 residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and
19880 having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut
19881 in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for,
19882 immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an
19883 old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an
19884 unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was
19885 prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it
19886 which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it
19887 insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to
19888 let him off.
     
19889 Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too.
19890 He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table
19891 reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.
     
19892 "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis.
19893 Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and
19894 get out of the gangway."
     
19895 Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish
19896 appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner,
19897 holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation,
19898 with both hands.
     
19899 I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was
19900 more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit.
     
19901 "I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I.
     
19902 Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his
19903 breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket
19904 with a bow. Mr. Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her
19905 head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow.
     
19906 "Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I.
     
19907 Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy's mother just now, I think
19908 I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head,
19909 and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to
19910 Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so
19911 unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty
19912 she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door into her
19913 bedroom adjoining.
     
19914 "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of
19915 a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My mother, though highly
19916 exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates."
     
19917 I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have
19918 turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up
19919 my veil.
     
19920 "I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I,
19921 "in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge's because, remembering what
19922 you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared
19923 I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy."
     
19924 I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw
19925 such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension.
     
19926 "Miss Summerson," stammered Mr. Guppy, "I -- I -- beg your pardon, but in
19927 our profession -- we -- we -- find it necessary to be explicit. You have
19928 referred to an occasion, miss, when I -- when I did myself the honour
19929 of making a declaration which -- "
     
19930 Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly
19931 swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to
19932 swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the
19933 room, and fluttered his papers.
     
19934 "A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained,
19935 "which rather knocks me over. I -- er -- a little subject to this sort of
19936 thing -- er -- by George!"
     
19937 I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his
19938 hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his
19939 chair into the corner behind him.
     
19940 "My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "dear
19941 me -- something bronchial, I think -- hem! -- to remark that you was so
19942 good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration.
19943 You -- you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses
19944 are present, it might be a satisfaction to -- to your mind -- if you was
19945 to put in that admission."
     
19946 "There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal
19947 without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy."
     
19948 "Thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled
19949 hands. "So far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er -- this
19950 is certainly bronchial! -- must be in the tubes -- er -- you wouldn't
19951 perhaps be offended if I was to mention -- not that it's necessary, for
19952 your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that -- if I
19953 was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there
19954 terminated?"
     
19955 "I quite understand that," said I.
     
19956 "Perhaps -- er -- it may not be worth the form, but it might be a
19957 satisfaction to your mind -- perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that,
19958 miss?" said Mr. Guppy.
     
19959 "I admit it most fully and freely," said I.
     
19960 "Thank you," returned Mr. Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I
19961 regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over
19962 which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall
19963 back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever,
19964 but it will ever be a retrospect entwined -- er -- with friendship's
19965 bowers." Mr. Guppy's bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his
19966 measurement of the table.
     
19967 "I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began.
     
19968 "I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "I am so persuaded
19969 that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will -- will keep you
19970 as square as possible -- that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am
19971 sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer."
     
19972 "You were so good as to imply, on that occasion -- "
     
19973 "Excuse me, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "but we had better not travel out
19974 of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied
19975 anything."
     
19976 "You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might possibly
19977 have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by
19978 making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that
19979 you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an
19980 orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr.
19981 Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg
19982 of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish
19983 all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I
19984 have thought of it most lately -- since I have been ill. At length I
19985 have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and
19986 act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are
19987 altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me
19988 that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I
19989 am acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to
19990 assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You
19991 may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse
19992 my giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the
19993 assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to
19994 do this, for my peace."
     
19995 "I am bound to confess," said Mr. Guppy, "that you express yourself,
19996 miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you
19997 credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and
19998 if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to
19999 tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as
20000 hereby offering that apology -- limiting it, as your own good sense and
20001 right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present
20002 proceedings."
     
20003 I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon
20004 him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do
20005 something I asked, and he looked ashamed.
     
20006 "If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I
20007 may have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to
20008 speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as
20009 possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a
20010 confidence which I have really wished to respect -- and which I always
20011 have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There
20012 really is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very
20013 well that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to
20014 you is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now
20015 preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me
20016 to accede to it."
     
20017 I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked
20018 more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very
20019 earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word and
20020 honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living
20021 man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in
20022 opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be any
20023 satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching
20024 the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he
20025 were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the
20026 whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so -- "
     
20027 "I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank
20028 you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!"
     
20029 Mr. Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient
20030 of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr.
20031 Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either
20032 imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there,
20033 staring.
     
20034 But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and
20035 with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently,
20036 "Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!"
     
20037 "I do," said I, "quite confidently."
     
20038 "I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and
20039 staying with the other, "but this lady being present -- your own
20040 witness -- it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish
20041 to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions."
     
20042 "Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be
20043 surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any
20044 engagement -- "
     
20045 "No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr. Guppy.
     
20046 "No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between
20047 this gentleman -- "
     
20048 "William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of
20049 Middlesex," he murmured.
     
20050 "Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place,
20051 Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself."
     
20052 "Thank you, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "Very full -- er -- excuse me -- lady's
20053 name, Christian and surname both?"
     
20054 I gave them.
     
20055 "Married woman, I believe?" said Mr. Guppy. "Married woman. Thank
20056 you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within
20057 the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford
20058 Street. Much obliged."
     
20059 He ran home and came running back again.
     
20060 "Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry
20061 that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which
20062 I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly
20063 terminated some time back," said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly and
20064 despondently, "but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put
20065 it to you."
     
20066 I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a
20067 doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again -- and back again.
     
20068 "It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "If
20069 an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship -- but, upon my
20070 soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the
20071 tender passion only!"
     
20072 The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it
20073 occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently
20074 conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted
20075 cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but
20076 when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same
20077 troubled state of mind.
     
     
     
     
20078 CHAPTER XXXIX
     
20079 Attorney and Client
     
     
20080 The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is
20081 inscribed upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane -- a little,
20082 pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two
20083 compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man
20084 in his way and constructed his inn of old building materials which
20085 took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and
20086 dismal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with congenial shabbiness.
20087 Quartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of Symond are the
20088 legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.
     
20089 Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation
20090 retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three
20091 feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's
20092 jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest
20093 midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage
20094 staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their
20095 brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale that one clerk
20096 can open the door without getting off his stool, while the other who
20097 elbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the fire.
20098 A smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and
20099 dust is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of
20100 mutton fat in candles and to the fretting of parchment forms and
20101 skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close.
20102 The place was last painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man,
20103 and the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of
20104 soot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames
20105 have but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to
20106 be always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the
20107 phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of
20108 firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.
     
20109 Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business,
20110 but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater
20111 attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most
20112 respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a
20113 mark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another
20114 mark of respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another
20115 mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired, which is highly
20116 respectable. And he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for
20117 his three daughters. And his father is dependent on him in the Vale
20118 of Taunton.
     
20119 The one great principle of the English law is to make business for
20120 itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and
20121 consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by
20122 this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze
20123 the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive
20124 that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their
20125 expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.
     
20126 But not perceiving this quite plainly -- only seeing it by halves in a
20127 confused way -- the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a
20128 bad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr.
20129 Vholes is brought into powerful play against them. "Repeal this
20130 statute, my good sir?" says Mr. Kenge to a smarting client. "Repeal
20131 it, my dear sir? Never, with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and
20132 what will be the effect of your rash proceeding on a class of
20133 practitioners very worthily represented, allow me to say to you, by
20134 the opposite attorney in the case, Mr. Vholes? Sir, that class of
20135 practitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. Now you
20136 cannot afford -- I will say, the social system cannot afford -- to lose
20137 an order of men like Mr. Vholes. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute
20138 in business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against
20139 the existing state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in
20140 your case; but I can never raise my voice for the demolition of a
20141 class of men like Mr. Vholes." The respectability of Mr. Vholes has
20142 even been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees,
20143 as in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's
20144 evidence. "Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight
20145 hundred and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice
20146 indisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question: And
20147 great expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone through for
20148 nothing. Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer: I am not
20149 prepared to say that. They have never given ME any vexation; quite
20150 the contrary. Question: But you think that their abolition would
20151 damage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have no doubt of it.
20152 Question: Can you instance any type of that class? Answer: Yes. I
20153 would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes. He would be ruined.
20154 Question: Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a respectable
20155 man? Answer:" -- which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years -- "Mr.
20156 Vholes is considered, in the profession, a MOST respectable man."
     
20157 So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less
20158 disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is
20159 coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is
20160 something else gone, that these changes are death to people like
20161 Vholes -- a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale
20162 of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in
20163 this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes's father?
20164 Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to be
20165 shirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr. Vholes and his relations
20166 being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish
20167 cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make
20168 man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!
     
20169 In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the
20170 Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber,
20171 to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a
20172 nuisance. And with a great many people in a great many instances, the
20173 question is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite
20174 an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or
20175 advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes.
     
20176 The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long
20177 vacation. Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags
20178 hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of
20179 serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the
20180 official den. Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much
20181 respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he
20182 were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were
20183 scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his
20184 hat and gloves upon the ground -- tosses them anywhere, without looking
20185 after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half
20186 sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and
20187 looks the portrait of young despair.
     
20188 "Again nothing done!" says Richard. "Nothing, nothing done!"
     
20189 "Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. "That is
20190 scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!"
     
20191 "Why, what IS done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.
     
20192 "That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes, "The question
20193 may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?"
     
20194 "And what is doing?" asks the moody client.
     
20195 Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips
20196 of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers,
20197 and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at
20198 his client, replies, "A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our
20199 shoulders to the wheel, Mr. Carstone, and the wheel is going round."
     
20200 "Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five
20201 accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and
20202 walking about the room.
     
20203 "Mr. C.," returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever
20204 he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your
20205 account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be
20206 so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more
20207 patience. You should sustain yourself better."
     
20208 "I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?" says Richard, sitting
20209 down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil's tattoo
20210 with his boot on the patternless carpet.
     
20211 "Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the client as if he were
20212 making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his
20213 professional appetite. "Sir," returns Vholes with his inward manner
20214 of speech and his bloodless quietude, "I should not have had the
20215 presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or any
20216 man's. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that
20217 is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you mention me so
20218 pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to impart to you a
20219 little of my -- come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility,
20220 and I am sure I have no objection -- say insensibility -- a little of my
20221 insensibility."
     
20222 "Mr. Vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "I had no
20223 intention to accuse you of insensibility."
     
20224 "I think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable
20225 Vholes. "Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests
20226 with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your excited
20227 feelings I may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My
20228 daughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. But
20229 they have known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye
20230 of affection is not the distrustful eye of business. Not that I
20231 complain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the
20232 contrary. In attending to your interests, I wish to have all possible
20233 checks upon me; it is right that I should have them; I court inquiry.
20234 But your interests demand that I should be cool and methodical, Mr.
20235 Carstone; and I cannot be otherwise -- no, sir, not even to please
20236 you."
     
20237 Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently
20238 watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young
20239 client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if
20240 there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor
20241 speak out, "What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the
20242 vacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many means
20243 of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you had asked
20244 me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have answered you
20245 more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am to be found
20246 here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr.
20247 C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish
20248 to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all
20249 times alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don't. Not that
20250 I blame them for going; I merely say I don't go. This desk is your
20251 rock, sir!"
     
20252 Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. Not
20253 to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to him.
20254 Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is.
     
20255 "I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes," says Richard, more familiarly and
20256 good-humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the world
20257 and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man of
20258 business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my case,
20259 dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into
20260 difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually
20261 disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in
20262 myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you
20263 will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do."
     
20264 "You know," says Mr. Vholes, "that I never give hopes, sir. I told
20265 you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly in
20266 a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out of
20267 the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I gave
20268 hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when you say
20269 there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter of fact,
20270 deny that."
     
20271 "Aye?" returns Richard, brightening. "But how do you make it out?"
     
20272 "Mr. Carstone, you are represented by -- "
     
20273 "You said just now -- a rock."
     
20274 "Yes, sir," says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping the
20275 hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust
20276 on dust, "a rock. That's something. You are separately represented,
20277 and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of others. THAT'S
20278 something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk
20279 it about. THAT'S something. It's not all Jarndyce, in fact as well as
20280 in name. THAT'S something. Nobody has it all his own way now, sir.
20281 And THAT'S something, surely."
     
20282 Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his
20283 clenched hand.
     
20284 "Mr. Vholes! If any man had told me when I first went to John
20285 Jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinterested friend he
20286 seemed -- that he was what he has gradually turned out to be -- I could
20287 have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not
20288 have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world!
20289 Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment
20290 of the suit; that in place of its being an abstraction, it is John
20291 Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him;
20292 that every new delay and every new disappointment is only a new
20293 injury from John Jarndyce's hand."
     
20294 "No, no," says Vholes. "Don't say so. We ought to have patience, all
20295 of us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage."
     
20296 "Mr. Vholes," returns the angry client. "You know as well as I that
20297 he would have strangled the suit if he could."
     
20298 "He was not active in it," Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of
20299 reluctance. "He certainly was not active in it. But however, but
20300 however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the
20301 heart, Mr. C.!"
     
20302 "You can," returns Richard.
     
20303 "I, Mr. C.?"
     
20304 "Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our
20305 interests conflicting? Tell -- me -- that!" says Richard, accompanying
20306 his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.
     
20307 "Mr. C.," returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking his
20308 hungry eyes, "I should be wanting in my duty as your professional
20309 adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if
20310 I represented those interests as identical with the interests of Mr.
20311 Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I never impute motives; I both
20312 have and am a father, and I never impute motives. But I must not
20313 shrink from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in
20314 families. I understand you to be now consulting me professionally as
20315 to your interests? You are so? I reply, then, they are not identical
20316 with those of Mr. Jarndyce."
     
20317 "Of course they are not!" cries Richard. "You found that out long
20318 ago."
     
20319 "Mr. C.," returns Vholes, "I wish to say no more of any third party
20320 than is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied, together
20321 with any little property of which I may become possessed through
20322 industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and Caroline.
20323 I also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. When
20324 Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir -- I will not say the very high
20325 honour, for I never stoop to flattery -- of bringing us together in
20326 this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no opinion or advice
20327 as to your interests while those interests were entrusted to another
20328 member of the profession. And I spoke in such terms as I was bound to
20329 speak of Kenge and Carboy's office, which stands high. You, sir,
20330 thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless
20331 and to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, sir, and
20332 I accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount
20333 in this office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me
20334 mention, are not in a good state, and rest might improve them; but I
20335 shall not rest, sir, while I am your representative. Whenever you
20336 want me, you will find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come.
20337 During the long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying
20338 your interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for
20339 moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor) after
20340 Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you, sir," says
20341 Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, "when I ultimately
20342 congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to
20343 fortune -- which, but that I never give hopes, I might say something
20344 further about -- you will owe me nothing beyond whatever little balance
20345 may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client
20346 not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. I pretend
20347 to no claim upon you, Mr. C., but for the zealous and active
20348 discharge -- not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much
20349 credit I stipulate for -- of my professional duty. My duty prosperously
20350 ended, all between us is ended."
     
20351 Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his
20352 principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment,
20353 perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for twenty
20354 pounds on account.
     
20355 "For there have been many little consultations and attendances of
20356 late, sir," observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary,
20357 "and these things mount up, and I don't profess to be a man of
20358 capital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated to
20359 you openly -- it is a principle of mine that there never can be too
20360 much openness between solicitor and client -- that I was not a man of
20361 capital and that if capital was your object you had better leave your
20362 papers in Kenge's office. No, Mr. C., you will find none of the
20363 advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir. This," Vholes gives
20364 the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock; it pretends to be
20365 nothing more."
     
20366 The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague
20367 hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not without
20368 perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear,
20369 implying scant effects in the agent's hands. All the while, Vholes,
20370 buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively. All the
20371 while, Vholes's official cat watches the mouse's hole.
     
20372 Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for heaven's
20373 sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to "pull him through" the
20374 Court of Chancery. Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes, lays his palm
20375 upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile, "Always here,
20376 sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir,
20377 with my shoulder to the wheel." Thus they part, and Vholes, left
20378 alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little matters out of his
20379 diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three
20380 daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of
20381 chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to
20382 disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up
20383 maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage
20384 situated in a damp garden at Kennington.
     
20385 Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond's Inn into the
20386 sunshine of Chancery Lane -- for there happens to be sunshine there
20387 to-day -- walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and
20388 passes under the shadow of the Lincoln's Inn trees. On many such
20389 loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on
20390 the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the lingering
20391 step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming and
20392 consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby yet, but
20393 that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is
20394 very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from
20395 ten thousand?
     
20396 Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he
20397 saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months
20398 together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case
20399 as if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with
20400 corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for
20401 some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit
20402 there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.
20403 But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being
20404 defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat;
20405 from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time
20406 for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to
20407 the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this
20408 ruin and make HIM his enemy. Richard has told Vholes the truth. Is he
20409 in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally
20410 at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and
20411 that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is
20412 resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification
20413 to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor.
     
20414 Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in
20415 such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the
20416 Recording Angel?
     
20417 Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as,
20418 biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed
20419 up by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Weevle
20420 are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in
20421 conversation against the low stone parapet under the trees. He passes
20422 close by them, seeing nothing but the ground.
     
20423 "William," says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, "there's
20424 combustion going on there! It's not a case of spontaneous, but it's
20425 smouldering combustion it is."
     
20426 "Ah!" says Mr. Guppy. "He wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I
20427 suppose he's over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him. He
20428 was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place. A good
20429 riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony, that as I was
20430 mentioning is what they're up to."
     
20431 Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet,
20432 as resuming a conversation of interest.
     
20433 "They are still up to it, sir," says Mr. Guppy, "still taking stock,
20434 still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of
20435 rubbish. At this rate they'll be at it these seven years."
     
20436 "And Small is helping?"
     
20437 "Small left us at a week's notice. Told Kenge his grandfather's
20438 business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better
20439 himself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between myself
20440 and Small on account of his being so close. But he said you and I
20441 began it, and as he had me there -- for we did -- I put our acquaintance
20442 on the old footing. That's how I come to know what they're up to."
     
20443 "You haven't looked in at all?"
     
20444 "Tony," says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved with
20445 you, I don't greatly relish the house, except in your company, and
20446 therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little
20447 appointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour by
20448 the clock! Tony" -- Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly
20449 eloquent -- "it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once
20450 more that circumstances over which I have no control have made a
20451 melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that
20452 unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend. That
20453 image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish now in
20454 connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the
20455 court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and bury 'em in
20456 oblivion. Do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I
20457 put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that
20458 capricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the -- spontaneous
20459 element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts
20460 he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that
20461 they were not destroyed that night?"
     
20462 Mr. Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly thinks
20463 not.
     
20464 "Tony," says Mr. Guppy as they walk towards the court, "once again
20465 understand me, as a friend. Without entering into further
20466 explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I have no purpose
20467 to serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myself. I
20468 owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the
20469 circumstances over which I have no control. If you was to express to
20470 me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late
20471 lodgings any papers that so much as looked like the papers in
20472 question, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own
20473 responsibility."
     
20474 Mr. Weevle nods. Mr. Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by
20475 having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and
20476 in part romantic -- this gentleman having a passion for conducting
20477 anything in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the
20478 form of a summing up or a speech -- accompanies his friend with dignity
20479 to the court.
     
20480 Never since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus' purse
20481 of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop.
20482 Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Smallweed brought
20483 down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs. Smallweed,
20484 Judy, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all remain there
20485 until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not abundant in
20486 quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and searching, digging,
20487 delving, and diving among the treasures of the late lamented. What
20488 those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened.
20489 In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots,
20490 crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses
20491 stuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the
20492 sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr.
20493 Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr. Elwes, of Suffolk, and
20494 transfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to Mr. Krook.
20495 Twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of old
20496 paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries
20497 into the baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen who
20498 write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen
20499 prowling in the neighbourhood -- shy of each other, their late
20500 partnership being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the
20501 prevailing interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in
20502 what are professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject,
20503 is received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the
20504 regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in
20505 the revived Caledonian melody of "We're a-Nodding," points the
20506 sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever the nature of that
20507 refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head
20508 towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr.
20509 Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double
20510 encore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as Mrs. Piper
20511 and Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance
20512 is the signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to
20513 discover everything, and more.
     
20514 Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon
20515 them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a
20516 high state of popularity. But being contrary to the court's
20517 expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are
20518 considered to mean no good.
     
20519 The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the
20520 ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced into
20521 the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the
20522 sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but
20523 they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his chair
20524 upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous Judy
20525 groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs. Smallweed on the level
20526 ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print,
20527 and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments
20528 that have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. The whole
20529 party, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a
20530 fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room.
20531 There is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier
20532 if possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead
20533 inhabitant and even with his chalked writing on the wall.
     
20534 On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously
20535 fold their arms and stop in their researches.
     
20536 "Aha!" croaks the old gentleman. "How de do, gentlemen, how de do!
20537 Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That's well, that's well.
20538 Ha! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your
20539 warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite at
20540 home here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see you!"
     
20541 Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Guppy's eye follows
20542 Mr. Weevle's eye. Mr. Weevle's eye comes back without any new
20543 intelligence in it. Mr. Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr.
20544 Smallweed's eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like
20545 some wound-up instrument running down, "How de do, sir -- how
20546 de -- how -- " And then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence,
20547 as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in the
20548 darkness opposite with his hands behind him.
     
20549 "Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says Grandfather
20550 Smallweed. "I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note,
20551 but he is so good!"
     
20552 Mr. Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a
20553 shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod.
20554 Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and
20555 were rather amused by the novelty.
     
20556 "A good deal of property here, sir, I should say," Mr. Guppy observes
20557 to Mr. Smallweed.
     
20558 "Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! Rags and rubbish! Me
20559 and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are endeavouring to make out an
20560 inventory of what's worth anything to sell. But we haven't come to
20561 much as yet; we -- haven't -- come -- to -- hah!"
     
20562 Mr. Smallweed has run down again, while Mr. Weevle's eye, attended by
20563 Mr. Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back.
     
20564 "Well, sir," says Mr. Weevle. "We won't intrude any longer if you'll
20565 allow us to go upstairs."
     
20566 "Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're at home. Make yourself so,
20567 pray!"
     
20568 As they go upstairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and
20569 looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull
20570 and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that
20571 memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a great
20572 disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from
20573 it first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit, packing the
20574 few movables with all possible speed and never speaking above a
20575 whisper.
     
20576 "Look here," says Tony, recoiling. "Here's that horrible cat coming
20577 in!"
     
20578 Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. "Small told me of her. She went
20579 leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a dragon, and
20580 got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight,
20581 and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see
20582 such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don't she? Almost
20583 looks as if she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!"
     
20584 Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and
20585 her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr.
20586 Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and
20587 swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam
20588 the house-tops again and return by the chimney.
     
20589 "Mr. Guppy," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "could I have a word with you?"
     
20590 Mr. Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British
20591 Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old
20592 ignoble band-box. "Sir," he returns, reddening, "I wish to act with
20593 courtesy towards every member of the profession, and especially, I am
20594 sure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself -- I will truly
20595 add, sir, so distinguished as yourself. Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir,
20596 I must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is
20597 spoken in the presence of my friend."
     
20598 "Oh, indeed?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
20599 "Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but they
20600 are amply sufficient for myself."
     
20601 "No doubt, no doubt." Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the
20602 hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. "The matter is not of
20603 that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any
20604 conditions, Mr. Guppy." He pauses here to smile, and his smile is as
20605 dull and rusty as his pantaloons. "You are to be congratulated, Mr.
20606 Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir."
     
20607 "Pretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don't complain."
     
20608 "Complain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and access
20609 to elegant ladies! Why, Mr. Guppy, there are people in London who
20610 would give their ears to be you."
     
20611 Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still
20612 reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of
20613 himself, replies, "Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is
20614 right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no
20615 consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not
20616 excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I am not under any
20617 obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you,
20618 sir, and without offence -- I repeat, without offence -- "
     
20619 "Oh, certainly!"
     
20620 " -- I don't intend to do it."
     
20621 "Quite so," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. "Very good; I see
20622 by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable
20623 great, sir?"
     
20624 He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft
20625 impeachment.
     
20626 "A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient," observes Mr.
20627 Tulkinghorn. He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to
20628 the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his
20629 eyes. "Who is this? 'Lady Dedlock.' Ha! A very good likeness in its
20630 way, but it wants force of character. Good day to you, gentlemen;
20631 good day!"
     
20632 When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves
20633 himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy
20634 Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock.
     
20635 "Tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be
20636 quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this
20637 place. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between
20638 myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I now
20639 hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and
20640 association. The time might have been when I might have revealed it
20641 to you. It never will be more. It is due alike to the oath I have
20642 taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over
20643 which I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion.
20644 I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in
20645 the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which I
20646 may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word
20647 of inquiry!"
     
20648 This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic
20649 lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair
20650 and even in his cultivated whiskers.
     
     
     
     
20651 CHAPTER XL
     
20652 National and Domestic
     
     
20653 England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle
20654 would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being
20655 nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there
20656 has been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting
20657 between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did
20658 not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle
20659 and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England
20660 must have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle,
20661 now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous
20662 national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle's making the
20663 timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he
20664 scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle,
20665 he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce
20666 him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while
20667 it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas
20668 Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down
20669 to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has
20670 been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well
20671 observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the
20672 marvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to
20673 care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and
20674 marrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days
20675 before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the
20676 danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest
20677 possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not
20678 only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in
20679 with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his
20680 brothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet.
     
20681 Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly
20682 in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is
20683 available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself
20684 upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia
20685 being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns,
20686 and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself
20687 black in the face that she does neither -- plainly to the advancement
20688 of her glory and morality -- the London season comes to a sudden end,
20689 through all the Doodleites and Coodleites dispersing to assist
20690 Britannia in those religious exercises.
     
20691 Hence Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees, though
20692 no instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be
20693 expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and
20694 others who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And
20695 hence the stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up
20696 and down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and
20697 through the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that
20698 everything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread,
20699 curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen
20700 cleared for action -- all things prepared as beseems the Dedlock
20701 dignity.
     
20702 This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations
20703 are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many
20704 appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured
20705 forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in
20706 possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this
20707 gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of
20708 the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so
20709 find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without
20710 them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the
20711 reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.
     
20712 Through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at
20713 this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of
20714 gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,
20715 overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen
20716 Dedlocks thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the
20717 shadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is beguiled
20718 into a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in
20719 his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a
20720 fleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred
20721 years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very
20722 like her -- casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two
20723 centuries -- shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of
20724 honour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and
20725 other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it
20726 ripples as it glows.
     
20727 But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and
20728 shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age
20729 and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture over the great
20730 chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it
20731 pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or
20732 hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker
20733 rises shadow on the wall -- now a red gloom on the ceiling -- now the
20734 fire is out.
     
20735 All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved
20736 solemnly away and changed -- not the first nor the last of beautiful
20737 things that look so near and will so change -- into a distant phantom.
20738 Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the
20739 garden are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses
20740 as if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to
20741 separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines
20742 behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among
20743 high cathedral arches fantastically broken.
     
20744 Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more
20745 than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful,
20746 stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in
20747 the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time
20748 for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a
20749 pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon
20750 the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy
20751 staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour
20752 has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy
20753 movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads
20754 inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the
20755 long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the
20756 last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into
20757 threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every
20758 breath that stirs.
     
20759 "She is not well, ma'am," says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell's
20760 audience-chamber.
     
20761 "My Lady not well! What's the matter?"
     
20762 "Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma'am, since she was last here -- I
20763 don't mean with the family, ma'am, but when she was here as a bird of
20764 passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept
20765 her room a good deal."
     
20766 "Chesney Wold, Thomas," rejoins the housekeeper with proud
20767 complacency, "will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no
20768 healthier soil in the world!"
     
20769 Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably
20770 hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of
20771 his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and
20772 retires to the servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.
     
20773 This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening,
20774 down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and
20775 down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass.
20776 Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men
20777 with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the
20778 country on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an
20779 auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless
20780 disposition and never do anything anywhere.
     
20781 On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful. A
20782 better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at
20783 dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the
20784 other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and
20785 there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard
20786 to find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent;
20787 and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her
20788 French conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time
20789 almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock in to dinner,
20790 or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national
20791 occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is
20792 constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and
20793 unpensioning country.
     
20794 My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and
20795 being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all
20796 the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other
20797 melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir
20798 Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be
20799 wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be
20800 received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he
20801 moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.
     
20802 Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,
20803 away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and
20804 hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for
20805 the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester
20806 holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no
20807 occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily
20808 Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state
20809 of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that
20810 Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.
     
20811 "How are we getting on?" says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. "ARE
20812 we safe?"
     
20813 The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will
20814 throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has
20815 just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright
20816 particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.
     
20817 "Volumnia," replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, "we
20818 are doing tolerably."
     
20819 "Only tolerably!"
     
20820 Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own
20821 particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near
20822 it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who
20823 should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must
20824 not be understood as a common expression, "Volumnia, we are doing
20825 tolerably."
     
20826 "At least there is no opposition to YOU," Volumnia asserts with
20827 confidence.
     
20828 "No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many
20829 respects, I grieve to say, but -- "
     
20830 "It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!"
     
20831 Volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir
20832 Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to
20833 himself, "A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally
20834 precipitate."
     
20835 In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock's
20836 observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions always
20837 delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale
20838 order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to
20839 him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending
20840 down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, "You will have the
20841 goodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and
20842 to send them home when done."
     
20843 "I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown
20844 a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of
20845 a most determined and most implacable description."
     
20846 "W-r-retches!" says Volumnia.
     
20847 "Even," proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins
20848 on sofas and ottomans, "even in many -- in fact, in most -- of those
20849 places in which the government has carried it against a faction -- "
     
20850 (Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the
20851 Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position
20852 towards the Coodleites.)
     
20853 " -- Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be
20854 constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without
20855 being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds," says Sir Leicester,
20856 eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation,
20857 "hundreds of thousands of pounds!"
     
20858 If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too
20859 innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well
20860 with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and
20861 pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, "What for?"
     
20862 "Volumnia," remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity.
20863 "Volumnia!"
     
20864 "No, no, I don't mean what for," cries Volumnia with her favourite
20865 little scream. "How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!"
     
20866 "I am glad," returns Sir Leicester, "that you do mean what a pity."
     
20867 Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people
20868 ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.
     
20869 "I am glad, Volumnia," repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these
20870 mollifying sentiments, "that you do mean what a pity. It is
20871 disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and
20872 without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me 'what for?'
20873 let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good
20874 sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere."
     
20875 Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect
20876 towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary
20877 expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be
20878 unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some
20879 graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the
20880 Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High
20881 Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of
20882 the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight
20883 gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.
     
20884 "I suppose," observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover
20885 her spirits after her late castigation, "I suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn
20886 has been worked to death."
     
20887 "I don't know," says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, "why Mr.
20888 Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don't know what Mr.
20889 Tulkinghorn's engagements may be. He is not a candidate."
     
20890 Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could
20891 desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again,
20892 suggests, by somebody -- to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester
20893 is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of
20894 his assistance.
     
20895 Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its
20896 cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the
20897 park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer's name was mentioned.
     
20898 A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now
20899 observes from his couch that man told him ya'as'dy that Tulkinghorn
20900 had gone down t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion 'bout
20901 something, and that contest being over t' day, 'twould be highly
20902 jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should 'pear with news that Coodle man
20903 was floored.
     
20904 Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon,
20905 that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady turns
20906 her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.
     
20907 Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so
20908 original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing
20909 all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded
20910 that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,
20911 and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with
20912 candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock
20913 delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.
     
20914 "He has not been here once," she adds, "since I came. I really had
20915 some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had
20916 almost made up my mind that he was dead."
     
20917 It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker
20918 gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady's face, as if she
20919 thought, "I would he were!"
     
20920 "Mr. Tulkinghorn," says Sir Leicester, "is always welcome here and
20921 always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and
20922 deservedly respected."
     
20923 The debilitated cousin supposes he is "'normously rich fler."
     
20924 "He has a stake in the country," says Sir Leicester, "I have no
20925 doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on
20926 a footing of equality with the highest society."
     
20927 Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.
     
20928 "Good gracious, what's that?" cries Volumnia with her little withered
20929 scream.
     
20930 "A rat," says my Lady. "And they have shot him."
     
20931 Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.
     
20932 "No, no," says Sir Leicester, "I think not. My Lady, do you object to
20933 the twilight?"
     
20934 On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
     
20935 "Volumnia?"
     
20936 Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the
20937 dark.
     
20938 "Then take them away," says Sir Leicester. "Tulkinghorn, I beg your
20939 pardon. How do you do?"
     
20940 Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his
20941 passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester's hand, and subsides
20942 into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on
20943 the opposite side of the Baronet's little newspaper-table. Sir
20944 Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will
20945 take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would
20946 rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf
20947 about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile
20948 takes a pinch of snuff.
     
20949 "Now," says Sir Leicester. "How has that contest gone?"
     
20950 "Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in
20951 both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one."
     
20952 It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn's policy and mastery to have no
20953 political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says "you" are
20954 beaten, and not "we."
     
20955 Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a
20956 thing. 'The debilitated cousin holds that it's sort of thing that's
20957 sure tapn slongs votes -- giv'n -- Mob.
     
20958 "It's the place, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the
20959 fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, "where they
20960 wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell's son."
     
20961 "A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had
20962 the becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to
20963 decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments
20964 expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in
20965 this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I
20966 am glad to acknowledge."
     
20967 "Ha!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It did not prevent him from being very
20968 active in this election, though."
     
20969 Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. "Did I
20970 understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active
20971 in this election?"
     
20972 "Uncommonly active."
     
20973 "Against -- "
     
20974 "Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and
20975 emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the
20976 business part of the proceedings he carried all before him."
     
20977 It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that
20978 Sir Leicester is staring majestically.
     
20979 "And he was much assisted," says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, "by
20980 his son."
     
20981 "By his son, sir?" repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.
     
20982 "By his son."
     
20983 "The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady's service?"
     
20984 "That son. He has but one."
     
20985 "Then upon my honour," says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause
20986 during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, "then
20987 upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,
20988 the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters
20989 have -- a -- obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion
20990 by which things are held together!"
     
20991 General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is
20992 really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in
20993 and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks -- country's
20994 going -- Dayvle -- steeple-chase pace.
     
20995 "I beg," says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, "that we may
20996 not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My
20997 Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman -- "
     
20998 "I have no intention," observes my Lady from her window in a low but
20999 decided tone, "of parting with her."
     
21000 "That was not my meaning," returns Sir Leicester. "I am glad to hear
21001 you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your
21002 patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these
21003 dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in
21004 such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve
21005 her for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably
21006 would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would
21007 not be -- " Sir Leicester adds, after a moment's consideration,
21008 "dragged from the altars of her forefathers."
     
21009 These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference
21010 when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in
21011 reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little
21012 stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.
     
21013 "It is worthy of remark," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "however, that these
21014 people are, in their way, very proud."
     
21015 "Proud?" Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.
     
21016 "I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the
21017 girl -- yes, lover and all -- instead of her abandoning them, supposing
21018 she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances."
     
21019 "Well!" says Sir Leicester tremulously. "Well! You should know, Mr.
21020 Tulkinghorn. You have been among them."
     
21021 "Really, Sir Leicester," returns the lawyer, "I state the fact. Why,
21022 I could tell you a story -- with Lady Dedlock's permission."
     
21023 Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is
21024 going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?
     
21025 "No. Real flesh and blood." Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and
21026 repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony,
21027 "Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars
21028 have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They
21029 exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady
21030 Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?"
     
21031 By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking
21032 towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be
21033 seen, perfectly still.
     
21034 "A townsman of this Mrs. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel
21035 circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter
21036 who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great
21037 lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your
21038 condition, Sir Leicester."
     
21039 Sir Leicester condescendingly says, "Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn," implying
21040 that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral
21041 dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.
     
21042 "The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl,
21043 and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her.
21044 Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she
21045 had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been
21046 engaged to marry a young rake -- he was a captain in the army -- nothing
21047 connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but
21048 she gave birth to a child of which he was the father."
     
21049 By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the
21050 moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile,
21051 perfectly still.
     
21052 "The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a
21053 train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to
21054 discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on
21055 her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how
21056 difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be
21057 always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you
21058 may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband's
21059 grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Rouncewell's
21060 townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be
21061 patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden
21062 underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly
21063 took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of
21064 the honour done him and his daughter by the lady's condescension; not
21065 the least. He resented the girl's position, as if the lady had been
21066 the commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock
21067 will excuse its painful nature."
     
21068 There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting
21069 with Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever
21070 was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The
21071 majority incline to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in
21072 few words -- "no business -- Rouncewell's fernal townsman." Sir Leicester
21073 generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a
21074 sequence of events on a plan of his own.
     
21075 There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept
21076 at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and
21077 this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone.
21078 It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for
21079 candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and
21080 then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes
21081 forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in
21082 the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for
21083 something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of
21084 which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked
21085 after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective
21086 by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of
21087 contrast.
     
     
     
     
21088 CHAPTER XLI
     
21089 In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room
     
     
21090 Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the
21091 journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his
21092 face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were,
21093 in his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly
21094 self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an
21095 injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any
21096 romantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a
21097 rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of
21098 his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back
21099 walks noiselessly up and down.
     
21100 There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty
21101 large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his
21102 reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to
21103 it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or
21104 so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But he
21105 happens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the documents
21106 awaiting his notice -- with his head bent low over the table, the old
21107 man's sight for print or writing being defective at night -- he opens
21108 the French window and steps out upon the leads. There he again walks
21109 slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool
21110 may have any need to subside, from the story he has related
21111 downstairs.
     
21112 The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk
21113 on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read
21114 their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though
21115 their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be
21116 seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the
21117 leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented
21118 below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other
21119 characters nearer to his hand.
     
21120 As he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his
21121 thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in
21122 passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his
21123 room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite
21124 the window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the
21125 night being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These
21126 eyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the
21127 corridor outside. He knows them well. The blood has not flushed into
21128 his face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he
21129 recognizes Lady Dedlock.
     
21130 He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors
21131 behind her. There is a wild disturbance -- is it fear or anger? -- in her
21132 eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs
21133 two hours ago.
     
21134 Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as
21135 pale, both as intent.
     
21136 "Lady Dedlock?"
     
21137 She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped
21138 into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like two
21139 pictures.
     
21140 "Why have you told my story to so many persons?"
     
21141 "Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it."
     
21142 "How long have you known it?"
     
21143 "I have suspected it a long while -- fully known it a little while."
     
21144 "Months?"
     
21145 "Days."
     
21146 He stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in
21147 his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood
21148 before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal
21149 politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be
21150 defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same
21151 distance, which nothing has ever diminished.
     
21152 "Is this true concerning the poor girl?"
     
21153 He slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding
21154 the question.
     
21155 "You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story
21156 also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried
21157 in the streets?"
     
21158 So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this
21159 woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr. Tulkinghorn's
21160 thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey
21161 eyebrows a hair's breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze.
     
21162 "No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir
21163 Leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand.
21164 But it would be a real case if they knew -- what we know."
     
21165 "Then they do not know it yet?"
     
21166 "No."
     
21167 "Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?"
     
21168 "Really, Lady Dedlock," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, "I cannot give a
21169 satisfactory opinion on that point."
     
21170 And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he
21171 watches the struggle in her breast, "The power and force of this
21172 woman are astonishing!"
     
21173 "Sir," she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the
21174 energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, "I will make it
21175 plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it,
21176 and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr.
21177 Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the power
21178 of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by
21179 having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my
21180 great and distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or
21181 I should rather say -- no longer belonging to this place -- I had, and if
21182 you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as
21183 to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy."
     
21184 Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug
21185 of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.
     
21186 "You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too.
21187 Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I
21188 can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in
21189 obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your
21190 discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will
21191 dictate. I am ready to do it."
     
21192 And she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand
21193 with which she takes the pen!
     
21194 "I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. Pray spare yourself."
     
21195 "I have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare
21196 myself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you have
21197 done. Do what remains now."
     
21198 "Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to say
21199 a few words when you have finished."
     
21200 Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do
21201 it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened
21202 window. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and
21203 the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where
21204 are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add
21205 the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn
21206 existence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious
21207 questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under
21208 the watching stars upon a summer night.
     
21209 "Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine," Lady Dedlock
21210 presently proceeds, "I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would
21211 be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears."
     
21212 He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with
21213 her disdainful hand.
     
21214 "Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels
21215 are all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there.
21216 So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had
21217 with me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own
21218 dress, in order that I might avoid observation. I went to be
21219 henceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other charge with
21220 you."
     
21221 "Excuse me, Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. "I am
21222 not sure that I understand you. You want -- "
     
21223 "To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this
21224 hour."
     
21225 Mr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but he, without moving
21226 hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill,
21227 shakes his head.
     
21228 "What? Not go as I have said?"
     
21229 "No, Lady Dedlock," he very calmly replies.
     
21230 "Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you
21231 forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and
21232 who it is?"
     
21233 "No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means."
     
21234 Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in
21235 her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot
21236 or raising his voice, "Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and
21237 hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the
21238 alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out before
21239 every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it."
     
21240 He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand
21241 confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, but when
21242 so practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a moment
21243 in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.
     
21244 He promptly says again, "Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock,"
21245 and motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but
21246 he motions again, and she sits down.
     
21247 "The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady
21248 Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for
21249 them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well
21250 known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have
21251 appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery."
     
21252 "Sir," she returns without looking up from the ground on which her
21253 eyes are now fixed, "I had better have gone. It would have been far
21254 better not to have detained me. I have no more to say."
     
21255 "Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear."
     
21256 "I wish to hear it at the window, then. I can't breathe where I am."
     
21257 His jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant's
21258 misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and
21259 dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the
21260 terrace below. But a moment's observation of her figure as she stands
21261 in the window without any support, looking out at the stars -- not
21262 up -- gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens,
21263 reassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little
21264 behind her.
     
21265 "Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision
21266 satisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear what
21267 to do or how to act next. I must request you, in the meantime, to
21268 keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I
21269 keep it too."
     
21270 He pauses, but she makes no reply.
     
21271 "Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an important subject. You are
21272 honouring me with your attention?"
     
21273 "I am."
     
21274 "Thank you. I might have known it from what I have seen of your
21275 strength of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but I
21276 have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go on.
21277 The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester."
     
21278 "Then why," she asks in a low voice and without removing her gloomy
21279 look from those distant stars, "do you detain me in his house?"
     
21280 "Because he IS the consideration. Lady Dedlock, I have no occasion to
21281 tell you that Sir Leicester is a very proud man, that his reliance
21282 upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of the sky would
21283 not amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his
21284 wife."
     
21285 She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as
21286 ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company.
     
21287 "I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that with anything short of this
21288 case that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up by means of
21289 my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as to
21290 shake your hold upon Sir Leicester and Sir Leicester's trust and
21291 confidence in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that
21292 he could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing
21293 can prepare him for the blow."
     
21294 "Not my flight?" she returned. "Think of it again."
     
21295 "Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a
21296 hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible
21297 to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of."
     
21298 There is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no
21299 remonstrance.
     
21300 "When I speak of Sir Leicester being the sole consideration, he and
21301 the family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the baronetcy, Sir
21302 Leicester and Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors and his
21303 patrimony" -- Mr. Tulkinghorn very dry here -- "are, I need not say to
21304 you, Lady Dedlock, inseparable."
     
21305 "Go on!"
     
21306 "Therefore," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot
21307 style, "I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if it can
21308 be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his wits or laid
21309 upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow
21310 morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? What
21311 could have caused it? What could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the
21312 wall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you
21313 are to remember that it would not affect you merely (whom I cannot at
21314 all consider in this business) but your husband, Lady Dedlock, your
21315 husband."
     
21316 He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or
21317 animated.
     
21318 "There is another point of view," he continues, "in which the case
21319 presents itself. Sir Leicester is devoted to you almost to
21320 infatuation. He might not be able to overcome that infatuation, even
21321 knowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it might be
21322 so. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better for common
21323 sense, better for him, better for me. I must take all this into
21324 account, and it combines to render a decision very difficult."
     
21325 She stands looking out at the same stars without a word. They are
21326 beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her.
     
21327 "My experience teaches me," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has by this
21328 time got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business
21329 consideration of the matter like a machine. "My experience teaches
21330 me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better
21331 to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of
21332 their troubles. So I thought when Sir Leicester married, and so I
21333 always have thought since. No more about that. I must now be guided
21334 by circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg you to keep your own
21335 counsel, and I will keep mine."
     
21336 "I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure,
21337 day by day?" she asks, still looking at the distant sky.
     
21338 "Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock."
     
21339 "It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?"
     
21340 "I am sure that what I recommend is necessary."
     
21341 "I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable
21342 deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when
21343 you give the signal?" she said slowly.
     
21344 "Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without
21345 forewarning you."
     
21346 She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory
21347 or calling them over in her sleep.
     
21348 "We are to meet as usual?"
     
21349 "Precisely as usual, if you please."
     
21350 "And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?"
     
21351 "As you have done so many years. I should not have made that
21352 reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your
21353 secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no
21354 better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never
21355 wholly trusted each other."
     
21356 She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time
21357 before asking, "Is there anything more to be said to-night?"
     
21358 "Why," Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his
21359 hands, "I should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my
21360 arrangements, Lady Dedlock."
     
21361 "You may be assured of it."
     
21362 "Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business
21363 precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any
21364 communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview I
21365 have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's
21366 feelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been
21367 happy to have made Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if
21368 the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not."
     
21369 "I can attest your fidelity, sir."
     
21370 Both before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length
21371 moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence,
21372 towards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he
21373 would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago,
21374 and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an
21375 ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into
21376 the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very
21377 slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he reflects when
21378 he is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint
21379 upon herself.
     
21380 He would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own
21381 rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands
21382 clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. He would
21383 think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down
21384 for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the
21385 faithful step upon the Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled
21386 air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And
21387 truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the
21388 turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger
21389 and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging.
     
21390 The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant
21391 country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins
21392 entering on various public employments, principally receipt of
21393 salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty
21394 thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false
21395 teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of Bath
21396 and the terror of every other community. Also into rooms high in the
21397 roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where
21398 humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodges, and in holy
21399 matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing
21400 everything up with it -- the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the
21401 earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and
21402 creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold
21403 emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great
21404 kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome
21405 air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn's unconscious
21406 head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are
21407 in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in
21408 Lincolnshire.
     
     
     
     
21409 CHAPTER XLII
     
21410 In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers
     
     
21411 From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock
21412 property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and
21413 dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places
21414 is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it
21415 were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he
21416 had never been out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither changes his
21417 dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. He melted out of
21418 his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he
21419 melts into his own square.
     
21420 Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant
21421 fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into
21422 wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded,
21423 dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without
21424 experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest
21425 in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its
21426 broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by
21427 the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than
21428 usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a
21429 century old.
     
21430 The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr.
21431 Tulkinghorn's side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble
21432 mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the
21433 door-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on
21434 the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.
     
21435 "Is that Snagsby?"
     
21436 "Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir,
21437 and going home."
     
21438 "Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?"
     
21439 "Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his
21440 head in his deference towards his best customer, "I was wishful to
21441 say a word to you, sir."
     
21442 "Can you say it here?"
     
21443 "Perfectly, sir."
     
21444 "Say it then." The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing
21445 at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the
21446 court-yard.
     
21447 "It is relating," says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, "it is
21448 relating -- not to put too fine a point upon it -- to the foreigner,
21449 sir!"
     
21450 Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. "What foreigner?"
     
21451 "The foreign female, sir. French, if I don't mistake? I am not
21452 acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her
21453 manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly
21454 foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the
21455 honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night."
     
21456 "Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense."
     
21457 "Indeed, sir?" Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his
21458 hat. "I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in
21459 general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that." Mr. Snagsby appears
21460 to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating
21461 the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself.
     
21462 "And what can you have to say, Snagsby," demands Mr. Tulkinghorn,
21463 "about her?"
     
21464 "Well, sir," returns the stationer, shading his communication with
21465 his hat, "it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is
21466 very great -- at least, it's as great as can be expected, I'm sure -- but
21467 my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a
21468 point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a
21469 foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and
21470 hovering -- I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if
21471 I could avoid it, but hovering, sir -- in the court -- you know it
21472 is -- now ain't it? I only put it to yourself, sir."
     
21473 Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a
21474 cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.
     
21475 "Why, what do you mean?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
21476 "Just so, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it
21477 yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when
21478 coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the
21479 foreign female -- which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a
21480 native sound I am sure -- caught up the word Snagsby that night, being
21481 uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at
21482 dinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and
21483 she, taking fright at the foreigner's looks -- which are fierce -- and at
21484 a grinding manner that she has of speaking -- which is calculated to
21485 alarm a weak mind -- gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it,
21486 and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such
21487 fits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in
21488 any house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample
21489 occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When
21490 she DID say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his
21491 employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of
21492 viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually
21493 calling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has
21494 been, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir" -- Mr. Snagsby
21495 repeats the word with pathetic emphasis -- "in the court. The effects
21496 of which movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn't wonder
21497 if it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even
21498 in the neighbours' minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was
21499 possible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows," says Mr.
21500 Snagsby, shaking his head, "I never had an idea of a foreign female,
21501 except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby,
21502 or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never had, I
21503 do assure you, sir!"
     
21504 Mr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires
21505 when the stationer has finished, "And that's all, is it, Snagsby?"
     
21506 "Why yes, sir, that's all," says Mr. Snagsby, ending with a cough
21507 that plainly adds, "and it's enough too -- for me."
     
21508 "I don't know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless she
21509 is mad," says the lawyer.
     
21510 "Even if she was, you know, sir," Mr. Snagsby pleads, "it wouldn't be
21511 a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign
21512 dagger planted in the family."
     
21513 "No," says the other. "Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry
21514 you have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here."
     
21515 Mr. Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes
21516 his leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying
21517 to himself, "These women were created to give trouble the whole earth
21518 over. The mistress not being enough to deal with, here's the maid
21519 now! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!"
     
21520 So saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms,
21521 lights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much
21522 of the Allegory overhead there, but that importunate Roman, who is
21523 for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work
21524 pretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much attention, Mr.
21525 Tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in
21526 which there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is
21527 another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to
21528 descend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the door with
21529 a candle in his hand when a knock comes.
     
21530 "Who's this? Aye, aye, mistress, it's you, is it? You appear at a
21531 good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?"
     
21532 He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk's hall and
21533 taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of
21534 welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her
21535 lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly
21536 closes the door before replying.
     
21537 "I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir."
     
21538 "HAVE you!"
     
21539 "I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he
21540 is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for
21541 you."
     
21542 "Quite right, and quite true."
     
21543 "Not true. Lies!"
     
21544 At times there is a suddenness in the manner of Mademoiselle Hortense
21545 so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such subject
21546 involuntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's case at
21547 present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with her eyes almost shut up
21548 (but still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and
21549 shaking her head.
     
21550 "Now, mistress," says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the
21551 chimney-piece. "If you have anything to say, say it, say it."
     
21552 "Sir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby."
     
21553 "Mean and shabby, eh?" returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the
21554 key.
     
21555 "Yes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have
21556 attrapped me -- catched me -- to give you information; you have asked me
21557 to show you the dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night, you
21558 have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it not?"
21559 Mademoiselle Hortense makes another spring.
     
21560 "You are a vixen, a vixen!" Mr. Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he
21561 looks distrustfully at her, then he replies, "Well, wench, well. I
21562 paid you."
     
21563 "You paid me!" she repeats with fierce disdain. "Two sovereign! I
21564 have not change them, I re-fuse them, I des-pise them, I throw them
21565 from me!" Which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as
21566 she speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor that
21567 they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into corners
21568 and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently.
     
21569 "Now!" says Mademoiselle Hortense, darkening her large eyes again.
21570 "You have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes!"
     
21571 Mr. Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains
21572 herself with a sarcastic laugh.
     
21573 "You must be rich, my fair friend," he composedly observes, "to throw
21574 money about in that way!"
     
21575 "I AM rich," she returns. "I am very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of
21576 all my heart. You know that."
     
21577 "Know it? How should I know it?"
     
21578 "Because you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give you
21579 that information. Because you have known perfectly that I was
21580 en-r-r-r-raged!" It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the
21581 letter "r" sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she
21582 assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and
21583 setting all her teeth.
     
21584 "Oh! I knew that, did I?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, examining the wards
21585 of the key.
     
21586 "Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me because
21587 you knew that. You had reason! I det-est her." Mademoiselle folds her
21588 arms and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders.
     
21589 "Having said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?"
     
21590 "I am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you
21591 cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to
21592 chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you well,
21593 and with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know that?"
     
21594 "You appear to know a good deal," Mr. Tulkinghorn retorts.
     
21595 "Do I not? Is it that I am so weak as to believe, like a child, that
21596 I come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy only to decide a
21597 little bet, a wager? Eh, my God, oh yes!" In this reply, down to the
21598 word "wager" inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically polite and
21599 tender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant
21600 scorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly
21601 shut and staringly wide open.
     
21602 "Now, let us see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the
21603 key and looking imperturbably at her, "how this matter stands."
     
21604 "Ah! Let us see," mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight
21605 nods of her head.
     
21606 "You come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have
21607 just stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again."
     
21608 "And again," says mademoiselle with more tight and angry nods. "And
21609 yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!"
     
21610 "And not only here, but you will go to Mr. Snagsby's too, perhaps?
21611 That visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?"
     
21612 "And again," repeats mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination.
21613 "And yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for
21614 ever!"
     
21615 "Very well. Now, Mademoiselle Hortense, let me recommend you to take
21616 the candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it
21617 behind the clerk's partition in the corner yonder."
     
21618 She merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and stands her ground
21619 with folded arms.
     
21620 "You will not, eh?"
     
21621 "No, I will not!"
     
21622 "So much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this
21623 is the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of
21624 prisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction
21625 (where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very
21626 strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of
21627 your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one
21628 of those keys turned upon her for any length of time. What do you
21629 think?"
     
21630 "I think," mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear,
21631 obliging voice, "that you are a miserable wretch."
     
21632 "Probably," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. "But I
21633 don't ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the
21634 prison."
     
21635 "Nothing. What does it matter to me?"
     
21636 "Why, it matters this much, mistress," says the lawyer, deliberately
21637 putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; "the law is so
21638 despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English
21639 citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits against his
21640 desire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold
21641 of the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard
21642 discipline. Turns the key upon her, mistress." Illustrating with the
21643 cellar-key.
     
21644 "Truly?" returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. "That is
21645 droll! But -- my faith! -- still what does it matter to me?"
     
21646 "My fair friend," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "make another visit here, or
21647 at Mr. Snagsby's, and you shall learn."
     
21648 "In that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?"
     
21649 "Perhaps."
     
21650 It would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle's state of
21651 agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish
21652 expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make
21653 her do it.
     
21654 "In a word, mistress," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "I am sorry to be
21655 unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here -- or
21656 there -- again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry is
21657 great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an
21658 ignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench."
     
21659 "I will prove you," whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand,
21660 "I will try if you dare to do it!"
     
21661 "And if," pursues the lawyer without minding her, "I place you in
21662 that good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time
21663 before you find yourself at liberty again."
     
21664 "I will prove you," repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper.
     
21665 "And now," proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, "you had
21666 better go. Think twice before you come here again."
     
21667 "Think you," she answers, "twice two hundred times!"
     
21668 "You were dismissed by your lady, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn
21669 observes, following her out upon the staircase, "as the most
21670 implacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and
21671 take warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I
21672 threaten, I will do, mistress."
     
21673 She goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is
21674 gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle,
21675 devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and
21676 then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the
21677 pertinacious Roman pointing from the ceiling.
     
     
     
     
21678 CHAPTER XLIII
     
21679 Esther's Narrative
     
     
21680 It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had
21681 told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to
21682 approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of
21683 the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my
21684 fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living
21685 creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always
21686 conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew
21687 the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I
21688 did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I
21689 was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I
21690 tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I
21691 knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did
21692 these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken
21693 of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might
21694 lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.
     
21695 It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's
21696 voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to
21697 do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so
21698 new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention
21699 of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house
21700 in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the
21701 theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide
21702 asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or
21703 confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has
21704 been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story
21705 of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and
21706 go on.
     
21707 When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations
21708 with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was
21709 deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but
21710 she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him
21711 even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his
21712 name with a word of reproof. "Rick is mistaken, my dear," he would
21713 say to her. "Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over
21714 again. We must trust to you and time to set him right."
     
21715 We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to
21716 time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had
21717 written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and
21718 persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard
21719 was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends
21720 when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark,
21721 he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those
21722 clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and
21723 misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the
21724 suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his
21725 unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession
21726 of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration
21727 before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a
21728 new argument in favour of his doing what he did. "So that it is even
21729 more mischievous," said my guardian once to me, "to remonstrate with
21730 the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone."
     
21731 I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.
21732 Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.
     
21733 "Adviser!" returned my guardian, laughing, "My dear, who would advise
21734 with Skimpole?"
     
21735 "Encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said I.
     
21736 "Encourager!" returned my guardian again. "Who could be encouraged by
21737 Skimpole?"
     
21738 "Not Richard?" I asked.
     
21739 "No," he replied. "Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer
21740 creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or
21741 encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or
21742 anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as
21743 Skimpole."
     
21744 "Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked
21745 over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?"
     
21746 "What made him such a child?" inquired my guardian, rubbing his head,
21747 a little at a loss.
     
21748 "Yes, cousin John."
     
21749 "Why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is
21750 all sentiment, and -- and susceptibility, and -- and sensibility,
21751 and -- and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him,
21752 somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth
21753 attached too much importance to them and too little to any training
21754 that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he
21755 is. Hey?" said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us
21756 hopefully. "What do you think, you two?"
     
21757 Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an
21758 expense to Richard.
     
21759 "So it is, so it is," returned my guardian hurriedly. "That must not
21760 be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do."
     
21761 And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever
21762 introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds.
     
21763 "Did he?" said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his
21764 face. "But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is
21765 nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of
21766 money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.
21767 Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and
21768 thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I'll be bound, my dear?"
     
21769 "Oh, yes!" said I.
     
21770 "Exactly!" cried my guardian, quite triumphant. "There you have the
21771 man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in
21772 it, he wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere
21773 simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll
21774 understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and
21775 caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an
21776 infant!"
     
21777 In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and
21778 presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole's door.
     
21779 He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there
21780 were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in
21781 cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant
21782 than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody
21783 always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for
21784 business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don't
21785 know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a
21786 state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of
21787 the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker
21788 was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge
21789 from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps
21790 were the only signs of its being inhabited.
     
21791 A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the
21792 rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry
21793 answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping
21794 up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and
21795 I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of
21796 her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The
21797 lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied
21798 herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action
21799 either, and said would we go upstairs?
     
21800 We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture
21801 than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further ceremony
21802 entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at
21803 all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a
21804 large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and
21805 plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music,
21806 newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass
21807 in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there
21808 was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was
21809 another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a
21810 bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in
21811 a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china
21812 cup -- it was then about mid-day -- and looking at a collection of
21813 wallflowers in the balcony.
     
21814 He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and
21815 received us in his usual airy manner.
     
21816 "Here I am, you see!" he said when we were seated, not without some
21817 little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. "Here
21818 I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and
21819 mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee,
21820 and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but
21821 they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef
21822 and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!"
     
21823 "This is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever
21824 prescribed), his sanctum, his studio," said my guardian to us.
     
21825 "Yes," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the
21826 bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his
21827 feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!"
     
21828 He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "He sings! Not
21829 an ambitious note, but still he sings."
     
21830 "These are very fine," said my guardian. "A present?"
     
21831 "No," he answered. "No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man
21832 wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should
21833 wait for the money. 'Really, my friend,' I said, 'I think not -- if
21834 your time is of any value to you.' I suppose it was, for he went
21835 away."
     
21836 My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "Is it
21837 possible to be worldly with this baby?"
     
21838 "This is a day," said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a
21839 tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint
21840 Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a
21841 blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment
21842 daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all.
21843 They'll be enchanted."
     
21844 He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him
21845 to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. "My dear
21846 Jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, "as many
21847 moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what
21848 o'clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life,
21849 you'll tell me? Certainly. But we DON'T get on in life. We don't
21850 pretend to do it."
     
21851 My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "You hear him?"
     
21852 "Now, Harold," he began, "the word I have to say relates to Rick."
     
21853 "The dearest friend I have!" returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. "I
21854 suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms
21855 with you. But he is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry,
21856 and I love him. If you don't like it, I can't help it. I love him."
     
21857 The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had
21858 a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for
21859 the moment, Ada too.
     
21860 "You are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned Mr.
21861 Jarndyce, "but we must save his pocket, Harold."
     
21862 "Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole. "His pocket? Now you are coming to what I
21863 don't understand." Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the
21864 cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an
21865 ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.
     
21866 "If you go with him here or there," said my guardian plainly, "you
21867 must not let him pay for both."
     
21868 "My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated
21869 by the comicality of this idea, "what am I to do? If he takes me
21870 anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I
21871 had any money, I don't know anything about it. Suppose I say to a
21872 man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know
21873 nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue
21874 the subject with any consideration for the man. I don't go about
21875 asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish -- which I
21876 don't understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and
21877 sixpence is in Money -- which I don't understand?"
     
21878 "Well," said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless
21879 reply, "if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must
21880 borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that
21881 circumstance), and leave the calculation to him."
     
21882 "My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "I will do anything to
21883 give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form -- a superstition.
21884 Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I
21885 thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to
21886 make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a
21887 bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower
21888 of money."
     
21889 "Indeed it is not so, sir," said Ada. "He is poor."
     
21890 "No, really?" returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. "You
21891 surprise me.
     
21892 "And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my
21893 guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr.
21894 Skimpole's dressing-gown, "be you very careful not to encourage him
21895 in that reliance, Harold."
     
21896 "My dear good friend," returned Mr. Skimpole, "and my dear Miss
21897 Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It's business,
21898 and I don't know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges
21899 from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before
21900 me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire
21901 them -- as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell
21902 him so."
     
21903 The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us,
21904 the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the
21905 fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and
21906 argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease
21907 of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. The
21908 more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was
21909 present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and
21910 yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the
21911 less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any
21912 one for whom I cared.
     
21913 Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr.
21914 Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters
21915 (his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite
21916 delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish
21917 character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young
21918 ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a
21919 delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of
21920 disorders.
     
21921 "This," said Mr. Skimpole, "is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa -- plays
21922 and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment
21923 daughter, Laura -- plays a little but don't sing. This is my Comedy
21924 daughter, Kitty -- sings a little but don't play. We all draw a little
21925 and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money."
     
21926 Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to
21927 strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that
21928 she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took
21929 every opportunity of throwing in another.
     
21930 "It is pleasant," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from
21931 one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to trace
21932 peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I
21933 am the youngest."
     
21934 The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by
21935 this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter.
     
21936 "My dears, it is true," said Mr. Skimpole, "is it not? So it is, and
21937 so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature
21938 to.' Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity
21939 and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very
21940 strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know nothing
21941 about chops in this house. But we don't, not the least. We can't cook
21942 anything whatever. A needle and thread we don't know how to use. We
21943 admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we
21944 don't quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live
21945 and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and
21946 let us live upon you!"
     
21947 He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what
21948 he said.
     
21949 "We have sympathy, my roses," said Mr. Skimpole, "sympathy for
21950 everything. Have we not?"
     
21951 "Oh, yes, papa!" cried the three daughters.
     
21952 "In fact, that is our family department," said Mr. Skimpole, "in this
21953 hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being
21954 interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can
21955 we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I
21956 dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all
21957 wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We
21958 had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social
21959 ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their
21960 young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or
21961 other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have
21962 THEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don't know how, but
21963 somehow."
     
21964 She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I
21965 could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the
21966 three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little
21967 haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's
21968 playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted,
21969 I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the
21970 Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter
21971 luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style,
21972 with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls
21973 dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to
21974 correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.
     
21975 Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them
21976 wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had
21977 been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in
21978 the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not
21979 help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously
21980 volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for
21981 the purpose.
     
21982 "My roses," he said when he came back, "take care of mama. She is
21983 poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I
21984 shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been
21985 tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home."
     
21986 "That bad man!" said the Comedy daughter.
     
21987 "At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers,
21988 looking at the blue sky," Laura complained.
     
21989 "And when the smell of hay was in the air!" said Arethusa.
     
21990 "It showed a want of poetry in the man," Mr. Skimpole assented, but
21991 with perfect good humour. "It was coarse. There was an absence of the
21992 finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great
21993 offence," he explained to us, "at an honest man -- "
     
21994 "Not honest, papa. Impossible!" they all three protested.
     
21995 "At a rough kind of fellow -- a sort of human hedgehog rolled up," said
21996 Mr. Skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we
21997 borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs,
21998 and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man
21999 who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them,
22000 and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back.
22001 He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He
22002 objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out
22003 his mistake. I said, 'Can you, at your time of life, be so
22004 headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to
22005 put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to
22006 survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don't you
22007 KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' He was
22008 unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being
22009 as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him.
22010 I said, 'Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary,
22011 we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming
22012 summer morning here you see me' (I was on the sofa) 'with flowers
22013 before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air
22014 full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common
22015 brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime,
22016 the absurd figure of an angry baker!' But he did," said Mr. Skimpole,
22017 raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; "he did interpose
22018 that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore
22019 I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend
22020 Jarndyce."
     
22021 It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the
22022 daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old
22023 a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took
22024 leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any
22025 other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in
22026 perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some
22027 open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a
22028 palace to the rest of the house.
     
22029 I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very
22030 startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what
22031 ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was
22032 in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to
22033 him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to
22034 the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had
22035 threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town,
22036 veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it.
     
22037 Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr.
22038 Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no
22039 way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room
22040 before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet
22041 looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and
22042 drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.
     
22043 We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the
22044 piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music,
22045 and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined
22046 old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and
22047 had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read
22048 aloud in a surprised voice, "Sir Leicester Dedlock!"
     
22049 The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me
22050 and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have
22051 hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness,
22052 to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know
22053 where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was
22054 presenting me before I could move to a chair.
     
22055 "Pray be seated, Sir Leicester."
     
22056 "Mr. Jarndyce," said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated
22057 himself, "I do myself the honour of calling here -- "
     
22058 "You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester."
     
22059 "Thank you -- of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express
22060 my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may
22061 have against a gentleman who -- who is known to you and has been your
22062 host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should
22063 have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge,
22064 from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and
22065 refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold."
     
22066 "You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those
22067 ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much."
     
22068 "It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the
22069 reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion -- it
22070 is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the
22071 honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to
22072 believe that you would not have been received by my local
22073 establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,
22074 which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen
22075 who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir,
22076 that the fact is the reverse."
     
22077 My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any
22078 verbal answer.
     
22079 "It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce," Sir Leicester weightily
22080 proceeded. "I assure you, sir, it has given -- me -- pain -- to learn from
22081 the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your
22082 company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a
22083 cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some
22084 such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that
22085 attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them
22086 and which some of them might possibly have repaid." Here he produced
22087 a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his
22088 eye-glass, "Mr. Hirrold -- Herald -- Harold -- Skampling -- Skumpling -- I beg
22089 your pardon -- Skimpole."
     
22090 "This is Mr. Harold Skimpole," said my guardian, evidently surprised.
     
22091 "Oh!" exclaimed Sir Leicester, "I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and
22092 to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope,
22093 sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you
22094 will be under no similar sense of restraint."
     
22095 "You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall
22096 certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to
22097 your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,"
22098 said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, "are public
22099 benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful
22100 objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to
22101 reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be
22102 ungrateful to our benefactors."
     
22103 Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. "An artist,
22104 sir?"
     
22105 "No," returned Mr. Skimpole. "A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur."
     
22106 Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might
22107 have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next
22108 came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much
22109 flattered and honoured.
     
22110 "Mr. Skimpole mentioned," pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself
22111 again to my guardian, "mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may
22112 have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family -- "
     
22113 ("That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the
22114 occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,"
22115 Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.)
     
22116 " -- That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was
22117 Mr. Jarndyce." Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. "And
22118 hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed
22119 my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr.
22120 Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock,
22121 and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as
22122 I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I
22123 assure you, give -- me -- pain."
     
22124 "Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester," returned my guardian. "I
22125 am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration.
22126 Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it."
     
22127 I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even
22128 appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find
22129 that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it
22130 passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my
22131 instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so
22132 distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the
22133 rushing in my head and the beating of my heart.
     
22134 "I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock," said Sir Leicester,
22135 rising, "and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of
22136 exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the
22137 occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the
22138 vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to
22139 these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole.
22140 Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me
22141 any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favoured my house
22142 with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that
22143 gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him."
     
22144 "You know my old opinion of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly
22145 appealing to us. "An amiable bull who is determined to make every
22146 colour scarlet!"
     
22147 Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear
22148 another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave
22149 with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all
22150 possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my
22151 self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to
22152 find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for
22153 having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.
     
22154 By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I
22155 must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being
22156 brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house,
22157 even of Mr. Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me,
22158 receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful
22159 that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance.
     
22160 When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual
22161 talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my
22162 guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as
22163 I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his
22164 reading-lamp.
     
22165 "May I come in, guardian?"
     
22166 "Surely, little woman. What's the matter?"
     
22167 "Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet
22168 time of saying a word to you about myself."
     
22169 He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his
22170 kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it
22171 wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before -- on
22172 that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could
22173 readily understand.
     
22174 "What concerns you, my dear Esther," said he, "concerns us all. You
22175 cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear."
     
22176 "I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and
22177 support. Oh! You don't know how much need I have to-night."
     
22178 He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little
22179 alarmed.
     
22180 "Or how anxious I have been to speak to you," said I, "ever since the
22181 visitor was here to-day."
     
22182 "The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?"
     
22183 "Yes."
     
22184 He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the
22185 profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not
22186 know how to prepare him.
     
22187 "Why, Esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you
22188 are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting
22189 together!"
     
22190 "Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago."
     
22191 The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He
22192 crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that)
22193 and resumed his seat before me.
     
22194 "Guardian," said I, "do you remember, when we were overtaken by the
22195 thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?"
     
22196 "Of course. Of course I do."
     
22197 "And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone
22198 their several ways?"
     
22199 "Of course."
     
22200 "Why did they separate, guardian?"
     
22201 His face quite altered as he looked at me. "My child, what questions
22202 are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I
22203 believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and
22204 proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen
22205 her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty
22206 as she."
     
22207 "Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!"
     
22208 "Seen her?"
     
22209 He paused a little, biting his lip. "Then, Esther, when you spoke to
22210 me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but
22211 married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and
22212 that that time had had its influence on his later life -- did you know
22213 it all, and know who the lady was?"
     
22214 "No, guardian," I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke
22215 upon me. "Nor do I know yet."
     
22216 "Lady Dedlock's sister."
     
22217 "And why," I could scarcely ask him, "why, guardian, pray tell me why
22218 were THEY parted?"
     
22219 "It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He
22220 afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some
22221 injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel
22222 with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him
22223 that from the date of that letter she died to him -- as in literal
22224 truth she did -- and that the resolution was exacted from her by her
22225 knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which
22226 were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in
22227 him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the
22228 sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did
22229 both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from
22230 that hour. Nor did any one."
     
22231 "Oh, guardian, what have I done!" I cried, giving way to my grief;
22232 "what sorrow have I innocently caused!"
     
22233 "You caused, Esther?"
     
22234 "Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is
22235 my first remembrance."
     
22236 "No, no!" he cried, starting.
     
22237 "Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!"
     
22238 I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear
22239 it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly
22240 before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better
22241 state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude
22242 towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him
22243 so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that
22244 night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door,
22245 and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever
22246 be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way
22247 could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to
22248 him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and
22249 honoured him.
     
     
     
     
22250 CHAPTER XLIV
     
22251 The Letter and the Answer
     
     
22252 My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him
22253 what had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to
22254 be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such
22255 encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely
22256 shared it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr. Skimpole from
22257 improving his opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it
22258 was not now possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were,
22259 but no such thing could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she
22260 had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he
22261 dreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by sight and by
22262 reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever
22263 happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and
22264 kindness, I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence.
     
22265 "Nor do I understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you, my
22266 dear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion."
     
22267 "With the lawyer," I returned. "But two other persons have come into
22268 my mind since I have been anxious. Then I told him all about Mr.
22269 Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I little
22270 understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview
22271 I expressed perfect confidence.
     
22272 "Well," said my guardian. "Then we may dismiss him for the present.
22273 Who is the other?"
     
22274 I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of
22275 herself she had made to me.
     
22276 "Ha!" he returned thoughtfully. "That is a more alarming person than
22277 the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new
22278 service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was
22279 natural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed
22280 herself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more."
     
22281 "Her manner was strange," said I.
     
22282 "Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and
22283 showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her
22284 death-bed," said my guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and
22285 torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very
22286 few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous
22287 meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing
22288 better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were
22289 before you had it. It is the best you can do for everybody's sake. I,
22290 sharing the secret with you -- "
     
22291 "And lightening it, guardian, so much," said I.
     
22292 " -- will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can
22293 observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can
22294 stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is
22295 better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear
22296 daughter's sake."
     
22297 I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank
22298 him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment.
22299 Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again;
22300 and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and
22301 far-off possibility that I understood it.
     
22302 "My dear Esther," said my guardian, "I have long had something in my
22303 thoughts that I have wished to say to you."
     
22304 "Indeed?"
     
22305 "I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I
22306 should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately
22307 considered. Would you object to my writing it?"
     
22308 "Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME to
22309 read?"
     
22310 "Then see, my love," said he with his cheery smile, "am I at this
22311 moment quite as plain and easy -- do I seem as open, as honest and
22312 old-fashioned -- as I am at any time?"
     
22313 I answered in all earnestness, "Quite." With the strictest truth, for
22314 his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and
22315 his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.
     
22316 "Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I
22317 said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he with his
22318 bright clear eyes on mine.
     
22319 I answered, most assuredly he did not.
     
22320 "Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess,
22321 Esther?"
     
22322 "Most thoroughly," said I with my whole heart.
     
22323 "My dear girl," returned my guardian, "give me your hand."
     
22324 He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down
22325 into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of
22326 manner -- the old protecting manner which had made that house my home
22327 in a moment -- said, "You have wrought changes in me, little woman,
22328 since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done
22329 me a world of good since that time."
     
22330 "Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!"
     
22331 "But," said he, "that is not to be remembered now."
     
22332 "It never can be forgotten."
     
22333 "Yes, Esther," said he with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be
22334 forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember
22335 now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite
22336 assured of that, my dear?"
     
22337 "I can, and I do," I said.
     
22338 "That's much," he answered. "That's everything. But I must not take
22339 that at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts until
22340 you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as
22341 you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never
22342 write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send
22343 Charley to me this night week -- 'for the letter.' But if you are not
22344 quite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing
22345 as in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point,
22346 never send!"
     
22347 "Guardian," said I, "I am already certain, I can no more be changed
22348 in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall send
22349 Charley for the letter."
     
22350 He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference
22351 to this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week.
22352 When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I was
22353 alone, "Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce's door, Charley, and say you
22354 have come from me -- 'for the letter.'" Charley went up the stairs, and
22355 down the stairs, and along the passages -- the zig-zag way about the
22356 old-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that
22357 night -- and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and
22358 up the stairs, and brought the letter. "Lay it on the table,
22359 Charley," said I. So Charley laid it on the table and went to bed,
22360 and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many
22361 things.
     
22362 I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those
22363 timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute
22364 face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael
22365 than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I
22366 passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in
22367 all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw
22368 my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was
22369 the grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of
22370 welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant
22371 faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived
22372 my happy life there over again, I went through my illness and
22373 recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so
22374 unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central
22375 figure, represented before me by the letter on the table.
     
22376 I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and
22377 in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed
22378 for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read
22379 much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it
22380 down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It
22381 asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.
     
22382 It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was
22383 written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his
22384 face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind
22385 protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places
22386 were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the
22387 feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he
22388 past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I
22389 was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing
22390 all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature
22391 deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage
22392 and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance
22393 the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he
22394 was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew
22395 since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only
22396 served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world
22397 would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood.
22398 I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of
22399 that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him
22400 nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often
22401 thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and
22402 fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age)
22403 would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up,
22404 had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it.
22405 If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to
22406 be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become
22407 the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter
22408 chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind
22409 myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even
22410 then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in
22411 the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his
22412 old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his
22413 bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the
22414 same, he knew.
     
22415 This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a
22416 justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian
22417 impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his
22418 integrity he stated the full case.
     
22419 But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had
22420 had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it.
22421 That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he
22422 could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery
22423 of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my
22424 disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in
22425 need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the
22426 last.
     
22427 But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of
22428 the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but
22429 one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him
22430 poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means
22431 of thanking him?
     
22432 Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after
22433 reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect -- for
22434 it was strange though I had expected the contents -- but as if
22435 something for which there was no name or distinct idea were
22436 indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very
22437 hopeful; but I cried very much.
     
22438 By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I
22439 said, "Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!" I am afraid the face in
22440 the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my
22441 finger at it, and it stopped.
     
22442 "That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear,
22443 when you showed me such a change!" said I, beginning to let down my
22444 hair. "When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as
22445 cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us
22446 begin for once and for all."
     
22447 I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little
22448 still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was
22449 crying then.
     
22450 "And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best
22451 friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great
22452 deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men."
     
22453 I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how
22454 should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been
22455 a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form
22456 that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid
22457 them down in their basket again.
     
22458 Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how
22459 often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my
22460 illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I
22461 should be busy, busy, busy -- useful, amiable, serviceable, in all
22462 honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit
22463 down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at
22464 first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I
22465 was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem
22466 strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not.
22467 "Don't you remember, my plain dear," I asked myself, looking at the
22468 glass, "what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about
22469 your marrying -- "
     
22470 Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of
22471 the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only
22472 been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it
22473 would be better not to keep them now.
     
22474 They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room -- our
22475 sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a candle and
22476 went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand,
22477 I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and
22478 I stole in to kiss her.
     
22479 It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but
22480 I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker
22481 than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment
22482 to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed,
22483 the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own
22484 room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
     
22485 On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just
22486 as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the
22487 least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was
22488 none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the
22489 morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it
22490 not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did
22491 not say a word.
     
22492 So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over
22493 which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day,
22494 that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never
22495 did.
     
22496 I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I
22497 tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not
22498 write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought
22499 each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days,
22500 and he never said a word.
     
22501 At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon
22502 going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down,
22503 came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the
22504 drawing-room window looking out.
     
22505 He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, "Aye, it's you, little
22506 woman, is it?" and looked out again.
     
22507 I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down
22508 on purpose. "Guardian," I said, rather hesitating and trembling,
22509 "when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came
22510 for?"
     
22511 "When it's ready, my dear," he replied.
     
22512 "I think it is ready," said I.
     
22513 "Is Charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly.
     
22514 "No. I have brought it myself, guardian," I returned.
     
22515 I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this
22516 the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no
22517 difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said
22518 nothing to my precious pet about it.
     
     
     
     
22519 CHAPTER XLV
     
22520 In Trust
     
     
22521 One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys,
22522 as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened
22523 to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in
22524 which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that
22525 morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the
22526 Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to
22527 damp my dear girl's spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes's
22528 shadow.
     
22529 Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping
22530 along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora's attendants
22531 instead of my maid, saying, "Oh, if you please, miss, would you step
22532 and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!"
     
22533 It was one of Charley's peculiarities that whenever she was charged
22534 with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld,
22535 at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw
22536 Charley asking me in her usual form of words to "step and speak" to
22537 Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she
22538 had said it so often that she was out of breath.
     
22539 I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we went
22540 in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To which
22541 Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit
22542 to my educational powers, replied, "Yes, miss. Him as come down in
22543 the country with Mr. Richard."
     
22544 A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose
22545 there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a
22546 table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and
22547 upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what
22548 he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it
22549 in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I
22550 never had seen two people so unmatched.
     
22551 "You know Mr. Vholes, my dear," said my guardian. Not with the
22552 greatest urbanity, I must say.
     
22553 Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself
22554 again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not
22555 having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.
     
22556 "Mr. Vholes," said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were
22557 a bird of ill omen, "has brought an ugly report of our most
22558 unfortunate Rick." Laying a marked emphasis on "most unfortunate" as
22559 if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr.
22560 Vholes.
     
22561 I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that
22562 he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with
22563 his black glove.
     
22564 "And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to
22565 know," said my guardian, "what you think, my dear. Would you be so
22566 good as to -- as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?"
     
22567 Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, "I have been saying
22568 that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.'s professional
22569 adviser, that Mr. C.'s circumstances are at the present moment in an
22570 embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the
22571 peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and
22572 the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved
22573 off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving
22574 off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket
22575 to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to
22576 being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have
22577 a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to
22578 realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My
22579 apprehension is, Mr. C.'s circumstances being such, lest it should
22580 end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all
22581 events is desirable to be made known to his connexions."
     
22582 Mr. Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into
22583 the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was
22584 his tone, and looked before him again.
     
22585 "Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource," said my
22586 guardian to me. "Yet what can I do? You know him, Esther. He would
22587 never accept of help from me now. To offer it or hint at it would be
22588 to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did."
     
22589 Mr. Vholes hereupon addressed me again.
     
22590 "What Mr. Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the
22591 difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say
22592 that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here
22593 under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything
22594 may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that
22595 everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything
22596 should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me.
22597 If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be
22598 here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his
22599 objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he
22600 charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of
22601 society and a father -- AND a son," said Mr. Vholes, who had nearly
22602 forgotten that point.
     
22603 It appeared to us that Mr. Vholes said neither more nor less than the
22604 truth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such
22605 as it was, of knowing Richard's situation. I could only suggest that
22606 I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see
22607 him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without
22608 consulting Mr. Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to
22609 propose it, while Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed
22610 his funeral gloves.
     
22611 The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my
22612 guardian's part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too
22613 happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr.
22614 Vholes.
     
22615 "Well, sir," said Mr. Jarndyce, "Miss Summerson will communicate with
22616 Mr. Carstone, and you can only hope that his position may be yet
22617 retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey,
22618 sir."
     
22619 "I thank you, Mr. Jarndyce," said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long
22620 black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, "not any. I thank you,
22621 no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor
22622 knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this
22623 period of the day, I don't know what the consequences might be.
22624 Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your
22625 permission take my leave."
     
22626 "And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take
22627 our leave, Mr. Vholes," returned my guardian bitterly, "of a cause
22628 you know of."
     
22629 Mr. Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had
22630 quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume,
22631 made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and
22632 slowly shook it.
     
22633 "We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of
22634 respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the
22635 wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think
22636 well of my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an
22637 obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C.?"
     
22638 I said I would be careful not to do it.
     
22639 "Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Jarndyce, good morning, sir." Mr.
22640 Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in
22641 it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, and took his
22642 long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach,
22643 passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling
22644 the seed in the ground as it glided along.
     
22645 Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going and why I
22646 was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was
22647 too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of
22648 excuse, and in a more loving spirit still -- my dear devoted girl! -- she
22649 wrote him a long letter, of which I took charge.
     
22650 Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted
22651 none and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London
22652 that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At
22653 our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward with the
22654 Kentish letters.
     
22655 It was a night's journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to
22656 ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me
22657 as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At
22658 one while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I
22659 thought I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever
22660 have supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in
22661 the world that I should have come, and now one of the most
22662 unreasonable. In what state I should find Richard, what I should say
22663 to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with
22664 these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune
22665 (to which the burden of my guardian's letter set itself) over and
22666 over again all night.
     
22667 At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they
22668 were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little
22669 irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and
22670 great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and
22671 blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and
22672 weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea
22673 was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but
22674 a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their
22675 bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they
22676 were spinning themselves into cordage.
     
22677 But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down,
22678 comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too
22679 late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our
22680 little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very
22681 much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships
22682 that we had had no idea were near appeared. I don't know how many
22683 sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these
22684 vessels were of grand size -- one was a large Indiaman just come home;
22685 and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in
22686 the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed,
22687 and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to
22688 them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in
22689 themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.
     
22690 The large Indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into
22691 the downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats, and we said how
22692 glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was
22693 curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the
22694 serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much
22695 faster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told
22696 her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast
22697 on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of
22698 one man. And Charley asking how that could be, I told her how we knew
22699 at home of such a case.
     
22700 I had thought of sending Richard a note saying I was there, but it
22701 seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived
22702 in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we
22703 went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard,
22704 we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I
22705 asked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. He
22706 sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and
22707 knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us.
     
22708 "Now then!" cried Richard from within. So I left Charley in the
22709 little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, "Can I come
22710 in, Richard? It's only Dame Durden."
     
22711 He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin
22712 cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the
22713 floor. He was only half dressed -- in plain clothes, I observed, not in
22714 uniform -- and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his
22715 room. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was
22716 seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me
22717 in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He was ever the same to me.
22718 Down to -- ah, poor poor fellow! -- to the end, he never received me but
22719 with something of his old merry boyish manner.
     
22720 "Good heaven, my dear little woman," said he, "how do you come here?
22721 Who could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is
22722 well?"
     
22723 "Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!"
     
22724 "Ah!" he said, leaning back in his chair. "My poor cousin! I was
22725 writing to you, Esther."
     
22726 So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his
22727 handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely
22728 written sheet of paper in his hand!
     
22729 "Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to
22730 read it after all?" I asked.
     
22731 "Oh, my dear," he returned with a hopeless gesture. "You may read it
22732 in the whole room. It is all over here."
     
22733 I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had
22734 heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult
22735 with him what could best be done.
     
22736 "Like you, Esther, but useless, and so NOT like you!" said he with a
22737 melancholy smile. "I am away on leave this day -- should have been gone
22738 in another hour -- and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out.
22739 Well! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I
22740 only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all
22741 the professions."
     
22742 "Richard," I urged, "it is not so hopeless as that?"
     
22743 "Esther," he returned, "it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as
22744 that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes)
22745 would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right.
22746 Apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even
22747 for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but
22748 for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn't broken now," he said,
22749 tearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting
22750 them away, by driblets, "how could I have gone abroad? I must have
22751 been ordered abroad, but how could I have gone? How could I, with my
22752 experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his
22753 back!"
     
22754 I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught
22755 the hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to
22756 prevent me from going on.
     
22757 "No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid -- must forbid. The first is
22758 John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell
22759 you I can't help it now, and can't be sane. But it is no such thing;
22760 it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was
22761 prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be
22762 wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I
22763 have bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very
22764 agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will."
     
22765 He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his
22766 determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took
22767 out Ada's letter and put it in his hand.
     
22768 "Am I to read it now?" he asked.
     
22769 As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon
22770 his hand, began. He had not read far when he rested his head upon his
22771 two hands -- to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if
22772 the light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it
22773 there, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had
22774 folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his
22775 hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.
     
22776 "Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?" He spoke in a
22777 softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me.
     
22778 "Yes, Richard."
     
22779 "Offers me," he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, "the little
22780 inheritance she is certain of so soon -- just as little and as much as
22781 I have wasted -- and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right
22782 with it, and remain in the service."
     
22783 "I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart," said I.
22784 "And, oh, my dear Richard, Ada's is a noble heart."
     
22785 "I am sure it is. I -- I wish I was dead!"
     
22786 He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his
22787 head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so, but I
22788 hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My
22789 experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his
22790 rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.
     
22791 "And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not
22792 otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from
22793 me," said he indignantly. "And the dear girl makes me this generous
22794 offer from under the same John Jarndyce's roof, and with the same
22795 John Jarndyce's gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new
22796 means of buying me off."
     
22797 "Richard!" I cried out, rising hastily. "I will not hear you say such
22798 shameful words!" I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time
22799 in my life, but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young
22800 face looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder
22801 and said, "If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a
22802 tone to me. Consider!"
     
22803 He blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner
22804 that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand
22805 times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather
22806 fluttered after being so fiery.
     
22807 "To accept this offer, my dear Esther," said he, sitting down beside
22808 me and resuming our conversation, " -- once more, pray, pray forgive
22809 me; I am deeply grieved -- to accept my dearest cousin's offer is, I
22810 need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I
22811 could show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have
22812 done with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in
22813 the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing
22814 Ada's interests in pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the
22815 wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me,
22816 thank God!"
     
22817 His sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his
22818 features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been
22819 before.
     
22820 "No, no!" cried Richard exultingly. "If every farthing of Ada's
22821 little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining
22822 me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary
22823 of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should
22824 be used where she has a larger stake. Don't be uneasy for me! I shall
22825 now have only one thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I
22826 shall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to
22827 compound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their
22828 bond now -- Vholes says so. I should have a balance in my favour
22829 anyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter
22830 to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of
22831 me and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear."
     
22832 I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and
22833 nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only
22834 came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw
22835 that on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless
22836 to make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in
22837 this very interview, the sense of my guardian's remark that it was
22838 even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as
22839 he was.
     
22840 Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind
22841 convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and
22842 that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation
22843 a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was
22844 arranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Vholes had copies
22845 of these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout.
22846 Beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada's letter,
22847 and being (as I was going to be) Richard's companion back to London,
22848 I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a
22849 reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he
22850 joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to
22851 the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach.
     
22852 There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval
22853 officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with
22854 unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great
22855 Indiaman's boats now, and we stopped to look.
     
22856 The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking
22857 good-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing
22858 about them as if they were glad to be in England again. "Charley,
22859 Charley," said I, "come away!" And I hurried on so swiftly that my
22860 little maid was surprised.
     
22861 It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and I had had time
22862 to take breath that I began to think why I had made such haste. In
22863 one of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr. Allan Woodcourt, and I
22864 had been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he
22865 should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my
22866 courage had quite failed me.
     
22867 But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, "My dear,
22868 there is no reason -- there is and there can be no reason at all -- why
22869 it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you were
22870 last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This
22871 is not your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!" I was in a
22872 great tremble -- with running -- and at first was quite unable to calm
22873 myself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it.
     
22874 The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase.
22875 I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices
22876 again -- I mean I knew Mr. Woodcourt's. It would still have been a
22877 great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but
22878 I was determined not to do so. "No, my dear, no. No, no, no!"
     
22879 I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up -- I think I mean half down,
22880 but it matters very little -- and wrote on one of my cards that I
22881 happened to be there with Mr. Richard Carstone, and I sent it in to
22882 Mr. Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be
22883 by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw
22884 that he was very sorry for me.
     
22885 "You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr.
22886 Woodcourt," said I, "but we can hardly call that a misfortune which
22887 enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the
22888 truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old
22889 patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe
22890 illness."
     
22891 "Ah! Little Miss Flite!" he said. "She lives the same life yet?"
     
22892 "Just the same."
     
22893 I was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to
22894 be able to put it aside.
     
22895 "Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most
22896 affectionate creature, as I have reason to say."
     
22897 "You -- you have found her so?" he returned. "I -- I am glad of that." He
22898 was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.
     
22899 "I assure you," said I, "that I was deeply touched by her sympathy
22900 and pleasure at the time I have referred to."
     
22901 "I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill."
     
22902 "I was very ill."
     
22903 "But you have quite recovered?"
     
22904 "I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness," said I. "You
22905 know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I
22906 have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to
22907 desire."
     
22908 I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had
22909 for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to
22910 find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I
22911 spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and
22912 of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He
22913 had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He
22914 had gone out a poor ship's surgeon and had come home nothing better.
22915 While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had
22916 alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing
22917 me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and
22918 they met with cordial pleasure.
     
22919 I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke
22920 of Richard's career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not
22921 going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there
22922 were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked
22923 towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the
22924 truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good
22925 spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom
22926 he had always liked.
     
22927 Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr.
22928 Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not
22929 join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so
22930 much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to
22931 think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not
22932 relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and Richard ran
22933 down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.
     
22934 I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I
22935 referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and to
22936 his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt
22937 listened with interest and expressed his regret.
     
22938 "I saw you observe him rather closely," said I, "Do you think him so
22939 changed?"
     
22940 "He is changed," he returned, shaking his head.
     
22941 I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was
22942 only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was
22943 gone.
     
22944 "It is not," said Mr. Woodcourt, "his being so much younger or older,
22945 or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his
22946 face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in
22947 a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all
22948 weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair."
     
22949 "You do not think he is ill?" said I.
     
22950 No. He looked robust in body.
     
22951 "That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to
22952 know," I proceeded. "Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?"
     
22953 "To-morrow or the next day."
     
22954 "There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always liked
22955 you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with
22956 your companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it
22957 might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I -- how
22958 we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!"
     
22959 "Miss Summerson," he said, more moved than he had been from the
22960 first, "before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept
22961 him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
     
22962 "God bless you!" said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought
22963 they might, when it was not for myself. "Ada loves him -- we all love
22964 him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say.
22965 Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!"
     
22966 Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and
22967 gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
     
22968 "Woodcourt," he said, unconscious with what application, "pray let us
22969 meet in London!"
     
22970 "Meet?" returned the other. "I have scarcely a friend there now but
22971 you. Where shall I find you?"
     
22972 "Why, I must get a lodging of some sort," said Richard, pondering.
22973 "Say at Vholes's, Symond's Inn."
     
22974 "Good! Without loss of time."
     
22975 They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard
22976 was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand
22977 on Richard's shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved
22978 mine in thanks.
     
22979 And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry
22980 for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may
22981 feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly
22982 remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.
     
     
     
     
22983 CHAPTER XLVI
     
22984 Stop Him!
     
     
22985 Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone's. Dilating and dilating since the
22986 sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills
22987 every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights
22988 burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily,
22989 heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking -- as that lamp, too, winks
22990 in Tom-all-Alone's -- at many horrible things. But they are blotted
22991 out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some
22992 puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and
22993 blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The
22994 blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone's,
22995 and Tom is fast asleep.
     
22996 Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of
22997 Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom
22998 shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by
22999 constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of
23000 figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by
23001 low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting
23002 trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or
23003 whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of
23004 which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit,
23005 that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according
23006 to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful
23007 meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined
23008 spirit.
     
23009 But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they
23010 serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's
23011 corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It
23012 shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists
23013 on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and
23014 his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance.
23015 There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any
23016 pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation
23017 about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his
23018 committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of
23019 society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the
23020 high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has
23021 his revenge.
     
23022 It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by
23023 night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more
23024 shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination
23025 is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it.
23026 The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the
23027 national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the
23028 British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder
23029 as Tom.
     
23030 A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep
23031 to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless
23032 pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by
23033 curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the
23034 miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark
23035 eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there,
23036 he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it
23037 before.
     
23038 On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street
23039 of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut
23040 up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one
23041 direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a
23042 door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has
23043 journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She
23044 sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her
23045 elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas
23046 bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she
23047 gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.
     
23048 The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to
23049 where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.
23050 Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
     
23051 "What is the matter?"
     
23052 "Nothing, sir."
     
23053 "Can't you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?"
     
23054 "I'm waiting till they get up at another house -- a lodging-house -- not
23055 here," the woman patiently returns. "I'm waiting here because there
23056 will be sun here presently to warm me."
     
23057 "I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the
23058 street."
     
23059 "Thank you, sir. It don't matter."
     
23060 A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or
23061 condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many
23062 people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little
23063 spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
     
23064 "Let me look at your forehead," he says, bending down. "I am a
23065 doctor. Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
     
23066 He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he
23067 can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,
23068 saying, "It's nothing"; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the
23069 wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
     
23070 "Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very
23071 sore."
     
23072 "It do ache a little, sir," returns the woman with a started tear
23073 upon her cheek.
     
23074 "Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won't hurt
23075 you."
     
23076 "Oh, dear no, sir, I'm sure of that!"
     
23077 He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully
23078 examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a
23079 small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is
23080 thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery
23081 in the street, "And so your husband is a brickmaker?"
     
23082 "How do you know that, sir?" asks the woman, astonished.
     
23083 "Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on
23084 your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in
23085 different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to
23086 their wives too."
     
23087 The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her
23088 injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her
23089 forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops
23090 them again.
     
23091 "Where is he now?" asks the surgeon.
     
23092 "He got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the
23093 lodging-house."
     
23094 "He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and
23095 heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as
23096 he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it.
23097 You have no young child?"
     
23098 The woman shakes her head. "One as I calls mine, sir, but it's
23099 Liz's."
     
23100 "Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!"
     
23101 By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. "I suppose
23102 you have some settled home. Is it far from here?" he asks,
23103 good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and
23104 curtsys.
     
23105 "It's a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint
23106 Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like,
23107 as if you did."
     
23108 "Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in
23109 return. Have you money for your lodging?"
     
23110 "Yes, sir," she says, "really and truly." And she shows it. He tells
23111 her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very
23112 welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone's is still
23113 asleep, and nothing is astir.
     
23114 Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he
23115 descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a
23116 ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the
23117 soiled walls -- which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid -- and
23118 furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth
23119 whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so
23120 intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger
23121 in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face
23122 with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and
23123 goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and
23124 his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what
23125 purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They
23126 look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of
23127 swampy growth that rotted long ago.
     
23128 Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a
23129 shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how
23130 or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form.
23131 He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge,
23132 still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his
23133 remembrance.
     
23134 He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's in the morning light,
23135 thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking
23136 round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by
23137 the woman.
     
23138 "Stop him, stop him!" cries the woman, almost breathless. "Stop him,
23139 sir!"
     
23140 He darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker
23141 than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up
23142 half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman
23143 follows, crying, "Stop him, sir, pray stop him!" Allan, not knowing
23144 but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and
23145 runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time
23146 he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To
23147 strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable
23148 him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly
23149 ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed,
23150 takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare.
23151 Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and
23152 tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at
23153 him until the woman comes up.
     
23154 "Oh, you, Jo!" cries the woman. "What? I have found you at last!"
     
23155 "Jo," repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, "Jo! Stay. To be
23156 sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the
23157 coroner."
     
23158 "Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich," whimpers Jo. "What of
23159 that? Can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An't I
23160 unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be?
23161 I've been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by
23162 another on you, till I'm worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich
23163 warn't MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he
23164 wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my
23165 crossing. It ain't wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I
23166 only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go and make a hole
23167 in the water, I'm sure I don't."
     
23168 He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so
23169 real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a
23170 growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in
23171 neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him.
23172 He says to the woman, "Miserable creature, what has he done?"
     
23173 To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure
23174 more amazedly than angrily, "Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at
23175 last!"
     
23176 "What has he done?" says Allan. "Has he robbed you?"
     
23177 "No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by
23178 me, and that's the wonder of it."
     
23179 Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting
23180 for one of them to unravel the riddle.
     
23181 "But he was along with me, sir," says the woman. "Oh, you Jo! He was
23182 along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord
23183 bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn't,
23184 and took him home -- "
     
23185 Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.
     
23186 "Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a
23187 thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or
23188 heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady
23189 that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful
23190 looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now if it
23191 wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet
23192 voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this
23193 is all along of you and of her goodness to you?" demands the woman,
23194 beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into
23195 passionate tears.
     
23196 The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing
23197 his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground,
23198 and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against
23199 which he leans rattles.
     
23200 Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but
23201 effectually.
     
23202 "Richard told me -- " He falters. "I mean, I have heard of this -- don't
23203 mind me for a moment, I will speak presently."
     
23204 He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered
23205 passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except
23206 that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very
23207 remarkable that it absorbs the woman's attention.
     
23208 "You hear what she says. But get up, get up!"
     
23209 Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner
23210 of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting
23211 one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right
23212 hand over his left and his left foot over his right.
     
23213 "You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here
23214 ever since?"
     
23215 "Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning,"
23216 replies Jo hoarsely.
     
23217 "Why have you come here now?"
     
23218 Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no
23219 higher than the knees, and finally answers, "I don't know how to do
23220 nothink, and I can't get nothink to do. I'm wery poor and ill, and I
23221 thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay
23222 down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go
23223 and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me
23224 somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on
23225 me -- like everybody everywheres."
     
23226 "Where have you come from?"
     
23227 Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees
23228 again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a
23229 sort of resignation.
     
23230 "Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?"
     
23231 "Tramp then," says Jo.
     
23232 "Now tell me," proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his
23233 repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an
23234 expression of confidence, "tell me how it came about that you left
23235 that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to
23236 pity you and take you home."
     
23237 Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares,
23238 addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that
23239 he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he
23240 would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his
23241 unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos
23242 wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his
23243 poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very
23244 miserable sobs.
     
23245 Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself
23246 to touch him. "Come, Jo. Tell me."
     
23247 "No. I dustn't," says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. "I
23248 dustn't, or I would."
     
23249 "But I must know," returns the other, "all the same. Come, Jo."
     
23250 After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again,
23251 looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, "Well, I'll
23252 tell you something. I was took away. There!"
     
23253 "Took away? In the night?"
     
23254 "Ah!" Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and
23255 even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through
23256 the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking
23257 over or hidden on the other side.
     
23258 "Who took you away?"
     
23259 "I dustn't name him," says Jo. "I dustn't do it, sir.
     
23260 "But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No
23261 one else shall hear."
     
23262 "Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as
23263 he DON'T hear."
     
23264 "Why, he is not in this place."
     
23265 "Oh, ain't he though?" says Jo. "He's in all manner of places, all at
23266 wanst."
     
23267 Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and
23268 good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently
23269 awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than
23270 by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.
     
23271 "Aye!" says Allan. "Why, what had you been doing?"
     
23272 "Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble,
23273 'sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I'm a-moving on now. I'm
23274 a-moving on to the berryin ground -- that's the move as I'm up to."
     
23275 "No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?"
     
23276 "Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whispering, "till I was
23277 discharged, then giv me a little money -- four half-bulls, wot you may
23278 call half-crowns -- and ses 'Hook it! Nobody wants you here,' he ses.
23279 'You hook it. You go and tramp,' he ses. 'You move on,' he ses.
23280 'Don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or
23281 you'll repent it.' So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see
23282 me if I'm above ground," concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his
23283 former precautions and investigations.
     
23284 Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but
23285 keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, "He is not so ungrateful as you
23286 supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an
23287 insufficient one."
     
23288 "Thankee, sir, thankee!" exclaims Jo. "There now! See how hard you
23289 wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and
23290 it's all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it."
     
23291 "Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, "come with me and I
23292 will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I
23293 take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you
23294 will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise."
     
23295 "I won't, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir."
     
23296 "Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this
23297 time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come
23298 along. Good day again, my good woman."
     
23299 "Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again."
     
23300 She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and
23301 takes it up. Jo, repeating, "Ony you tell the young lady as I never
23302 went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and
23303 shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a
23304 farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan
23305 Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In
23306 this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad
23307 rays of the sunlight and the purer air.
     
     
     
     
23308 CHAPTER XLVII
     
23309 Jo's Will
     
     
23310 As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets where the high
23311 church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning
23312 light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in
23313 his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. "It surely is a
23314 strange fact," he considers, "that in the heart of a civilized world
23315 this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of
23316 than an unowned dog." But it is none the less a fact because of its
23317 strangeness, and the difficulty remains.
     
23318 At first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still
23319 really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close
23320 to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick
23321 to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along,
23322 glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing
23323 in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering
23324 with a less divided attention what he shall do.
     
23325 A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be
23326 done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and
23327 comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his
23328 right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading
23329 dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo
23330 is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw
23331 the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions
23332 as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal.
     
23333 But he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him.
23334 "I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir," says Jo, soon putting down
23335 his food, "but I don't know nothink -- not even that. I don't care for
23336 eating wittles nor yet for drinking on 'em." And Jo stands shivering
23337 and looking at the breakfast wonderingly.
     
23338 Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. "Draw
23339 breath, Jo!" "It draws," says Jo, "as heavy as a cart." He might add,
23340 "And rattles like it," but he only mutters, "I'm a-moving on, sir."
     
23341 Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop. There is none at hand,
23342 but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of
23343 wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to
23344 revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. "We may repeat that
23345 dose, Jo," observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face.
23346 "So! Now we will take five minutes' rest, and then go on again."
     
23347 Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his
23348 back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in
23349 the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without
23350 appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that
23351 he is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his
23352 face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice
23353 of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of
23354 improvement, Allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no
23355 small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its
23356 consequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has
23357 finished his story and his bread, they go on again.
     
23358 Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of
23359 refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite,
23360 Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered.
23361 But all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer
23362 lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much
23363 obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other
23364 than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These
23365 sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her
23366 birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to
23367 that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she
23368 may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend
23369 the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and
23370 with open arms.
     
23371 "My dear physician!" cries Miss Flite. "My meritorious,
23372 distinguished, honourable officer!" She uses some odd expressions,
23373 but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be -- more so
23374 than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has
23375 no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a
23376 doorway, and tells her how he comes there.
     
23377 "Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a
23378 fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me."
     
23379 Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider;
23380 but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is
23381 entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley's room.
23382 "Gridley!" exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth
23383 repetition of this remark. "Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear
23384 physician! General George will help us out."
     
23385 It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and
23386 would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on
23387 her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with
23388 her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her
23389 disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George,
23390 whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a
23391 great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think
23392 that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his
23393 encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and
23394 they repair to the general's. Fortunately it is not far.
     
23395 From the exterior of George's Shooting Gallery, and the long entry,
23396 and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He
23397 also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding
23398 towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no
23399 stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and
23400 dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light
23401 shirt-sleeves.
     
23402 "Your servant, sir," says Mr. George with a military salute.
23403 Good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp
23404 hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and
23405 at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He
23406 winds it up with another "Your servant, sir!" and another salute.
     
23407 "Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?" says Mr. George.
     
23408 "I am proud to find I have the air of one," returns Allan; "but I am
23409 only a sea-going doctor."
     
23410 "Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket
23411 myself."
     
23412 Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on
23413 that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe,
23414 which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing.
23415 "You are very good, sir," returns the trooper. "As I know by
23416 experience that it's not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it's
23417 equally agreeable to yourself -- " and finishes the sentence by putting
23418 it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows
23419 about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face.
     
23420 "And that's the lad, sir, is it?" he inquires, looking along the
23421 entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the
23422 whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.
     
23423 "That's he," says Allan. "And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty
23424 about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could
23425 procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not
23426 stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same
23427 objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be
23428 evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to
23429 get him into one, which is a system that I don't take kindly to."
     
23430 "No man does, sir," returns Mr. George.
     
23431 "I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he
23432 is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered
23433 him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person
23434 to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything."
     
23435 "I ask your pardon, sir," says Mr. George. "But you have not
23436 mentioned that party's name. Is it a secret, sir?"
     
23437 "The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket."
     
23438 "Bucket the detective, sir?"
     
23439 "The same man."
     
23440 "The man is known to me, sir," returns the trooper after blowing out
23441 a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, "and the boy is so far
23442 correct that he undoubtedly is a -- rum customer." Mr. George smokes
23443 with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence.
     
23444 "Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that
23445 this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it
23446 in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so.
23447 Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor
23448 lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent
23449 people and Jo, Mr. George," says Allan, following the direction of
23450 the trooper's eyes along the entry, "have not been much acquainted,
23451 as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in
23452 this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for
23453 him beforehand?"
     
23454 As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man
23455 standing at the trooper's elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted
23456 figure and countenance, into the trooper's face. After a few more
23457 puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man,
23458 and the little man winks up at the trooper.
     
23459 "Well, sir," says Mr. George, "I can assure you that I would
23460 willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all
23461 agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege
23462 to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in
23463 the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the
23464 place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the
23465 same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We
23466 are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are
23467 liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment's notice. However,
23468 sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at
23469 your service."
     
23470 With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole
23471 building at his visitor's disposal.
     
23472 "I take it for granted, sir," he adds, "you being one of the medical
23473 staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate
23474 subject?"
     
23475 Allan is quite sure of it.
     
23476 "Because, sir," says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrowfully, "we
23477 have had enough of that."
     
23478 His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance.
23479 "Still I am bound to tell you," observes Allan after repeating his
23480 former assurance, "that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and
23481 that he may be -- I do not say that he is -- too far gone to recover."
     
23482 "Do you consider him in present danger, sir?" inquires the trooper.
     
23483 "Yes, I fear so."
     
23484 "Then, sir," returns the trooper in a decisive manner, "it appears to
23485 me -- being naturally in the vagabond way myself -- that the sooner he
23486 comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!"
     
23487 Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command;
23488 and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought
23489 in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not
23490 one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with
23491 Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he
23492 is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made
23493 article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a
23494 common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely
23495 filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in
23496 him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English
23497 soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts
23498 that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the
23499 sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing
23500 interesting about thee.
     
23501 He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery and stands huddled
23502 together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know
23503 that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he
23504 is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He
23505 is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in
23506 creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor
23507 of humanity.
     
23508 "Look here, Jo!" says Allan. "This is Mr. George."
     
23509 Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a
23510 moment, and then down again.
     
23511 "He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room
23512 here."
     
23513 Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After
23514 a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot
23515 on which he rests, he mutters that he is "wery thankful."
     
23516 "You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be
23517 obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here,
23518 whatever you do, Jo."
     
23519 "Wishermaydie if I don't, sir," says Jo, reverting to his favourite
23520 declaration. "I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get
23521 myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir,
23522 'sept not knowin' nothink and starwation."
     
23523 "I believe it, now attend to Mr. George. I see he is going to speak
23524 to you."
     
23525 "My intention merely was, sir," observes Mr. George, amazingly broad
23526 and upright, "to point out to him where he can lie down and get a
23527 thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here." As the trooper speaks,
23528 he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the
23529 little cabins. "There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here
23530 you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon,
23531 sir" -- he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given him -- "Mr.
23532 Woodcourt pleases. Don't you be alarmed if you hear shots; they'll be
23533 aimed at the target, and not you. Now, there's another thing I would
23534 recommend, sir," says the trooper, turning to his visitor. "Phil,
23535 come here!"
     
23536 Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. "Here is a
23537 man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it
23538 is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor
23539 creature. You do, don't you, Phil?"
     
23540 "Certainly and surely I do, guv'ner," is Phil's reply.
     
23541 "Now I was thinking, sir," says Mr. George in a martial sort of
23542 confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a
23543 drum-head, "that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay
23544 out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles -- "
     
23545 "Mr. George, my considerate friend," returns Allan, taking out his
23546 purse, "it is the very favour I would have asked."
     
23547 Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of
23548 improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the
23549 best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her
23550 friend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the
23551 judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing
23552 "which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years,
23553 would be too absurdly unfortunate!" Allan takes the opportunity of
23554 going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them
23555 near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down
23556 the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him.
     
23557 "I take it, sir," says Mr. George, "that you know Miss Summerson
23558 pretty well?"
     
23559 Yes, it appears.
     
23560 "Not related to her, sir?"
     
23561 No, it appears.
     
23562 "Excuse the apparent curiosity," says Mr. George. "It seemed to me
23563 probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor
23564 creature because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest
23565 in him. 'Tis MY case, sir, I assure you."
     
23566 "And mine, Mr. George."
     
23567 The trooper looks sideways at Allan's sunburnt cheek and bright dark
23568 eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of
23569 him.
     
23570 "Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I
23571 unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Bucket
23572 took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted
23573 with the name, I can help you to it. It's Tulkinghorn. That's what it
23574 is."
     
23575 Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.
     
23576 "Tulkinghorn. That's the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to
23577 have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased
23578 person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow."
     
23579 Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is.
     
23580 "What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?"
     
23581 "I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally,
23582 what kind of man?"
     
23583 "Why, then I'll tell you, sir," returns the trooper, stopping short
23584 and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face
23585 fires and flushes all over; "he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He
23586 is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood
23587 than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man -- by George! -- that
23588 has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more
23589 dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That's
23590 the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!"
     
23591 "I am sorry," says Allan, "to have touched so sore a place."
     
23592 "Sore?" The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his
23593 broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. "It's no
23594 fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me.
23595 He is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of
23596 this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won't
23597 hold off, and he won't come on. If I have a payment to make him, or
23598 time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don't see me,
23599 don't hear me -- passes me on to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn,
23600 Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn passes me back again to him -- he
23601 keeps me prowling and dangling about him as if I was made of the same
23602 stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well,
23603 loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing.
23604 Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He
23605 chafes and goads me till -- Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr.
23606 Woodcourt," the trooper resumes his march, "all I say is, he is an
23607 old man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs
23608 to my horse and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that
23609 chance, in one of the humours he drives me into -- he'd go down, sir!"
     
23610 Mr. George has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his
23611 forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity
23612 away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head
23613 and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an
23614 occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar,
23615 as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a
23616 choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about
23617 the going down of Mr. Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.
     
23618 Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his
23619 mattress by the careful Phil, to whom, after due administration of
23620 medicine by his own hands, Allan confides all needful means and
23621 instructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He
23622 repairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without
23623 seeking rest, goes away to Mr. Jarndyce to communicate his discovery.
     
23624 With him Mr. Jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that
23625 there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and
23626 showing a serious interest in it. To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in
23627 substance what he said in the morning, without any material
23628 variation. Only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a
23629 hollower sound.
     
23630 "Let me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more," falters Jo, "and
23631 be so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where I used fur to sleep,
23632 as jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a-moving
23633 on right forards with his duty, and I'll be wery thankful. I'd be
23634 more thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an
23635 unfortnet to be it."
     
23636 He makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the
23637 course of a day or two that Allan, after conferring with Mr.
23638 Jarndyce, good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook's Court, the
23639 rather, as the cart seems to be breaking down.
     
23640 To Cook's Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr. Snagsby is behind his
23641 counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture of
23642 several skins which has just come in from the engrosser's, an immense
23643 desert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place
23644 of a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the
23645 traveller from despair. Mr Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells
23646 and greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for
23647 business.
     
23648 "You don't remember me, Mr. Snagsby?"
     
23649 The stationer's heart begins to thump heavily, for his old
23650 apprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to
23651 answer, "No, sir, I can't say I do. I should have considered -- not to
23652 put too fine a point upon it -- that I never saw you before, sir."
     
23653 "Twice before," says Allan Woodcourt. "Once at a poor bedside, and
23654 once -- "
     
23655 "It's come at last!" thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection
23656 breaks upon him. "It's got to a head now and is going to burst!" But
23657 he has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the
23658 little counting-house and to shut the door.
     
23659 "Are you a married man, sir?"
     
23660 "No, I am not."
     
23661 "Would you make the attempt, though single," says Mr. Snagsby in a
23662 melancholy whisper, "to speak as low as you can? For my little woman
23663 is a-listening somewheres, or I'll forfeit the business and five
23664 hundred pound!"
     
23665 In deep dejection Mr. Snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back
23666 against his desk, protesting, "I never had a secret of my own, sir. I
23667 can't charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my
23668 little woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn't
23669 have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn't
23670 have done it, I dursn't have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I
23671 find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a
23672 burden to me."
     
23673 His visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he
23674 remember Jo. Mr. Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don't
23675 he!
     
23676 "You couldn't name an individual human being -- except myself -- that my
23677 little woman is more set and determined against than Jo," says Mr.
23678 Snagsby.
     
23679 Allan asks why.
     
23680 "Why?" repeats Mr. Snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump
23681 of hair at the back of his bald head. "How should I know why? But you
23682 are a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married
23683 person such a question!"
     
23684 With this beneficent wish, Mr. Snagsby coughs a cough of dismal
23685 resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to
23686 communicate.
     
23687 "There again!" says Mr. Snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his
23688 feelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the
23689 face. "At it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me,
23690 in the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little
23691 woman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself,
23692 and charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that
23693 other certain person above all other persons. Why, this is a private
23694 asylum! Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam,
23695 sir!" says Mr. Snagsby.
     
23696 But it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of
23697 the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen.
23698 And being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of Jo's
23699 condition, he readily engages to "look round" as early in the evening
23700 as he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the
23701 evening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs. Snagsby is as quiet a
23702 manager as he.
     
23703 Jo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left
23704 alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so
23705 far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. Snagsby, touched
23706 by the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a
23707 crown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds.
     
23708 "And how do you find yourself, my poor lad?" inquires the stationer
23709 with his cough of sympathy.
     
23710 "I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am," returns Jo, "and don't want for
23711 nothink. I'm more cumfbler nor you can't think. Mr. Sangsby! I'm wery
23712 sorry that I done it, but I didn't go fur to do it, sir."
     
23713 The stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what
23714 it is that he is sorry for having done.
     
23715 "Mr. Sangsby," says Jo, "I went and giv a illness to the lady as wos
23716 and yit as warn't the t'other lady, and none of 'em never says
23717 nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good
23718 and my having been s'unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me
23719 yesday, and she ses, 'Ah, Jo!' she ses. 'We thought we'd lost you,
23720 Jo!' she ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a
23721 word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don't, and I
23722 turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr. Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him
23723 a-forced to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, he come fur to
23724 giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he's allus a-doin' on day and
23725 night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, I
23726 see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby."
     
23727 The softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table.
23728 Nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve
23729 his feelings.
     
23730 "Wot I was a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby," proceeds Jo, "wos, as you wos
23731 able to write wery large, p'raps?"
     
23732 "Yes, Jo, please God," returns the stationer.
     
23733 "Uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says Jo with eagerness.
     
23734 "Yes, my poor boy."
     
23735 Jo laughs with pleasure. "Wot I wos a-thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby,
23736 wos, that when I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn't
23737 be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'raps as to write
23738 out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos
23739 wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to
23740 do it, and that though I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr.
23741 Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I
23742 hoped as he'd be able to forgive me in his mind. If the writin could
23743 be made to say it wery large, he might."
     
23744 "It shall say it, Jo. Very large."
     
23745 Jo laughs again. "Thankee, Mr. Sangsby. It's wery kind of you, sir,
23746 and it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore."
     
23747 The meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips
23748 down his fourth half-crown -- he has never been so close to a case
23749 requiring so many -- and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this
23750 little earth, shall meet no more. No more.
     
23751 For the cart so hard to draw is near its journey's end and drags over
23752 stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps,
23753 shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it
23754 still upon its weary road.
     
23755 Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse
23756 and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking
23757 round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging
23758 elevation of his one eyebrow, "Hold up, my boy! Hold up!" There, too,
23759 is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always, both
23760 thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast
23761 in the web of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a
23762 frequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and,
23763 from his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down
23764 temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in
23765 answer to his cheerful words.
     
23766 Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Allan Woodcourt, newly
23767 arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a
23768 while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards
23769 him -- just as he sat in the law-writer's room -- and touches his chest
23770 and heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little
23771 more.
     
23772 The trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped
23773 in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr.
23774 Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and
23775 attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper,
23776 signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next
23777 used, there will be a speck of rust upon it.
     
23778 "Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don't be frightened."
     
23779 "I thought," says Jo, who has started and is looking round, "I
23780 thought I was in Tom-all-Alone's agin. Ain't there nobody here but
23781 you, Mr. Woodcot?"
     
23782 "Nobody."
     
23783 "And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's. Am I, sir?"
     
23784 "No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, "I'm wery thankful."
     
23785 After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very
23786 near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, "Jo! Did you
23787 ever know a prayer?"
     
23788 "Never knowd nothink, sir."
     
23789 "Not so much as one short prayer?"
     
23790 "No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr.
23791 Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin to
23792 hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn't make out
23793 nothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down
23794 Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other
23795 'wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to
23796 theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to
23797 us. WE never knowd nothink. I never knowd what it wos all about."
     
23798 It takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and
23799 attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a
23800 short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong
23801 effort to get out of bed.
     
23802 "Stay, Jo! What now?"
     
23803 "It's time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir," he
23804 returns with a wild look.
     
23805 "Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?"
     
23806 "Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed,
23807 he wos. It's time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground,
23808 sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be
23809 berried. He used fur to say to me, 'I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,'
23810 he ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have
23811 come there to be laid along with him."
     
23812 "By and by, Jo. By and by."
     
23813 "Ah! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to go myself. But will you
23814 promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?"
     
23815 "I will, indeed."
     
23816 "Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They'll have to get the key of the gate
23817 afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. And there's a step
23818 there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It's turned wery dark,
23819 sir. Is there any light a-comin?"
     
23820 "It is coming fast, Jo."
     
23821 Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very
23822 near its end.
     
23823 "Jo, my poor fellow!"
     
23824 "I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin -- a-gropin -- let me
23825 catch hold of your hand."
     
23826 "Jo, can you say what I say?"
     
23827 "I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it's good."
     
23828 "Our Father."
     
23829 "Our Father! Yes, that's wery good, sir."
     
23830 "Which art in heaven."
     
23831 "Art in heaven -- is the light a-comin, sir?"
     
23832 "It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!"
     
23833 "Hallowed be -- thy -- "
     
23834 The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!
     
23835 Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right
23836 reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women,
23837 born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around
23838 us every day.
     
     
     
     
23839 CHAPTER XLVIII
     
23840 Closing In
     
     
23841 The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house
23842 in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Dedlocks of the past doze in
23843 their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long
23844 drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the
23845 Dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through
23846 the darkness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or
23847 hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility,
23848 loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. The
23849 fashionable world -- tremendous orb, nearly five miles round -- is in
23850 full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed
23851 distances.
     
23852 Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where
23853 all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and
23854 refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled
23855 and taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed
23856 in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under
23857 her mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance
23858 that what she is to those around her she will remain another day,
23859 it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to
23860 yield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown
23861 more handsome and more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of
23862 her that she's beauty nough -- tsetup shopofwomen -- but rather
23863 larming kind -- remindingmanfact -- inconvenient woman -- who WILL
23864 getoutofbedandbawthstahlishment -- Shakespeare.
     
23865 Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. Now, as heretofore, he
23866 is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat
23867 loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from
23868 the peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who
23869 might be supposed to have any influence upon my Lady. Of all women
23870 she is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him.
     
23871 One thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his
23872 turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to
23873 throw it off.
     
23874 It is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little
23875 sun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing
23876 in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like
23877 overblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of
23878 seed in their tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has
23879 fallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a
23880 Parliamentary committee. My Lady sits in the room in which she gave
23881 audience to the young man of the name of Guppy. Rosa is with her and
23882 has been writing for her and reading to her. Rosa is now at work upon
23883 embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over
23884 it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the first time to-day.
     
23885 "Rosa."
     
23886 The pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious
23887 my Lady is, looks puzzled and surprised.
     
23888 "See to the door. Is it shut?"
     
23889 Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised.
     
23890 "I am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust
23891 your attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I
23892 will not disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in you. Say
23893 nothing to any one of what passes between us."
     
23894 The timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be
23895 trustworthy.
     
23896 "Do you know," Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her
23897 chair nearer, "do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from
23898 what I am to any one?"
     
23899 "Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you
23900 really are."
     
23901 "You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!"
     
23902 She says it with a kind of scorn -- though not of Rosa -- and sits
23903 brooding, looking dreamily at her.
     
23904 "Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you
23905 suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to
23906 me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?"
     
23907 "I don't know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my
23908 heart, I wish it was so."
     
23909 "It is so, little one."
     
23910 The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark
23911 expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an
23912 explanation.
     
23913 "And if I were to say to-day, 'Go! Leave me!' I should say what would
23914 give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very
23915 solitary."
     
23916 "My Lady! Have I offended you?"
     
23917 "In nothing. Come here."
     
23918 Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady's feet. My Lady, with
23919 that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand
23920 upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there.
     
23921 "I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy and that I would
23922 make you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot.
23923 There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part,
23924 rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You
23925 must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have
23926 written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. All
23927 this I have done for your sake."
     
23928 The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she
23929 do, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses
23930 her on the cheek and makes no other answer.
     
23931 "Now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be beloved and
23932 happy!"
     
23933 "Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes thought -- forgive my being so
23934 free -- that YOU are not happy."
     
23935 "I!"
     
23936 "Will you be more so when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think
23937 again. Let me stay a little while!"
     
23938 "I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my
23939 own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now -- not
23940 what I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my
23941 confidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!"
     
23942 She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the
23943 room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the
23944 staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indifferent
23945 as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the
23946 earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its
23947 other departed monsters.
     
23948 Mercury has announced Mr. Rouncewell, which is the cause of her
23949 appearance. Mr. Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to
23950 the library. Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him
23951 first.
     
23952 "Sir Leicester, I am desirous -- but you are engaged."
     
23953 Oh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr. Tulkinghorn.
     
23954 Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him
23955 for a moment.
     
23956 "I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will you allow me to retire?"
     
23957 With a look that plainly says, "You know you have the power to remain
23958 if you will," she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a
23959 chair. Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his
23960 clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her
23961 and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls
23962 upon her, and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her
23963 life.
     
23964 It is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long
23965 rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that
23966 half-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared
23967 into stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a
23968 street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to
23969 liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their
23970 own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry
23971 and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone
23972 chargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines
23973 itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these
23974 petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the
23975 upstart gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which
23976 bold boys aspire to throw their friends' caps (its only present use),
23977 retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of
23978 departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals
23979 in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an
23980 oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high
23981 and dry master in the House of Lords.
     
23982 Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair,
23983 could wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands.
23984 And yet -- and yet -- she sends a look in that direction as if it were
23985 her heart's desire to have that figure moved out of the way.
     
23986 Sir Leicester begs his Lady's pardon. She was about to say?
     
23987 "Only that Mr. Rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment)
23988 and that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am
23989 tired to death of the matter."
     
23990 "What can I do -- to -- assist?" demands Sir Leicester in some
23991 considerable doubt.
     
23992 "Let us see him here and have done with it. Will you tell them to
23993 send him up?"
     
23994 "Mr. Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request," says
23995 Sir Leicester to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business
23996 term, "request the iron gentleman to walk this way."
     
23997 Mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces
23998 him. Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person graciously.
     
23999 "I hope you are well, Mr. Rouncewell. Be seated. (My solicitor, Mr.
24000 Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr. Rouncewell," Sir Leicester
24001 skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, "was desirous
24002 to speak with you. Hem!"
     
24003 "I shall be very happy," returns the iron gentleman, "to give my best
24004 attention to anything Lady Dedlock does me the honour to say."
     
24005 As he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon
24006 him is less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant
24007 supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is
24008 nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness.
     
24009 "Pray, sir," says Lady Dedlock listlessly, "may I be allowed to
24010 inquire whether anything has passed between you and your son
24011 respecting your son's fancy?"
     
24012 It is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look
24013 upon him as she asks this question.
     
24014 "If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I said, when I had the
24015 pleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son
24016 to conquer that -- fancy." The ironmaster repeats her expression with a
24017 little emphasis.
     
24018 "And did you?"
     
24019 "Oh! Of course I did."
     
24020 Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper.
24021 The iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do
24022 it. No difference in this respect between the base metals and the
24023 precious. Highly proper.
     
24024 "And pray has he done so?"
     
24025 "Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear
24026 not. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we sometimes couple
24027 an intention with our -- our fancies which renders them not altogether
24028 easy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest."
     
24029 Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish
24030 meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr. Rouncewell is
24031 perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently
24032 adapts his tone to his reception.
     
24033 "Because," proceeds my Lady, "I have been thinking of the subject,
24034 which is tiresome to me."
     
24035 "I am very sorry, I am sure."
     
24036 "And also of what Sir Leicester said upon it, in which I quite
24037 concur" -- Sir Leicester flattered -- "and if you cannot give us the
24038 assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion
24039 that the girl had better leave me."
     
24040 "I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedlock. Nothing of the kind."
     
24041 "Then she had better go."
     
24042 "Excuse me, my Lady," Sir Leicester considerately interposes, "but
24043 perhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has
24044 not merited. Here is a young woman," says Sir Leicester,
24045 magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a
24046 service of plate, "whose good fortune it is to have attracted the
24047 notice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the
24048 protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages
24049 which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very
24050 great -- I believe unquestionably very great, sir -- for a young woman in
24051 that station of life. The question then arises, should that young
24052 woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune
24053 simply because she has" -- Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but
24054 dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up
24055 his sentence -- "has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell's son? Now,
24056 has she deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this
24057 our previous understanding?"
     
24058 "I beg your pardon," interposes Mr. Rouncewell's son's father. "Sir
24059 Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray
24060 dismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so
24061 unimportant -- which is not to be expected -- you would recollect that my
24062 first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining
24063 here."
     
24064 Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from consideration? Oh! Sir Leicester
24065 is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him
24066 through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their
24067 report of the iron gentleman's observations.
     
24068 "It is not necessary," observes my Lady in her coldest manner before
24069 he can do anything but breathe amazedly, "to enter into these matters
24070 on either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever
24071 to say against her, but she is so far insensible to her many
24072 advantages and her good fortune that she is in love -- or supposes she
24073 is, poor little fool -- and unable to appreciate them."
     
24074 Sir Leicester begs to observe that wholly alters the case. He might
24075 have been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and reasons in
24076 support of her view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman
24077 had better go.
     
24078 "As Sir Leicester observed, Mr. Rouncewell, on the last occasion when
24079 we were fatigued by this business," Lady Dedlock languidly proceeds,
24080 "we cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under
24081 present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had
24082 better go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back
24083 to the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would
24084 you prefer?"
     
24085 "Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly -- "
     
24086 "By all means."
     
24087 " -- I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of
24088 the incumbrance and remove her from her present position."
     
24089 "And to speak as plainly," she returns with the same studied
24090 carelessness, "so should I. Do I understand that you will take her
24091 with you?"
     
24092 The iron gentleman makes an iron bow.
     
24093 "Sir Leicester, will you ring?" Mr. Tulkinghorn steps forward from
24094 his window and pulls the bell. "I had forgotten you. Thank you." He
24095 makes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. Mercury,
24096 swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce,
24097 skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs.
     
24098 Rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the
24099 ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with
24100 her near the door ready to depart.
     
24101 "You are taken charge of, you see," says my Lady in her weary manner,
24102 "and are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a
24103 very good girl, and you have nothing to cry for."
     
24104 "She seems after all," observes Mr. Tulkinghorn, loitering a little
24105 forward with his hands behind him, "as if she were crying at going
24106 away."
     
24107 "Why, she is not well-bred, you see," returns Mr. Rouncewell with
24108 some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer
24109 to retort upon, "and she is an inexperienced little thing and knows
24110 no better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no
24111 doubt."
     
24112 "No doubt," is Mr. Tulkinghorn's composed reply.
     
24113 Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Lady, and that she
24114 was happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Lady, and that
24115 she thanks my Lady over and over again. "Out, you silly little puss!"
24116 says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily.
24117 "Have a spirit, if you're fond of Watt!" My Lady merely waves her off
24118 with indifference, saying, "There, there, child! You are a good girl.
24119 Go away!" Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the
24120 subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr.
24121 Tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted
24122 with lamps, looms in my Lady's view, bigger and blacker than before.
     
24123 "Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Rouncewell after a pause
24124 of a few moments, "I beg to take my leave, with an apology for having
24125 again troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome
24126 subject. I can very well understand, I assure you, how tiresome so
24127 small a matter must have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of
24128 my dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly
24129 exert my influence to take my young friend here away without
24130 troubling you at all. But it appeared to me -- I dare say magnifying
24131 the importance of the thing -- that it was respectful to explain to you
24132 how the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and
24133 convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the
24134 polite world."
     
24135 Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these
24136 remarks. "Mr. Rouncewell," he returns, "do not mention it.
24137 Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side."
     
24138 "I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; and if I may, by way of a last
24139 word, revert to what I said before of my mother's long connexion with
24140 the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out
24141 this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate
24142 and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done
24143 something to awaken such feelings -- though of course Lady Dedlock, by
24144 her heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much
24145 more."
     
24146 If he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points
24147 it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of
24148 speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim
24149 room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting
24150 salutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another
24151 flight, and Mr. Rouncewell and Rosa leave the house.
     
24152 Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr. Tulkinghorn still
24153 standing in his window with his hands behind him and my Lady still
24154 sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night
24155 as well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr. Tulkinghorn, observing
24156 it as she rises to retire, thinks, "Well she may be! The power of
24157 this woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole
24158 time." But he can act a part too -- his one unchanging character -- and
24159 as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each
24160 fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester's pair, should find no flaw in
24161 him.
     
24162 Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room to-day. Sir Leicester is
24163 whipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the discomfiture of
24164 the Coodle Faction. Lady Dedlock asks on sitting down to dinner,
24165 still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated
24166 cousin's text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr. Tulkinghorn
24167 is gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What
24168 is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library.
24169 Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that.
     
24170 But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is
24171 reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive
24172 him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now.
24173 He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission,
24174 while she is at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to
24175 dispense with such mockeries.
     
24176 "What do you want, sir?"
     
24177 "Why, Lady Dedlock," says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little
24178 distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up
24179 and down, up and down, "I am rather surprised by the course you have
24180 taken."
     
24181 "Indeed?"
     
24182 "Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure
24183 from our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position,
24184 Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I
24185 don't approve of it."
     
24186 He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his
24187 knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an
24188 indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not
24189 escape this woman's observation.
     
24190 "I do not quite understand you."
     
24191 "Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock,
24192 we must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl."
     
24193 "Well, sir?"
     
24194 "And you know -- and I know -- that you have not sent her away for the
24195 reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as
24196 much as possible from -- excuse my mentioning it as a matter of
24197 business -- any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself."
     
24198 "Well, sir?"
     
24199 "Well, Lady Dedlock," returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and
24200 nursing the uppermost knee. "I object to that. I consider that a
24201 dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to
24202 awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don't know what, in the house.
24203 Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly
24204 what you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it
24205 is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what
24206 you were before. Why, bless my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!"
     
24207 "If, sir," she begins, "in my knowledge of my secret -- " But he
24208 interrupts her.
     
24209 "Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of
24210 business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your
24211 secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in
24212 trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady
24213 Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation."
     
24214 "That is very true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can
24215 to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference
24216 to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney
24217 Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I
24218 have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could
24219 shake it or could move me." This she says with great deliberation and
24220 distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for
24221 him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were
24222 any insensible instrument used in business.
     
24223 "Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock," he returns, "you are not to be
24224 trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and
24225 according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not
24226 to be trusted."
     
24227 "Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same
24228 point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?"
     
24229 "Yes," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the
24230 hearth. "Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred
24231 to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both
24232 the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any
24233 action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt
24234 about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is
24235 she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One
24236 might have supposed that the course was straight on -- over everything,
24237 neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all
24238 considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under
24239 foot."
     
24240 She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at
24241 him. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower
24242 lip is compressed under her teeth. "This woman understands me," Mr.
24243 Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. "SHE cannot be
24244 spared. Why should she spare others?"
     
24245 For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner,
24246 but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk
24247 it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it,
24248 shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness
24249 or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. "This
24250 woman," thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark
24251 object closing up her view, "is a study."
     
24252 He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too
24253 studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak,
24254 appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until
24255 midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence.
     
24256 "Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview
24257 remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your
24258 sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring
24259 it void and taking my own course."
     
24260 "I am quite prepared."
     
24261 Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. "That is all I have to trouble you
24262 with, Lady Dedlock."
     
24263 She stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, "This is the
24264 notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you."
     
24265 "Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because
24266 the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed.
24267 But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely
24268 in a lawyer's mind."
     
24269 "You intend to give me no other notice?"
     
24270 "You are right. No."
     
24271 "Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester to-night?"
     
24272 "A home question!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and
24273 cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. "No, not to-night."
     
24274 "To-morrow?"
     
24275 "All things considered, I had better decline answering that question,
24276 Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don't know when, exactly, you would
24277 not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow.
24278 I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no
24279 expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you
24280 good evening."
     
24281 She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks
24282 silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open
24283 it.
     
24284 "Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were
24285 writing in the library. Are you going to return there?"
     
24286 "Only for my hat. I am going home."
     
24287 She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and
24288 curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch
24289 but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a
24290 splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not
24291 often are, for its accuracy. "And what do YOU say," Mr. Tulkinghorn
24292 inquires, referring to it. "What do you say?"
     
24293 If it said now, "Don't go home!" What a famous clock, hereafter, if
24294 it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this
24295 old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it,
24296 "Don't go home!" With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters
24297 after seven and ticks on again. "Why, you are worse than I thought
24298 you," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. "Two
24299 minutes wrong? At this rate you won't last my time." What a watch to
24300 return good for evil if it ticked in answer, "Don't go home!"
     
24301 He passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind
24302 him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries,
24303 difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured
24304 up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of
24305 the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family
24306 secrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to
24307 whisper, "Don't go home!"
     
24308 Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar
24309 and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing
24310 shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the
24311 crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and
24312 nothing meets him murmuring, "Don't go home!" Arrived at last in his
24313 dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the
24314 Roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the
24315 Roman's hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to
24316 give him the late warning, "Don't come here!"
     
24317 It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only
24318 now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining
24319 as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as
24320 he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them.
24321 Her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless.
24322 The large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their
24323 restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden.
     
24324 Too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much
24325 surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman,
24326 loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with
24327 the key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his
24328 Lady's hands at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk
24329 there some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may
24330 be more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring
24331 with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of
24332 some trees.
     
24333 A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr.
24334 Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting
24335 those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He
24336 looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large
24337 moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.
     
24338 A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude
24339 and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded
24340 places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads
24341 and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in
24342 repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees
24343 against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is
24344 it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the
24345 water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among
24346 pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only
24347 does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick,
24348 where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping
24349 make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements
24350 through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed
24351 ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds,
24352 rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with
24353 the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and
24354 on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread
24355 wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only
24356 him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some
24357 rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more
24358 ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale
24359 effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are
24360 softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly
24361 away. In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the
24362 shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their
24363 sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them
24364 exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a
24365 distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.
     
24366 What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?
     
24367 The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some
24368 windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a
24369 loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so
24370 a man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the
24371 neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the
24372 road. While the dogs are yet barking and howling -- there is one dog
24373 howling like a demon -- the church-clocks, as if they were startled
24374 too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise, seems to
24375 swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last clock begins
24376 to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine night,
24377 the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace
24378 again.
     
24379 Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet,
24380 and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to bring
24381 him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of
24382 him. What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man
24383 out of his immovable composure?
     
24384 For many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no
24385 particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has
24386 any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing -- like
24387 any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt,
24388 in his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long.
24389 Moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly
24390 pointing, and no one minds him.
     
24391 But a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the
24392 rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not
24393 expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up
24394 at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that
24395 person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one
24396 looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.
     
24397 What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber,
24398 and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily,
24399 carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whispering
24400 and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing
24401 of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of
24402 furniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, "If
24403 he could only tell what he saw!"
     
24404 He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a
24405 glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after
24406 being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon
24407 the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These
24408 objects lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might
24409 suppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the
24410 rest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but
24411 the clouds and flowers and pillars too -- in short, the very body and
24412 soul of Allegory, and all the brains it has -- stark mad. It happens
24413 surely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at
24414 these things looks up at the Roman and that he is invested in all
24415 eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.
     
24416 So it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly
24417 stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be
24418 covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the
24419 ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him,
24420 with far greater significance than he ever had in Mr. Tulkinghorn's
24421 time, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr. Tulkinghorn's time is over
24422 for evermore, and the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted
24423 against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to
24424 morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.
     
     
     
     
24425 CHAPTER XLIX
     
24426 Dutiful Friendship
     
     
24427 A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr.
24428 Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present
24429 bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration
24430 of a birthday in the family.
     
24431 It is not Mr. Bagnet's birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that
24432 epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with
24433 an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after
24434 dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is
24435 thinking about it -- a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so
24436 by his mother having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely
24437 revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their
24438 remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection
24439 into their mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his
24440 exalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually
24441 to make the noun-substantive "goodness" of the feminine gender.
     
24442 It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions
24443 are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the
24444 bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich's last
24445 birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and
24446 general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on
24447 the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism,
24448 accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two,
24449 "What is your name?" and "Who gave you that name?" but there failing
24450 in the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number
24451 three the question "And how do you like that name?" which he
24452 propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and
24453 improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a
24454 speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity.
     
24455 It is the old girl's birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and
24456 reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is
24457 always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed
24458 by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being deeply convinced
24459 that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest
24460 pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in
24461 the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in
24462 by the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest
24463 inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with these triumphs of
24464 toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief
24465 (essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites Mrs.
24466 Bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs.
24467 Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr.
24468 Bagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment
24469 amidst general amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the
24470 old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown
24471 and be served by himself and the young people. As he is not
24472 illustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of
24473 state rather than enjoyment on the old girl's part, but she keeps her
24474 state with all imaginable cheerfulness.
     
24475 On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual
24476 preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if
24477 there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff,
24478 to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by
24479 their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting
24480 of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers
24481 itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of
24482 ceremony, an honoured guest.
     
24483 Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving,
24484 as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these
24485 young scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake
24486 of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.
     
24487 "At half after one." Says Mr. Bagnet. "To the minute. They'll be
24488 done."
     
24489 Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill before
24490 the fire and beginning to burn.
     
24491 "You shall have a dinner, old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Fit for a
24492 queen."
     
24493 Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception
24494 of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled
24495 by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the
24496 matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the
24497 fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to
24498 consciousness. Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of
24499 the agitation in Mrs. Bagnet's breast and with an admonitory poke
24500 recalls him. The stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes
24501 her eyes in the intensity of her relief.
     
24502 "George will look us up," says Mr. Bagnet. "At half after four. To
24503 the moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This
24504 afternoon?"
     
24505 "Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I
24506 begin to think. Just about that, and no less," returns Mrs. Bagnet,
24507 laughing and shaking her head.
     
24508 "Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "never mind. You'd be as young as ever
24509 you was. If you wasn't younger. Which you are. As everybody knows."
     
24510 Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is
24511 sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it
24512 will be.
     
24513 "Do you know, Lignum," says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the
24514 table-cloth, and winking "salt!" at Malta with her right eye, and
24515 shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, "I begin to think
24516 George is in the roving way again.
     
24517 "George," returns Mr. Bagnet, "will never desert. And leave his old
24518 comrade. In the lurch. Don't be afraid of it."
     
24519 "No, Lignum. No. I don't say he will. I don't think he will. But if
24520 he could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he would be
24521 off."
     
24522 Mr. Bagnet asks why.
     
24523 "Well," returns his wife, considering, "George seems to me to be
24524 getting not a little impatient and restless. I don't say but what
24525 he's as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn't be
24526 George, but he smarts and seems put out."
     
24527 "He's extra-drilled," says Mr. Bagnet. "By a lawyer. Who would put
24528 the devil out."
     
24529 "There's something in that," his wife assents; "but so it is,
24530 Lignum."
     
24531 Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity
24532 under which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of
24533 his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry
24534 humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made
24535 gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion.
24536 With a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the
24537 process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction,
24538 as if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the fowls, too,
24539 are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. Overcoming
24540 these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr. Bagnet at last
24541 dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest's
24542 place at his right hand.
     
24543 It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year,
24544 for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of
24545 finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess
24546 is developed in these specimens in the singular form of
24547 guitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their
24548 breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their
24549 legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted
24550 the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian
24551 exercises and the walking of matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of
24552 these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eating a most
24553 severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old
24554 girl would not cause him a moment's disappointment on any day, least
24555 of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her
24556 digestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drum-sticks
24557 without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to
24558 understand.
     
24559 The old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the
24560 repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept,
24561 and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. The
24562 great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply
24563 themselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of
24564 their mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens,
24565 inspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the
24566 present. The same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering
24567 of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an
24568 expenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the
24569 young ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs.
24570 Bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last
24571 the various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec
24572 and Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco,
24573 and something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl
24574 enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this
24575 delightful entertainment.
     
24576 When Mr. Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very
24577 near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr. Bagnet
24578 announces, "George! Military time."
     
24579 It is George, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl
24580 (whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for
24581 Mr. Bagnet. "Happy returns to all!" says Mr. George.
     
24582 "But, George, old man!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, looking at him curiously.
24583 "What's come to you?"
     
24584 "Come to me?"
     
24585 "Ah! You are so white, George -- for you -- and look so shocked. Now
24586 don't he, Lignum?"
     
24587 "George," says Mr. Bagnet, "tell the old girl. What's the matter."
     
24588 "I didn't know I looked white," says the trooper, passing his hand
24589 over his brow, "and I didn't know I looked shocked, and I'm sorry I
24590 do. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died
24591 yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over."
     
24592 "Poor creetur!" says Mrs. Bagnet with a mother's pity. "Is he gone?
24593 Dear, dear!"
     
24594 "I didn't mean to say anything about it, for it's not birthday talk,
24595 but you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should
24596 have roused up in a minute," says the trooper, making himself speak
24597 more gaily, "but you're so quick, Mrs. Bagnet."
     
24598 "You're right. The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Is as quick. As
24599 powder."
     
24600 "And what's more, she's the subject of the day, and we'll stick to
24601 her," cries Mr. George. "See here, I have brought a little brooch
24602 along with me. It's a poor thing, you know, but it's a keepsake.
24603 That's all the good it is, Mrs. Bagnet."
     
24604 Mr. George produces his present, which is greeted with admiring
24605 leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of
24606 reverential admiration by Mr. Bagnet. "Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet.
24607 "Tell him my opinion of it."
     
24608 "Why, it's a wonder, George!" Mrs. Bagnet exclaims. "It's the
24609 beautifullest thing that ever was seen!"
     
24610 "Good!" says Mr. Bagnet. "My opinion."
     
24611 "It's so pretty, George," cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning it on all sides
24612 and holding it out at arm's length, "that it seems too choice for
24613 me."
     
24614 "Bad!" says Mr. Bagnet. "Not my opinion."
     
24615 "But whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow," says
24616 Mrs. Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched
24617 out to him; "and though I have been a crossgrained soldier's wife to
24618 you sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in
24619 reality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for
24620 good luck, if you will, George."
     
24621 The children close up to see it done, and Mr. Bagnet looks over young
24622 Woolwich's head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden,
24623 yet pleasantly childish, that Mrs. Bagnet cannot help laughing in her
24624 airy way and saying, "Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap
24625 you are!" But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand
24626 shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. "Would any one believe
24627 this?" says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. "I am so
24628 out of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like this!"
     
24629 Mrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a
24630 pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the
24631 trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be
24632 got into action. "If that don't bring you round, George," says she,
24633 "just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and
24634 the two together MUST do it."
     
24635 "You ought to do it of yourself," George answers; "I know that very
24636 well, Mrs. Bagnet. I'll tell you how, one way and another, the blues
24637 have got to be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. 'Twas dull
24638 work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him."
     
24639 "What do you mean, George? You did help him. You took him under your
24640 roof."
     
24641 "I helped him so far, but that's little. I mean, Mrs. Bagnet, there
24642 he was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know
24643 his right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped
24644 out of that."
     
24645 "Ah, poor creetur!" says Mrs. Bagnet.
     
24646 "Then," says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his
24647 heavy hand over his hair, "that brought up Gridley in a man's mind.
24648 His was a bad case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up
24649 in a man's mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And
24650 to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end
24651 in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly -- it
24652 made flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you."
     
24653 "My advice to you," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "is to light your pipe and
24654 tingle that way. It's wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the
24655 health altogether."
     
24656 "You're right," says the trooper, "and I'll do it."
     
24657 So he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses
24658 the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony
24659 of drinking Mrs. Bagnet's health, always given by himself on these
24660 occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies
24661 having composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling "the
24662 mixtur," and George's pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers
24663 it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the
24664 assembled company in the following terms.
     
24665 "George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day's
24666 march. And you won't find such another. Here's towards her!"
     
24667 The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns
24668 thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model
24669 composition is limited to the three words "And wishing yours!" which
24670 the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a
24671 well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the
24672 present occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, "Here's a
24673 man!"
     
24674 Here IS a man, much to the astonishment of the little company,
24675 looking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man -- a quick keen
24676 man -- and he takes in everybody's look at him, all at once,
24677 individually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a
24678 remarkable man.
     
24679 "George," says the man, nodding, "how do you find yourself?"
     
24680 "Why, it's Bucket!" cries Mr. George.
     
24681 "Yes," says the man, coming in and closing the door. "I was going
24682 down the street here when I happened to stop and look in at the
24683 musical instruments in the shop-window -- a friend of mine is in want
24684 of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone -- and I saw a party
24685 enjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I
24686 thought I couldn't be mistaken. How goes the world with you, George,
24687 at the present moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma'am? And with
24688 you, governor? And Lord," says Mr. Bucket, opening his arms, "here's
24689 children too! You may do anything with me if you only show me
24690 children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who YOUR
24691 father and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!"
     
24692 Mr. Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr. George
24693 and taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. "You pretty dears," says Mr.
24694 Bucket, "give us another kiss; it's the only thing I'm greedy in.
24695 Lord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ages of
24696 these two, ma'am? I should put 'em down at the figures of about eight
24697 and ten."
     
24698 "You're very near, sir," says Mrs. Bagnet.
     
24699 "I generally am near," returns Mr. Bucket, "being so fond of
24700 children. A friend of mine has had nineteen of 'em, ma'am, all by one
24701 mother, and she's still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much
24702 so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do
24703 you call these, my darling?" pursues Mr. Bucket, pinching Malta's
24704 cheeks. "These are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do
24705 you think about father? Do you think father could recommend a
24706 second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr. Bucket's friend, my
24707 dear? My name's Bucket. Ain't that a funny name?"
     
24708 These blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs. Bagnet
24709 forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr.
24710 Bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive
24711 so pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him
24712 that as a friend of George's she is particularly glad to see him this
24713 evening, for George has not been in his usual spirits.
     
24714 "Not in his usual spirits?" exclaims Mr. Bucket. "Why, I never heard
24715 of such a thing! What's the matter, George? You don't intend to tell
24716 me you've been out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for?
24717 You haven't got anything on your mind, you know."
     
24718 "Nothing particular," returns the trooper.
     
24719 "I should think not," rejoins Mr. Bucket. "What could you have on
24720 your mind, you know! And have these pets got anything on THEIR minds,
24721 eh? Not they, but they'll be upon the minds of some of the young
24722 fellows, some of these days, and make 'em precious low-spirited. I
24723 ain't much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma'am."
     
24724 Mrs. Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr. Bucket has a family of his own.
     
24725 "There, ma'am!" says Mr. Bucket. "Would you believe it? No, I
24726 haven't. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. Mrs. Bucket is as
24727 fond of children as myself and as wishful to have 'em, but no. So it
24728 is. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine.
24729 What a very nice backyard, ma'am! Any way out of that yard, now?"
     
24730 There is no way out of that yard.
     
24731 "Ain't there really?" says Mr. Bucket. "I should have thought there
24732 might have been. Well, I don't know as I ever saw a backyard that
24733 took my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No,
24734 I see there's no way out. But what a very good-proportioned yard it
24735 is!"
     
24736 Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr. Bucket returns to his
24737 chair next his friend Mr. George and pats Mr. George affectionately
24738 on the shoulder.
     
24739 "How are your spirits now, George?"
     
24740 "All right now," returns the trooper.
     
24741 "That's your sort!" says Mr. Bucket. "Why should you ever have been
24742 otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to
24743 be out of spirits. That ain't a chest to be out of spirits, is it,
24744 ma'am? And you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George;
24745 what could you have on your mind!"
     
24746 Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety
24747 of his conversational powers, Mr. Bucket twice or thrice repeats it
24748 to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly
24749 his own. But the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this brief
24750 eclipse and shines again.
     
24751 "And this is brother, is it, my dears?" says Mr. Bucket, referring to
24752 Quebec and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich.
24753 "And a nice brother he is -- half-brother I mean to say. For he's too
24754 old to be your boy, ma'am."
     
24755 "I can certify at all events that he is not anybody else's," returns
24756 Mrs. Bagnet, laughing.
     
24757 "Well, you do surprise me! Yet he's like you, there's no denying.
24758 Lord, he's wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the
24759 brow, you know, THERE his father comes out!" Mr. Bucket compares the
24760 faces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid
24761 satisfaction.
     
24762 This is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is
24763 George's godson.
     
24764 "George's godson, is he?" rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality.
24765 "I must shake hands over again with George's godson. Godfather and
24766 godson do credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of
24767 him, ma'am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?"
     
24768 Mr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, "Plays the fife. Beautiful."
     
24769 "Would you believe it, governor," says Mr. Bucket, struck by the
24770 coincidence, "that when I was a boy I played the fife myself? Not in
24771 a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you!
24772 'British Grenadiers' -- there's a tune to warm an Englishman up! COULD
24773 you give us 'British Grenadiers,' my fine fellow?"
     
24774 Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call
24775 upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs
24776 the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much
24777 enlivened, beats time and never falls to come in sharp with the
24778 burden, "British Gra-a-anadeers!" In short, he shows so much musical
24779 taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to
24780 express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the
24781 harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once
24782 chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom,
24783 and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is
24784 asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening,
24785 he complies and gives them "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young
24786 Charms." This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have
24787 been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a
24788 maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar -- Mr. Bucket's own
24789 words are "to come up to the scratch."
     
24790 This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the
24791 evening that Mr. George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure
24792 on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of
24793 him. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to
24794 get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr.
24795 Bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his
24796 acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old
24797 girl's next birthday. If anything can more closely cement and
24798 consolidate the esteem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it
24799 is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He drinks to Mrs.
24800 Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that
24801 day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day
24802 in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope
24803 that Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet may before then become, in a manner,
24804 sisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private
24805 ties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that
24806 sphere that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the
24807 confines of domestic bliss.
     
24808 It is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn,
24809 should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an
24810 acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the
24811 subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits
24812 to walk home with him. He is interested in his very boots and
24813 observes even them attentively as Mr. George sits smoking
24814 cross-legged in the chimney-corner.
     
24815 At length Mr. George rises to depart. At the same moment Mr. Bucket,
24816 with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the
24817 children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken
24818 for an absent friend.
     
24819 "Respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor -- could you
24820 recommend me such a thing?"
     
24821 "Scores," says Mr. Bagnet.
     
24822 "I am obliged to you," returns Mr. Bucket, squeezing his hand.
24823 "You're a friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a
24824 regular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel and the
24825 rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn't," says
24826 Mr. Bucket in a considerate and private voice, "you needn't commit
24827 yourself to too low a figure, governor. I don't want to pay too large
24828 a price for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage
24829 and be remunerated for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man
24830 must live, and ought to it."
     
24831 Mr. Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they
24832 have found a jewel of price.
     
24833 "Suppose I was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten
24834 to-morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few
24835 wiolincellers of a good tone?" says Mr. Bucket.
     
24836 Nothing easier. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet both engage to have the requisite
24837 information ready and even hint to each other at the practicability
24838 of having a small stock collected there for approval.
     
24839 "Thank you," says Mr. Bucket, "thank you. Good night, ma'am. Good
24840 night, governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for
24841 one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life."
     
24842 They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he
24843 has given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions
24844 of goodwill on both sides. "Now George, old boy," says Mr. Bucket,
24845 taking his arm at the shop-door, "come along!" As they go down the
24846 little street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them,
24847 Mrs. Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr. Bucket "almost
24848 clings to George like, and seems to be really fond of him."
     
24849 The neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little
24850 inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr. George
24851 therefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr. Bucket, who cannot
24852 make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, "Wait half
24853 a minute, George. I should wish to speak to you first." Immediately
24854 afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour,
24855 where he confronts him and claps his own back against the door.
     
24856 "Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, "duty is duty, and friendship is
24857 friendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it. I have
24858 endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it to you
24859 whether I have done it or not. You must consider yourself in custody,
24860 George."
     
24861 "Custody? What for?" returns the trooper, thunderstruck.
     
24862 "Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case
24863 upon him with his fat forefinger, "duty, as you know very well, is
24864 one thing, and conversation is another. It's my duty to inform you
24865 that any observations you may make will be liable to be used against
24866 you. Therefore, George, be careful what you say. You don't happen to
24867 have heard of a murder?"
     
24868 "Murder!"
     
24869 "Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an
24870 impressive state of action, "bear in mind what I've said to you. I
24871 ask you nothing. You've been in low spirits this afternoon. I say,
24872 you don't happen to have heard of a murder?"
     
24873 "No. Where has there been a murder?"
     
24874 "Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, "don't you go and commit yourself.
24875 I'm a-going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder
24876 in Lincoln's Inn Fields -- gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was
24877 shot last night. I want you for that."
     
24878 The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out
24879 upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face.
     
24880 "Bucket! It's not possible that Mr. Tulkinghorn has been killed and
24881 that you suspect ME?"
     
24882 "George," returns Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, "it is
24883 certainly possible, because it's the case. This deed was done last
24884 night at ten o'clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten
24885 o'clock, and you'll be able to prove it, no doubt."
     
24886 "Last night! Last night?" repeats the trooper thoughtfully. Then it
24887 flashes upon him. "Why, great heaven, I was there last night!"
     
24888 "So I have understood, George," returns Mr. Bucket with great
24889 deliberation. "So I have understood. Likewise you've been very often
24890 there. You've been seen hanging about the place, and you've been
24891 heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it's possible -- I
24892 don't say it's certainly so, mind you, but it's possible -- that he may
24893 have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous
24894 fellow."
     
24895 The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak.
     
24896 "Now, George," continues Mr. Bucket, putting his hat upon the table
24897 with an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise,
24898 "my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant.
24899 I tell you plainly there's a reward out, of a hundred guineas,
24900 offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always
24901 been pleasant together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if
24902 that hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as
24903 any other man. On all of which accounts, I should hope it was clear
24904 to you that I must have you, and that I'm damned if I don't have you.
24905 Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?"
     
24906 Mr. George has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier.
24907 "Come," he says; "I am ready."
     
24908 "George," continues Mr. Bucket, "wait a bit!" With his upholsterer
24909 manner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes
24910 from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "This is a serious charge,
24911 George, and such is my duty."
     
24912 The trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his
24913 two hands, clasped together, and says, "There! Put them on!"
     
24914 Mr. Bucket adjusts them in a moment. "How do you find them? Are they
24915 comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as
24916 is consistent with my duty, and I've got another pair in my pocket."
24917 This remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to
24918 execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his
24919 customer. "They'll do as they are? Very well! Now, you see,
24920 George" -- he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about
24921 the trooper's neck -- "I was mindful of your feelings when I come out,
24922 and brought this on purpose. There! Who's the wiser?"
     
24923 "Only I," returns the trooper, "but as I know it, do me one more good
24924 turn and pull my hat over my eyes."
     
24925 "Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain't it a pity? It looks so."
     
24926 "I can't look chance men in the face with these things on," Mr.
24927 George hurriedly replies. "Do, for God's sake, pull my hat forward."
     
24928 So strongly entreated, Mr. Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and
24929 conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as
24930 steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr. Bucket
24931 steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.
     
     
     
     
24932 CHAPTER L
     
24933 Esther's Narrative
     
     
24934 It happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from Caddy
24935 Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), informing me that her
24936 health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and
24937 that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to
24938 see her. It was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on
24939 which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in
24940 which he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now
24941 the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby -- such a
24942 tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely
24943 anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand,
24944 always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all
24945 day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to
24946 imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved
24947 it cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole
24948 desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. It had
24949 curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks
24950 under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Caddy's inky days, and
24951 altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous
24952 little sight.
     
24953 But it was enough for Caddy that SHE was used to it. The projects
24954 with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther's education,
24955 and little Esther's marriage, and even for her own old age as the
24956 grandmother of little Esther's little Esthers, was so prettily
24957 expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be
24958 tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that I
24959 am getting on irregularly as it is.
     
24960 To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me which had
24961 been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when
24962 she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost -- I think I
24963 must say quite -- believed that I did her good whenever I was near her.
24964 Now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl's that I
24965 am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of
24966 a fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my
24967 guardian's consent, post-haste; and she and Prince made so much of me
24968 that there never was anything like it.
     
24969 Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It
24970 was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier in
24971 the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters
24972 before leaving home.
     
24973 But when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my
24974 return at night, "Now, little woman, little woman, this will never
24975 do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching
24976 will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a while and
24977 take possession of our old lodgings."
     
24978 "Not for me, dear guardian," said I, "for I never feel tired," which
24979 was strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request.
     
24980 "For me then," returned my guardian, "or for Ada, or for both of us.
24981 It is somebody's birthday to-morrow, I think."
     
24982 "Truly I think it is," said I, kissing my darling, who would be
24983 twenty-one to-morrow.
     
24984 "Well," observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously,
24985 "that's a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary
24986 business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make
24987 London a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will
24988 go. That being settled, there is another thing -- how have you left
24989 Caddy?"
     
24990 "Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she
24991 regains her health and strength."
     
24992 "What do you call some time, now?" asked my guardian thoughtfully.
     
24993 "Some weeks, I am afraid."
     
24994 "Ah!" He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets,
24995 showing that he had been thinking as much. "Now, what do you say
24996 about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?"
     
24997 I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but
24998 that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his
24999 opinion to be confirmed by some one.
     
25000 "Well, you know," returned my guardian quickly, "there's Woodcourt."
     
25001 I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment
25002 all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Woodcourt seemed
25003 to come back and confuse me.
     
25004 "You don't object to him, little woman?"
     
25005 "Object to him, guardian? Oh no!"
     
25006 "And you don't think the patient would object to him?"
     
25007 So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a
25008 great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he was
25009 no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind
25010 attendance on Miss Flite.
     
25011 "Very good," said my guardian. "He has been here to-day, my dear, and
25012 I will see him about it to-morrow."
     
25013 I felt in this short conversation -- though I did not know how, for she
25014 was quiet, and we interchanged no look -- that my dear girl well
25015 remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no
25016 other hands than Caddy's had brought me the little parting token.
25017 This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that
25018 I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided
25019 that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes
25020 of its master's love. Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited
25021 listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be
25022 the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to
25023 take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before
25024 myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life
25025 that was in store for for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at
25026 one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest
25027 of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted
25028 by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle
25029 reservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before.
25030 I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that
25031 it was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better.
     
25032 Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in
25033 half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone
25034 away. Mr. Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling's birthday,
25035 and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us
25036 that Richard's absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that
25037 day I was for some weeks -- eight or nine as I remember -- very much with
25038 Caddy, and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than
25039 any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own
25040 illness. She often came to Caddy's, but our function there was to
25041 amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential
25042 manner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, but Caddy's
25043 rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her.
     
25044 With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their
25045 home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying,
25046 so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid
25047 of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her
25048 husband and the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop; I had never known the
25049 best of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face
25050 and helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing
25051 was the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began
25052 early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy
25053 waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon.
     
25054 At Caddy's request I took the supreme direction of her apartment,
25055 trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more
25056 airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every
25057 day, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small
25058 namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It
25059 was at one of the first of these quiet times that I told Caddy about
25060 Bleak House.
     
25061 We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Prince, who in
25062 his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit
25063 softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very
25064 little child. Whatever Caddy's condition really was, she never failed
25065 to declare to Prince that she was all but well -- which I, heaven
25066 forgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Prince in such
25067 good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and
25068 play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never knew it to do
25069 in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all.
     
25070 Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She would come occasionally, with her
25071 usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her
25072 grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan
25073 on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as
25074 untidy, she would say, "Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do
25075 to-day?" And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of
25076 the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number
25077 of letters she had lately received and answered or of the
25078 coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would always do
25079 with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be
25080 disguised.
     
25081 Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop, who was from morning to night and
25082 from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the
25083 baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him
25084 uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was
25085 surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy
25086 required any little comfort that the house contained, she first
25087 carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In
25088 return for this consideration he would come into the room once a day,
25089 all but blessing it -- showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a
25090 grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered
25091 presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known
25092 better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy's life.
     
25093 "My Caroline," he would say, making the nearest approach that he
25094 could to bending over her. "Tell me that you are better to-day."
     
25095 "Oh, much better, thank you, Mr. Turveydrop," Caddy would reply.
     
25096 "Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not quite
25097 prostrated by fatigue?" Here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss
25098 his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased to be
25099 particular in his attentions since I had been so altered.
     
25100 "Not at all," I would assure him.
     
25101 "Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson. We
25102 must spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My
25103 dear Caroline" -- he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite
25104 generosity and protection -- "want for nothing, my love. Frame a wish
25105 and gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house contains,
25106 everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not," he
25107 would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, "even allow my simple
25108 requirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere
25109 with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are greater than mine."
     
25110 He had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment
25111 (his son's inheritance from his mother) that I several times knew
25112 both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these
25113 affectionate self-sacrifices.
     
25114 "Nay, my dears," he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy's thin
25115 arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though
25116 not by the same process. "Nay, nay! I have promised never to leave
25117 ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no other
25118 return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park."
     
25119 He would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his
25120 hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Turveydrop no wrong, but I never
25121 saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except
25122 that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the
25123 child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending
25124 him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a
25125 halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended
25126 with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Peepy was
25127 sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of
25128 deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy and
25129 her husband, from top to toe.
     
25130 Last of our visitors, there was Mr. Jellyby. Really when he used to
25131 come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she was,
25132 and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt
25133 to say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling
25134 about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as
25135 if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got
25136 any further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the
25137 wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and I could not quite
25138 divest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another.
     
25139 I have not counted Mr. Woodcourt among our visitors because he was
25140 now Caddy's regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his
25141 care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he
25142 took that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal
25143 of Mr. Woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might be
25144 supposed, for knowing Caddy to be safe in his hands, I often slipped
25145 home at about the hours when he was expected. We frequently met,
25146 notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself now, but I still
25147 felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still WAS sorry
25148 for me I believed. He helped Mr. Badger in his professional
25149 engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects
25150 for the future.
     
25151 It was when Caddy began to recover that I began to notice a change in
25152 my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me,
25153 because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing
25154 in themselves and only became something when they were pieced
25155 together. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada was
25156 not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her tenderness for
25157 me was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a moment doubt that;
25158 but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to
25159 me, and in which I traced some hidden regret.
     
25160 Now, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the
25161 happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me
25162 thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this
25163 something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my
25164 head that she was a little grieved -- for me -- by what I had told her
25165 about Bleak House.
     
25166 How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don't know. I had no
25167 idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not
25168 grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still,
25169 that Ada might be thinking -- for me, though I had abandoned all such
25170 thoughts -- of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy
25171 to believe that I believed it.
     
25172 What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show
25173 her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and
25174 busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along. However, as
25175 Caddy's illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home
25176 duties -- though I had always been there in the morning to make my
25177 guardian's breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said
25178 there must be two little women, for his little woman was never
25179 missing -- I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went about
25180 the house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and working
25181 in a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning, noon, and
25182 night.
     
25183 And still there was the same shade between me and my darling.
     
25184 "So, Dame Trot," observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night
25185 when we were all three together, "so Woodcourt has restored Caddy
25186 Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?"
     
25187 "Yes," I said; "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be
25188 made rich, guardian."
     
25189 "I wish it was," he returned, "with all my heart."
     
25190 So did I too, for that matter. I said so.
     
25191 "Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we
25192 not, little woman?"
     
25193 I laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that, for
25194 it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be
25195 many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herself, and
25196 many others.
     
25197 "True," said my guardian. "I had forgotten that. But we would agree
25198 to make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with
25199 tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home and
25200 his own household gods -- and household goddess, too, perhaps?"
     
25201 That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that.
     
25202 "To be sure," said my guardian. "All of us. I have a great regard for
25203 Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him
25204 delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an
25205 independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And
25206 yet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems
25207 half inclined for another voyage. But that appears like casting such
25208 a man away."
     
25209 "It might open a new world to him," said I.
     
25210 "So it might, little woman," my guardian assented. "I doubt if he
25211 expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he
25212 sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune
25213 encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?"
     
25214 I shook my head.
     
25215 "Humph," said my guardian. "I am mistaken, I dare say." As there was
25216 a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl's
25217 satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked
25218 which was a favourite with my guardian.
     
25219 "And do you think Mr. Woodcourt will make another voyage?" I asked
25220 him when I had hummed it quietly all through.
     
25221 "I don't quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was
25222 likely at present that he will give a long trip to another country."
     
25223 "I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him
25224 wherever he goes," said I; "and though they are not riches, he will
25225 never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least."
     
25226 "Never, little woman," he replied.
     
25227 I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian's
25228 chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was
25229 now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she
25230 looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears
25231 were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and
25232 merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at
25233 rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself.
     
25234 So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder -- how little thinking
25235 what was heavy on her mind! -- and I said she was not quite well, and
25236 put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own
25237 room, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so
25238 unprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I
25239 never thought she stood in need of it.
     
25240 "Oh, my dear good Esther," said Ada, "if I could only make up my mind
25241 to speak to you and my cousin John when you are together!"
     
25242 "Why, my love!" I remonstrated. "Ada, why should you not speak to
25243 us!"
     
25244 Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart.
     
25245 "You surely don't forget, my beauty," said I, smiling, "what quiet,
25246 old-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the
25247 discreetest of dames? You don't forget how happily and peacefully my
25248 life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you
25249 don't forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be."
     
25250 "No, never, Esther."
     
25251 "Why then, my dear," said I, "there can be nothing amiss -- and why
25252 should you not speak to us?"
     
25253 "Nothing amiss, Esther?" returned Ada. "Oh, when I think of all these
25254 years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old
25255 relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!"
     
25256 I looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to
25257 answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off into many
25258 little recollections of our life together and prevented her from
25259 saying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned
25260 to my guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat
25261 near her for a little while.
     
25262 She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a
25263 little changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I could not
25264 decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was
25265 changed, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked
25266 different to me. My guardian's old hopes of her and Richard arose
25267 sorrowfully in my mind, and I said to myself, "She has been anxious
25268 about him," and I wondered how that love would end.
     
25269 When I had come home from Caddy's while she was ill, I had often
25270 found Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had
25271 never known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her,
25272 which was not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still
25273 rather wondered what the work could he, for it was evidently nothing
25274 for herself.
     
25275 And I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under
25276 her pillow so that it was hidden.
     
25277 How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much
25278 less amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own
25279 cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me
25280 to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace!
     
25281 But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next
25282 day to find that there was still the same shade between me and my
25283 darling.
     
     
     
     
25284 CHAPTER LI
     
25285 Enlightened
     
     
25286 When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to
25287 Mr. Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For he never once, from the moment when
25288 I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his
25289 promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred
25290 trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit.
     
25291 He found Mr. Vholes in his office and informed Mr. Vholes of his
25292 agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his
25293 address.
     
25294 "Just so, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred
25295 miles from here, sir, Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred miles from
25296 here. Would you take a seat, sir?"
     
25297 Mr. Woodcourt thanked Mr. Vholes, but he had no business with him
25298 beyond what he had mentioned.
     
25299 "Just so, sir. I believe, sir," said Mr. Vholes, still quietly
25300 insisting on the seat by not giving the address, "that you have
25301 influence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have."
     
25302 "I was not aware of it myself," returned Mr. Woodcourt; "but I
25303 suppose you know best."
     
25304 "Sir," rejoined Mr. Vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all,
25305 "it is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of
25306 my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who
25307 confides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be
25308 wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be
25309 wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir."
     
25310 Mr. Woodcourt again mentioned the address.
     
25311 "Give me leave, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Bear with me for a moment.
25312 Sir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play
25313 without -- need I say what?"
     
25314 "Money, I presume?"
     
25315 "Sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to be honest with you (honesty being my
25316 golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I
25317 generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr.
25318 C.'s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be highly
25319 impolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off;
25320 it might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir," said Mr. Vholes,
25321 bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner,
25322 "nothing."
     
25323 "You seem to forget," returned Mr. Woodcourt, "that I ask you to say
25324 nothing and have no interest in anything you say."
     
25325 "Pardon me, sir!" retorted Mr. Vholes. "You do yourself an injustice.
25326 No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not -- shall not in my office, if I know
25327 it -- do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in
25328 everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much
25329 better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your
25330 appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend."
     
25331 "Well," replied Mr. Woodcourt, "that may be. I am particularly
25332 interested in his address."
     
25333 "The number, sir," said Mr. Vholes parenthetically, "I believe I have
25334 already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this
25335 considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are
25336 funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand.
25337 But for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C.
25338 is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and
25339 solely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the
25340 opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without
25341 funds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the
25342 extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate,
25343 not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging
25344 some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable
25345 father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or
25346 some one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly
25347 if you please) to wrong no one."
     
25348 Mr. Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it.
     
25349 "I wish, sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to leave a good name behind me.
25350 Therefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of
25351 Mr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is
25352 worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I
25353 do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is
25354 painted on the door outside, with that object."
     
25355 "And Mr. Carstone's address, Mr. Vholes?"
     
25356 "Sir," returned Mr. Vholes, "as I believe I have already mentioned,
25357 it is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.'s
25358 apartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I
25359 am far from objecting, for I court inquiry."
     
25360 Upon this Mr. Woodcourt wished Mr. Vholes good day and went in search
25361 of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now
25362 but too well.
     
25363 He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found
25364 him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was
25365 not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his
25366 eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing
25367 open, Mr. Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without
25368 being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the
25369 haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was
25370 aroused from his dream.
     
25371 "Woodcourt, my dear fellow," cried Richard, starting up with extended
25372 hands, "you come upon my vision like a ghost."
     
25373 "A friendly one," he replied, "and only waiting, as they say ghosts
25374 do, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?" They were seated
25375 now, near together.
     
25376 "Badly enough, and slowly enough," said Richard, "speaking at least
25377 for my part of it."
     
25378 "What part is that?"
     
25379 "The Chancery part."
     
25380 "I never heard," returned Mr. Woodcourt, shaking his head, "of its
25381 going well yet."
     
25382 "Nor I," said Richard moodily. "Who ever did?" He brightened again in
25383 a moment and said with his natural openness, "Woodcourt, I should be
25384 sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your
25385 estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I
25386 have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of
25387 nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out
25388 of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not,
25389 though I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard,
25390 a very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid
25391 I have wanted an object; but I have an object now -- or it has me -- and
25392 it is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of
25393 me."
     
25394 "A bargain," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Do as much by me in return."
     
25395 "Oh! You," returned Richard, "you can pursue your art for its own
25396 sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can
25397 strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different
25398 creatures."
     
25399 He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary
25400 condition.
     
25401 "Well, well!" he cried, shaking it off. "Everything has an end. We
25402 shall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?"
     
25403 "Aye! Indeed I will." They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in
25404 deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of
25405 hearts.
     
25406 "You come as a godsend," said Richard, "for I have seen nobody here
25407 yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to
25408 mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You
25409 can hardly make the best of me if I don't. You know, I dare say, that
25410 I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?"
     
25411 Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. "Now pray,"
25412 returned Richard, "don't think me a heap of selfishness. Don't
25413 suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over
25414 this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone.
25415 Ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works
25416 for both of us. Do think of that!"
     
25417 He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him
25418 the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.
     
25419 "You see," said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of
25420 lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, "to an
25421 upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I
25422 cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see
25423 Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to
25424 right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to
25425 extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!"
     
25426 Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he
25427 was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard's anxiety on
25428 this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to
25429 Symond's Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had
25430 had before that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by
25431 Mr. Vholes and that Richard's justification to himself would be
25432 sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the
25433 interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had
25434 recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling.
     
25435 I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard. It
25436 a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so
25437 radiantly willing as I had expected.
     
25438 "My dear," said I, "you have not had any difference with Richard
25439 since I have been so much away?"
     
25440 "No, Esther."
     
25441 "Not heard of him, perhaps?" said I.
     
25442 "Yes, I have heard of him," said Ada.
     
25443 Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make
25444 my darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said. No, Ada
25445 thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada
25446 thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go
25447 now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her
25448 eyes and the love in her face!
     
25449 We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of
25450 chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days
25451 when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the
25452 dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise
25453 about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl
25454 quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were
25455 more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen
25456 before.
     
25457 We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were going to inquire in a
25458 shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. "We are not
25459 likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction," said I.
25460 So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it
25461 written up. Symond's Inn.
     
25462 We had next to find out the number. "Or Mr. Vholes's office will do,"
25463 I recollected, "for Mr. Vholes's office is next door." Upon which Ada
25464 said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes's office in the corner there. And
25465 it really was.
     
25466 Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for
25467 the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was
25468 right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to
25469 Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.
     
25470 I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the
25471 handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table
25472 covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty
25473 mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous
25474 words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
     
25475 He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. "If you had come
25476 a little earlier," he said, "you would have found Woodcourt here.
25477 There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to
25478 look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do
25479 would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery,
25480 so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so -- everything that I am not, that
25481 the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes
25482 again."
     
25483 "God bless him," I thought, "for his truth to me!"
     
25484 "He is not so sanguine, Ada," continued Richard, casting his dejected
25485 look over the bundles of papers, "as Vholes and I are usually, but he
25486 is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into
25487 them, and he has not. He can't be expected to know much of such a
25488 labyrinth."
     
25489 As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two
25490 hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes
25491 appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all
25492 bitten away.
     
25493 "Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?" said I.
     
25494 "Why, my dear Minerva," answered Richard with his old gay laugh, "it
25495 is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines
25496 here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in
25497 an open spot. But it's well enough for the time. It's near the
25498 offices and near Vholes."
     
25499 "Perhaps," I hinted, "a change from both -- "
     
25500 "Might do me good?" said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the
25501 sentence. "I shouldn't wonder! But it can only come in one way
25502 now -- in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be
25503 ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl,
25504 the suit, my dear girl!"
     
25505 These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to
25506 him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not
25507 see it.
     
25508 "We are doing very well," pursued Richard. "Vholes will tell you so.
25509 We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest.
25510 Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them
25511 everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that
25512 nest of sleepers, mark my words!"
     
25513 His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his
25514 despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in
25515 its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so
25516 conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched
25517 me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in
25518 his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I
25519 say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could
25520 have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in
25521 that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach,
25522 and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his
25523 features to the hour of his death.
     
25524 "The sight of our dear little woman," said Richard, Ada still
25525 remaining silent and quiet, "is so natural to me, and her
25526 compassionate face is so like the face of old days -- "
     
25527 Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.
     
25528 " -- So exactly like the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial
25529 voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing
25530 ever changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a
25531 little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes
25532 I -- don't quite despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard,
25533 relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, "so tired!"
     
25534 He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. "I get," he
25535 repeated gloomily, "so tired. It is such weary, weary work!"
     
25536 He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice
25537 and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet,
25538 kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on
25539 his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to
25540 me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!
     
25541 "Esther, dear," she said very quietly, "I am not going home again."
     
25542 A light shone in upon me all at once.
     
25543 "Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have
25544 been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I
25545 shall never go home any more!" With those words my darling drew his
25546 head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I
25547 saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before
25548 me.
     
25549 "Speak to Esther, my dearest," said Richard, breaking the silence
25550 presently. "Tell her how it was."
     
25551 I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We
25552 neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to
25553 hear nothing. "My pet," said I. "My love. My poor, poor girl!" I
25554 pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that
25555 I had upon me was to pity her so much.
     
25556 "Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?"
     
25557 "My dear," said I, "to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great
25558 wrong. And as to me!" Why, as to me, what had I to forgive!
     
25559 I dried my sobbing darling's eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and
25560 Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so
25561 different night when they had first taken me into their confidence
25562 and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between
25563 them how it was.
     
25564 "All I had was Richard's," Ada said; "and Richard would not take it,
25565 Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!"
     
25566 "And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame
25567 Durden," said Richard, "that how could we speak to you at such a
25568 time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one
25569 morning and were married."
     
25570 "And when it was done, Esther," said my darling, "I was always
25571 thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I
25572 thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you
25573 ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not
25574 tell what to do, and I fretted very much."
     
25575 How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I
25576 don't know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of
25577 them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much,
25578 and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never
25579 had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and
25580 in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not
25581 there to darken their way; I did not do that.
     
25582 When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her
25583 wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I
25584 remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage
25585 she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada
25586 blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how
25587 I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought
25588 why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again,
25589 and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to
25590 hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out
25591 of heart.
     
25592 Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of
25593 returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then
25594 my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me
25595 by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do
25596 without me! Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have
25597 been the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself,
25598 "Now Esther, if you do, I'll never speak to you again!"
     
25599 "Why, I declare," said I, "I never saw such a wife. I don't think she
25600 loves her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness'
25601 sake." But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over
25602 her I don't know how long.
     
25603 "I give this dear young couple notice," said I, "that I am only going
25604 away to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming
25605 backwards and forwards until Symond's Inn is tired of the sight of
25606 me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use
25607 of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!"
     
25608 I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered
25609 for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my
25610 heart to turn from.
     
25611 So I said (in a merry, bustling manner) that unless they gave me some
25612 encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that
25613 liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through
25614 her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it
25615 one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away.
     
25616 And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me
25617 that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without
25618 her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing
25619 her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked
25620 up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying.
     
25621 I came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach
25622 home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a
25623 short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was
25624 then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to
25625 inquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I
25626 cried a little again, though on the whole I don't think I behaved so
25627 very, very ill.
     
25628 It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss
25629 of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after
25630 years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which
25631 I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed
25632 stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some
25633 sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only
25634 to look up at her windows.
     
25635 It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me,
25636 and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my
25637 confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the
25638 new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the
25639 yellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking
25640 up, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Vholes, who came out of his
25641 office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before
25642 going home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air
25643 of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I
25644 thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in
25645 such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place.
     
25646 It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might
25647 safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light
25648 foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the
25649 way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence
25650 of the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young
25651 voices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss
25652 for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these
25653 days I would confess to the visit.
     
25654 And it really did me good, for though nobody but Charley and I knew
25655 anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the
25656 separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for
25657 those moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change,
25658 but all the better for that hovering about my darling.
     
25659 My guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark
25660 window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but
25661 he caught the light upon my face as I took mine.
     
25662 "Little woman," said he, "You have been crying."
     
25663 "Why, yes, guardian," said I, "I am afraid I have been, a little. Ada
25664 has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian."
     
25665 I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that
25666 my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him.
     
25667 "Is she married, my dear?"
     
25668 I told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to
25669 his forgiveness.
     
25670 "She has no need of it," said he. "Heaven bless her and her husband!"
25671 But just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. "Poor
25672 girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!"
     
25673 Neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, "Well,
25674 well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast."
     
25675 "But its mistress remains, guardian." Though I was timid about saying
25676 it, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken.
25677 "She will do all she can to make it happy," said I.
     
25678 "She will succeed, my love!"
     
25679 The letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by
25680 his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old
25681 bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old
25682 way, and said again, "She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak
25683 House is thinning fast, O little woman!"
     
25684 I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was
25685 rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had
25686 meant to be since the letter and the answer.
     
     
     
     
25687 CHAPTER LII
     
25688 Obstinacy
     
     
25689 But one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we
25690 were going to breakfast, Mr. Woodcourt came in haste with the
25691 astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which
25692 Mr. George had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us
25693 that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the
25694 murderer's apprehension, I did not in my first consternation
25695 understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the
25696 murdered person was Sir Leicester's lawyer, and immediately my
25697 mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance.
     
25698 This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched
25699 and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for
25700 whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in
25701 him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first
25702 thoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be
25703 able to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had
25704 sometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out
25705 of life!
     
25706 Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always
25707 felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could
25708 scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the
25709 conversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I
25710 came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that
25711 they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every
25712 favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had
25713 known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in
25714 his behalf that I was quite set up again.
     
25715 "Guardian, you don't think it possible that he is justly accused?"
     
25716 "My dear, I CAN'T think so. This man whom we have seen so
25717 open-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the
25718 gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and
25719 is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a
25720 crime? I can't believe it. It's not that I don't or I won't. I
25721 can't!"
     
25722 "And I can't," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Still, whatever we believe or
25723 know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are
25724 against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He
25725 has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed
25726 himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my
25727 knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder
25728 within a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be
25729 as innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all
25730 reasons for suspicion falling upon him."
     
25731 "True," said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, "It would be
25732 doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth
25733 in any of these respects."
     
25734 I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to
25735 others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew
25736 withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce
25737 us to desert him in his need.
     
25738 "Heaven forbid!" returned my guardian. "We will stand by him, as he
25739 himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone." He meant Mr.
25740 Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr. George had given shelter.
     
25741 Mr. Woodcourt then told us that the trooper's man had been with him
25742 before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a
25743 distracted creature. That one of the trooper's first anxieties was
25744 that we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his
25745 messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn
25746 assurance he could send us. That Mr. Woodcourt had only quieted the
25747 man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning
25748 with these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to
25749 see the prisoner himself.
     
25750 My guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked
25751 the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret
25752 interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I
25753 felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become
25754 personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered
25755 and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once
25756 run wild, might run wilder.
     
25757 In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with
25758 them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went.
     
25759 It was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one
25760 another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new
25761 comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary
25762 prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year,
25763 have had -- as I have read -- for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an
25764 arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so
25765 glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and
25766 iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found
25767 the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench
25768 there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.
     
25769 When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread,
25770 and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced,
25771 putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.
     
25772 "This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen,"
25773 said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath.
25774 "And now I don't so much care how it ends."
     
25775 He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his
25776 soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard.
     
25777 "This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in,"
25778 said Mr. George, "but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of
25779 it." As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat
25780 down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction.
     
25781 "I thank you, miss," said he.
     
25782 "Now, George," observed my guardian, "as we require no new assurances
25783 on your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours."
     
25784 "Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not
25785 innocent of this crime, I couldn't look at you and keep my secret to
25786 myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the
25787 present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I
25788 feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply."
     
25789 He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to
25790 us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great
25791 amount of natural emotion by these simple means.
     
25792 "First," said my guardian, "can we do anything for your personal
25793 comfort, George?"
     
25794 "For which, sir?" he inquired, clearing his throat.
     
25795 "For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would
25796 lessen the hardship of this confinement?"
     
25797 "Well, sir," replied George, after a little cogitation, "I am equally
25798 obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can't say that
25799 there is."
     
25800 "You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever
25801 you do, George, let us know."
     
25802 "Thank you, sir. Howsoever," observed Mr. George with one of his
25803 sunburnt smiles, "a man who has been knocking about the world in a
25804 vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a
25805 place like the present, so far as that goes."
     
25806 "Next, as to your case," observed my guardian.
     
25807 "Exactly so, sir," returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
25808 breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity.
     
25809 "How does it stand now?"
     
25810 "Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to
25811 understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from
25812 time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made
25813 more complete I don't myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage
25814 it somehow."
     
25815 "Why, heaven save us, man," exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his
25816 old oddity and vehemence, "you talk of yourself as if you were
25817 somebody else!"
     
25818 "No offence, sir," said Mr. George. "I am very sensible of your
25819 kindness. But I don't see how an innocent man is to make up his mind
25820 to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls
25821 unless he takes it in that point of view.
     
25822 "That is true enough to a certain extent," returned my guardian,
25823 softened. "But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take
25824 ordinary precautions to defend himself."
     
25825 "Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the
25826 magistrates, 'Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as
25827 yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is
25828 perfectly true; I know no more about it.' I intend to continue
25829 stating that, sir. What more can I do? It's the truth."
     
25830 "But the mere truth won't do," rejoined my guardian.
     
25831 "Won't it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!" Mr. George
25832 good-humouredly observed.
     
25833 "You must have a lawyer," pursued my guardian. "We must engage a good
25834 one for you."
     
25835 "I ask your pardon, sir," said Mr. George with a step backward. "I am
25836 equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything
25837 of that sort."
     
25838 "You won't have a lawyer?"
     
25839 "No, sir." Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. "I
25840 thank you all the same, sir, but -- no lawyer!"
     
25841 "Why not?"
     
25842 "I don't take kindly to the breed," said Mr. George. "Gridley didn't.
25843 And -- if you'll excuse my saying so much -- I should hardly have thought
25844 you did yourself, sir."
     
25845 "That's equity," my guardian explained, a little at a loss; "that's
25846 equity, George."
     
25847 "Is it, indeed, sir?" returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. "I
25848 am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general
25849 way I object to the breed."
     
25850 Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one
25851 massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a
25852 picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever
25853 I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured
25854 to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well
25855 with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our
25856 representations that his place of confinement was.
     
25857 "Pray think, once more, Mr. George," said I. "Have you no wish in
25858 reference to your case?"
     
25859 "I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss," he returned, "by
25860 court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware.
25861 If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a
25862 couple of minutes, miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain myself
25863 as clearly as I can."
     
25864 He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he
25865 were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and
25866 after a moment's reflection went on.
     
25867 "You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and
25868 brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My
25869 shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property
25870 as I have -- 'tis small -- is turned this way and that till it don't know
25871 itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don't particular complain of
25872 that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately
25873 preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn't
25874 gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn't have happened.
25875 It HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it."
     
25876 He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look
25877 and said apologetically, "I am such a short-winded talker that I must
25878 think a bit." Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed.
     
25879 "How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer
25880 and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wish to rake up his ashes,
25881 but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight
25882 hold of me. I don't like his trade the better for that. If I had kept
25883 clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that's
25884 not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had
25885 discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off
25886 that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found
25887 there any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as
25888 soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer."
     
25889 He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not
25890 resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what
25891 purpose opened, I will mention presently.
     
25892 "I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often
25893 read in the newspapers), 'My client says nothing, my client reserves
25894 his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. Well, 'tis not the
25895 custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to
25896 think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He
25897 would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What
25898 would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was -- shut my mouth up, tell
25899 me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence
25900 small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I
25901 care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my
25902 own way -- if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a
25903 lady?"
     
25904 He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further
25905 necessity to wait a bit.
     
25906 "I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don't
25907 intend to say," looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo
25908 and his dark eyebrows raised, "that I am more partial to being hanged
25909 than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or
25910 not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I
25911 say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be
25912 used,' I tell them I don't mind that; I mean it to be used. If they
25913 can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to
25914 do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it's
25915 worth nothing to me."
     
25916 Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table
25917 and finished what he had to say.
     
25918 "I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention,
25919 and many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the
25920 matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt
25921 broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my
25922 duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap
25923 pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being
25924 seized as a murderer -- it don't take a rover who has knocked about so
25925 much as myself so very long to recover from a crash -- I worked my way
25926 round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations
25927 will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and -- and that's all
25928 I've got to say."
     
25929 The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less
25930 prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned,
25931 bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance,
25932 had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George
25933 had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but
25934 without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He
25935 now shook them cordially by the hand and said, "Miss Summerson and
25936 gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this
25937 is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet."
     
25938 Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a
25939 curtsy.
     
25940 "Real good friends of mine, they are," sald Mr. George. "It was at
25941 their house I was taken."
     
25942 "With a second-hand wiolinceller," Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his
25943 head angrily. "Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object
25944 to."
     
25945 "Mat," said Mr. George, "you have heard pretty well all I have been
25946 saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your
25947 approval?"
     
25948 Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. "Old
25949 girl," said he. "Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval."
     
25950 "Why, George," exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her
25951 basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea
25952 and sugar, and a brown loaf, "you ought to know it don't. You ought
25953 to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won't be
25954 got off this way, and you won't be got off that way -- what do you mean
25955 by such picking and choosing? It's stuff and nonsense, George."
     
25956 "Don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet," said the
25957 trooper lightly.
     
25958 "Oh! Bother your misfortunes," cried Mrs. Bagnet, "if they don't make
25959 you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my
25960 life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this
25961 day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks
25962 should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman
25963 recommended them to you."
     
25964 "This is a very sensible woman," said my guardian. "I hope you will
25965 persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet."
     
25966 "Persuade him, sir?" she returned. "Lord bless you, no. You don't
25967 know George. Now, there!" Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him
25968 out with both her bare brown hands. "There he stands! As self-willed
25969 and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human
25970 creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and
25971 shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that
25972 man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why,
25973 don't I know him!" cried Mrs. Bagnet. "Don't I know you, George! You
25974 don't mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these
25975 years, I hope?"
     
25976 Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband,
25977 who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent
25978 recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at
25979 me; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to
25980 do something, though I did not comprehend what.
     
25981 "But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,"
25982 said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork,
25983 looking at me again; "and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well
25984 as I do, they'll give up talking to you too. If you are not too
25985 headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is."
     
25986 "I accept it with many thanks," returned the trooper.
     
25987 "Do you though, indeed?" said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on
25988 good-humouredly. "I'm sure I'm surprised at that. I wonder you don't
25989 starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps
25990 you'll set your mind upon THAT next." Here she again looked at me,
25991 and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns,
25992 that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside
25993 the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and
25994 Mr. Woodcourt, I rose.
     
25995 "We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George," said I, "and we
25996 shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable."
     
25997 "More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can't find me," he returned.
     
25998 "But more persuadable we can, I hope," said I. "And let me entreat
25999 you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the
26000 discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last
26001 importance to others besides yourself."
     
26002 He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which
26003 I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he
26004 was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure,
26005 which seemed to catch his attention all at once.
     
26006 "'Tis curious," said he. "And yet I thought so at the time!"
     
26007 My guardian asked him what he meant.
     
26008 "Why, sir," he answered, "when my ill fortune took me to the dead
26009 man's staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like
26010 Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak
26011 to it."
     
26012 For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since
26013 and hope I shall never feel again.
     
26014 "It came downstairs as I went up," said the trooper, "and crossed the
26015 moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep
26016 fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject,
26017 excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment that it
26018 came into my head."
     
26019 I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after
26020 this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon
26021 me from the first of following the investigation was, without my
26022 distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I
26023 was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my
26024 being afraid.
     
26025 We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short
26026 distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not
26027 waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined
26028 us.
     
26029 There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet's eyes, and her face was
26030 flushed and hurried. "I didn't let George see what I thought about
26031 it, you know, miss," was her first remark when she came up, "but he's
26032 in a bad way, poor old fellow!"
     
26033 "Not with care and prudence and good help," said my guardian.
     
26034 "A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir," returned Mrs. Bagnet,
26035 hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, "but I am
26036 uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he
26037 never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as
26038 Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have
26039 happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought
26040 forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep."
     
26041 "With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a
26042 boy," Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity.
     
26043 "Now, I tell you, miss," said Mrs. Bagnet; "and when I say miss, I
26044 mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I'll tell you!"
     
26045 Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first
26046 too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, "Old girl!
26047 Tell 'em!"
     
26048 "Why, then, miss," the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her
26049 bonnet for more air, "you could as soon move Dover Castle as move
26050 George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with.
26051 And I have got it!"
     
26052 "You are a jewel of a woman," said my guardian. "Go on!"
     
26053 "Now, I tell you, miss," she proceeded, clapping her hands in her
26054 hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, "that what he
26055 says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don't know of him, but
26056 he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to
26057 anybody else, and it warn't for nothing that he once spoke to my
26058 Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers' heads. For fifty
26059 pounds he had seen his mother that day. She's alive and must be
26060 brought here straight!"
     
26061 Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning
26062 up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey
26063 cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.
     
26064 "Lignum," said Mrs. Bagnet, "you take care of the children, old man,
26065 and give me the umbrella! I'm away to Lincolnshire to bring that old
26066 lady here."
     
26067 "But, bless the woman," cried my guardian with his hand in his
26068 pocket, "how is she going? What money has she got?"
     
26069 Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth
26070 a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings
26071 and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
     
26072 "Never you mind for me, miss. I'm a soldier's wife and accustomed to
26073 travel my own way. Lignum, old boy," kissing him, "one for yourself,
26074 three for the children. Now I'm away into Lincolnshire after George's
26075 mother!"
     
26076 And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another
26077 lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a
26078 sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.
     
26079 "Mr. Bagnet," said my guardian. "Do you mean to let her go in that
26080 way?"
     
26081 "Can't help it," he returned. "Made her way home once from another
26082 quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella.
26083 Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says,
26084 I'LL do it. She does it."
     
26085 "Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks," rejoined my
26086 guardian, "and it is impossible to say more for her."
     
26087 "She's Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion," said Mr. Bagnet,
26088 looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. "And there's
26089 not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must
26090 be maintained."
     
     
     
     
26091 CHAPTER LIII
     
26092 The Track
     
     
26093 Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together
26094 under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this
26095 pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems
26096 to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears,
26097 and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins
26098 him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent;
26099 he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his
26100 destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict
26101 that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a
26102 terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
     
26103 Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the
26104 whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the
26105 follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and
26106 strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather
26107 languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition
26108 towards his species and will drink with most of them. He is free with
26109 his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation -- but
26110 through the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current
26111 of forefinger.
     
26112 Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he
26113 is here to-day and gone to-morrow -- but, very unlike man indeed, he is
26114 here again the next day. This evening he will be casually looking
26115 into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's
26116 house in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads
26117 at Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is
26118 propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all
26119 things belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards,
26120 he and the Roman will be alone together comparing forefingers.
     
26121 It is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home
26122 enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go
26123 home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs.
26124 Bucket -- a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been
26125 improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but
26126 which has paused at the level of a clever amateur -- he holds himself
26127 aloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger
26128 (fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for
26129 companionship and conversation.
     
26130 A great crowd assembles in Lincoln's Inn Fields on the day of the
26131 funeral. Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in person;
26132 strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that
26133 is to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin
26134 (thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable
26135 carriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled
26136 affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the
26137 assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald's
26138 College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a
26139 blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes,
26140 with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and
26141 three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of
26142 woe. All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and
26143 if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in
26144 horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified
26145 this day.
     
26146 Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so
26147 many legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of
26148 the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through
26149 the lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd -- as for what
26150 not? -- and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage,
26151 now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the
26152 people's heads, nothing escapes him.
     
26153 "And there you are, my partner, eh?" says Mr. Bucket to himself,
26154 apostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of
26155 the deceased's house. "And so you are. And so you are! And very well
26156 indeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!"
     
26157 The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of
26158 its assemblage to be brought out. Mr. Bucket, in the foremost
26159 emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice
26160 a hair's breadth open while he looks.
     
26161 And it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is
26162 still occupied with Mrs. B. "There you are, my partner, eh?" he
26163 murmuringly repeats. "And our lodger with you. I'm taking notice of
26164 you, Mrs. Bucket; I hope you're all right in your health, my dear!"
     
26165 Not another word does Mr. Bucket say, but sits with most attentive
26166 eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought
26167 down -- Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did
26168 they fly with him on that sudden journey? -- and until the procession
26169 moves, and Mr. Bucket's view is changed. After which he composes
26170 himself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the
26171 carriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful.
     
26172 Contrast enough between Mr. Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage
26173 and Mr. Bucket shut up in HIS. Between the immeasurable track of
26174 space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed
26175 sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the
26176 narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state
26177 expressed in every hair of his head! But it is all one to both;
26178 neither is troubled about that.
     
26179 Mr. Bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides
26180 from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself
26181 arrives. He makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock's, which is at present a
26182 sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all
26183 hours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows
26184 the whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious
26185 greatness.
     
26186 No knocking or ringing for Mr. Bucket. He has caused himself to be
26187 provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is
26188 crossing the hall, Mercury informs him, "Here's another letter for
26189 you, Mr. Bucket, come by post," and gives it him.
     
26190 "Another one, eh?" says Mr. Bucket.
     
26191 If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity
26192 as to Mr. Bucket's letters, that wary person is not the man to
26193 gratify it. Mr. Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of
26194 some miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same.
     
26195 "Do you happen to carry a box?" says Mr. Bucket.
     
26196 Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker.
     
26197 "Could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?" says Mr. Bucket.
26198 "Thankee. It don't matter what it is; I'm not particular as to the
26199 kind. Thankee!"
     
26200 Having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from
26201 somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable
26202 show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the
26203 other, Mr. Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right
26204 sort and goes on, letter in hand.
     
26205 Now although Mr. Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within
26206 the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of
26207 letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not
26208 incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his
26209 pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient
26210 to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others
26211 as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business.
26212 Further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has
26213 occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For
26214 these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender
26215 or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the
26216 last twenty-four hours.
     
26217 "And this," says Mr. Bucket, spreading it out on the table, "is in
26218 the same hand, and consists of the same two words."
     
26219 What two words?
     
26220 He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book
26221 of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly
26222 written in each, "Lady Dedlock."
     
26223 "Yes, yes," says Mr. Bucket. "But I could have made the money without
26224 this anonymous information."
     
26225 Having put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again,
26226 he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is
26227 brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr. Bucket
26228 frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint,
26229 that he likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry
26230 better than anything you can offer him. Consequently he fills and
26231 empties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his
26232 refreshment when an idea enters his mind.
     
26233 Mr. Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room
26234 and the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is
26235 sinking low. Mr. Bucket's eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the
26236 room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they
26237 arrive. Several letters for Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr. Bucket
26238 draws near and examines the directions. "No," he says, "there's none
26239 in that hand. It's only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir
26240 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to-morrow."
     
26241 With that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and
26242 after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Leicester
26243 has received him there these several evenings past to know whether he
26244 has anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the
26245 funeral) and Volumnia are in attendance.
     
26246 Mr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three
26247 people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to
26248 Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom
26249 it airily says, "You are a swell about town, and you know me, and I
26250 know you." Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr.
26251 Bucket rubs his hands.
     
26252 "Have you anything new to communicate, officer?" inquires Sir
26253 Leicester. "Do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?"
     
26254 "Why -- not to-night, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
     
26255 "Because my time," pursues Sir Leicester, "is wholly at your disposal
26256 with a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law."
     
26257 Mr. Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as
26258 though he would respectfully observe, "I do assure you, you're a
26259 pretty creetur. I've seen hundreds worse looking at your time of
26260 life, I have indeed."
     
26261 The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing
26262 influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes
26263 and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr. Bucket prices that
26264 decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia
26265 is writing poetry.
     
26266 "If I have not," pursues Sir Leicester, "in the most emphatic manner,
26267 adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious
26268 case, I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of
26269 rectifying any omission I may have made. Let no expense be a
26270 consideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can incur
26271 none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall
26272 hesitate for a moment to bear."
     
26273 Mr. Bucket made Sir Leicester's bow again as a response to this
26274 liberality.
     
26275 "My mind," Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as
26276 may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical
26277 occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full
26278 of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to
26279 the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent."
     
26280 Sir Leicester's voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head.
26281 Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused.
     
26282 "I declare," he says, "I solemnly declare that until this crime is
26283 discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as
26284 if there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a
26285 large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last
26286 day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table
26287 and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck
26288 down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he
26289 may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first
26290 marked because of his association with my house -- which may have
26291 suggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of
26292 greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have
26293 indicated. If I cannot with my means and influence and my position
26294 bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the
26295 assertion of my respect for that gentleman's memory and of my
26296 fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me."
     
26297 While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness,
26298 looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr.
26299 Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might
26300 be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.
     
26301 "The ceremony of to-day," continues Sir Leicester, "strikingly
26302 illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend" -- he lays a
26303 stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions -- "was held by
26304 the flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have
26305 received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my
26306 brother who had committed it, I would not spare him."
     
26307 Mr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he
26308 was the trustiest and dearest person!
     
26309 "You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss," replies Mr. Bucket
26310 soothingly, "no doubt. He was calculated to BE a deprivation, I'm
26311 sure he was."
     
26312 Volumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive
26313 mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she
26314 lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not
26315 the least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a
26316 cocked hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of
26317 her melancholy condition.
     
26318 "It gives a start to a delicate female," says Mr. Bucket
26319 sympathetically, "but it'll wear off."
     
26320 Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are
26321 going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether
26322 he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law?
26323 And a great deal more to the like artless purpose.
     
26324 "Why you see, miss," returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into
26325 persuasive action -- and such is his natural gallantry that he had
26326 almost said "my dear" -- "it ain't easy to answer those questions at
26327 the present moment. Not at the present moment. I've kept myself on
26328 this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," whom Mr. Bucket takes
26329 into the conversation in right of his importance, "morning, noon, and
26330 night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don't think I could have
26331 had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I COULD answer
26332 your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock,
26333 Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been
26334 traced. And I hope that he may find it" -- Mr. Bucket again looks
26335 grave -- "to his satisfaction."
     
26336 The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler'll be executed -- zample.
26337 Thinks more interest's wanted -- get man hanged presentime -- than get
26338 man place ten thousand a year. Hasn't a doubt -- zample -- far better
26339 hang wrong fler than no fler.
     
26340 "YOU know life, you know, sir," says Mr. Bucket with a complimentary
26341 twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, "and you can confirm what
26342 I've mentioned to this lady. YOU don't want to be told that from
26343 information I have received I have gone to work. You're up to what a
26344 lady can't be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated
26345 station of society, miss," says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at
26346 another narrow escape from "my dear."
     
26347 "The officer, Volumnia," observes Sir Leicester, "is faithful to his
26348 duty, and perfectly right."
     
26349 Mr. Bucket murmurs, "Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir
26350 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
     
26351 "In fact, Volumnia," proceeds Sir Leicester, "it is not holding up a
26352 good model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you
26353 have put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he
26354 acts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist
26355 in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them
26356 into execution. Or," says Sir Leicester somewhat sternly, for
26357 Volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, "or
26358 who vindicate their outraged majesty."
     
26359 Volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea
26360 of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in
26361 general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for
26362 the darling man whose loss they all deplore.
     
26363 "Very well, Volumnia," returns Sir Leicester. "Then you cannot be too
26364 discreet."
     
26365 Mr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again.
     
26366 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this
26367 lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case
26368 as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case -- a beautiful
26369 case -- and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able
26370 to supply in a few hours."
     
26371 "I am very glad indeed to hear it," says Sir Leicester. "Highly
26372 creditable to you."
     
26373 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket very seriously,
26374 "I hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove
26375 satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see,
26376 miss," Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, "I mean
26377 from my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such
26378 cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange
26379 things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart,
26380 what you would think to be phenomenons, quite."
     
26381 Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so.
     
26382 "Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great
26383 families," says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside.
26384 "I have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and
26385 you have no idea -- come, I'll go so far as to say not even YOU have
26386 any idea, sir," this to the debilitated cousin, "what games goes on!"
     
26387 The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a
26388 prostration of boredom yawns, "Vayli," being the used-up for "very
26389 likely."
     
26390 Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here
26391 majestically interposes with the words, "Very good. Thank you!" and
26392 also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end
26393 of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they
26394 must take the consequences. "You will not forget, officer," he adds
26395 with condescension, "that I am at your disposal when you please."
     
26396 Mr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would
26397 suit, in case he should be as for'ard as he expects to be. Sir
26398 Leicester replies, "All times are alike to me." Mr. Bucket makes his
26399 three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him.
     
26400 "Might I ask, by the by," he says in a low voice, cautiously
26401 returning, "who posted the reward-bill on the staircase."
     
26402 "I ordered it to be put up there," replies Sir Leicester.
     
26403 "Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if
26404 I was to ask you why?"
     
26405 "Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think
26406 it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I
26407 wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the
26408 determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the
26409 same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject
26410 see any objection -- "
     
26411 Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not
26412 be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing the
26413 door on Volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her
26414 remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue
26415 Chamber.
     
26416 In his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr.
26417 Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire -- bright and warm on
26418 the early winter night -- admiring Mercury.
     
26419 "Why, you're six foot two, I suppose?" says Mr. Bucket.
     
26420 "Three," says Mercury.
     
26421 "Are you so much? But then, you see, you're broad in proportion and
26422 don't look it. You're not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain't. Was
26423 you ever modelled now?" Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of
26424 an artist into the turn of his eye and head.
     
26425 Mercury never was modelled.
     
26426 "Then you ought to be, you know," says Mr. Bucket; "and a friend of
26427 mine that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would
26428 stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for
26429 the marble. My Lady's out, ain't she?"
     
26430 "Out to dinner."
     
26431 "Goes out pretty well every day, don't she?"
     
26432 "Yes."
     
26433 "Not to be wondered at!" says Mr. Bucket. "Such a fine woman as her,
26434 so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on
26435 a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the
26436 same way of life as yourself?"
     
26437 Answer in the negative.
     
26438 "Mine was," says Mr. Bucket. "My father was first a page, then a
26439 footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived
26440 universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath
26441 that he considered service the most honourable part of his career,
26442 and so it was. I've a brother in service, AND a brother-in-law. My
26443 Lady a good temper?"
     
26444 Mercury replies, "As good as you can expect."
     
26445 "Ah!" says Mr. Bucket. "A little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord!
26446 What can you anticipate when they're so handsome as that? And we like
26447 'em all the better for it, don't we?"
     
26448 Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom
26449 small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a
26450 man of gallantry and can't deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a
26451 violent ringing at the bell. "Talk of the angels," says Mr. Bucket.
26452 "Here she is!"
     
26453 The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still
26454 very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful
26455 bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is
26456 particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager
26457 eye and rattles something in his pocket -- halfpence perhaps.
     
26458 Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the
26459 other Mercury who has brought her home.
     
26460 "Mr. Bucket, my Lady."
     
26461 Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon
26462 over the region of his mouth.
     
26463 "Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?"
     
26464 "No, my Lady, I've seen him!"
     
26465 "Have you anything to say to me?"
     
26466 "Not just at present, my Lady."
     
26467 "Have you made any new discoveries?"
     
26468 "A few, my Lady."
     
26469 This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps
26470 upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot,
26471 watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his
26472 grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy
26473 weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going
26474 by, out of view.
     
26475 "She's a lovely woman, too, she really is," says Mr. Bucket, coming
26476 back to Mercury. "Don't look quite healthy though."
     
26477 Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from
26478 headaches.
     
26479 Really? That's a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that.
26480 Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two
26481 hours when she has them bad. By night, too.
     
26482 "Are you sure you're quite so much as six foot three?" asks Mr.
26483 Bucket. "Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?"
     
26484 Not a doubt about it.
     
26485 "You're so well put together that I shouldn't have thought it. But
26486 the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so
26487 straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it's moonlight, though?"
     
26488 Oh, yes. When it's moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course!
26489 Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.
     
26490 "I suppose you ain't in the habit of walking yourself?" says Mr.
26491 Bucket. "Not much time for it, I should say?"
     
26492 Besides which, Mercury don't like it. Prefers carriage exercise.
     
26493 "To be sure," says Mr. Bucket. "That makes a difference. Now I think
26494 of it," says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at
26495 the blaze, "she went out walking the very night of this business."
     
26496 "To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way."
     
26497 "And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it."
     
26498 "I didn't see YOU," says Mercury.
     
26499 "I was rather in a hurry," returns Mr. Bucket, "for I was going to
26500 visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea -- next door but two to the
26501 old original Bun House -- ninety year old the old lady is, a single
26502 woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the
26503 time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't ten."
     
26504 "Half-past nine."
     
26505 "You're right. So it was. And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady was
26506 muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?"
     
26507 "Of course she was."
     
26508 Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to
26509 get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in
26510 acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he -- this is
26511 all he asks -- will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of
26512 bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of
26513 both parties?
     
     
     
     
26514 CHAPTER LIV
     
26515 Springing a Mine
     
     
26516 Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and
26517 prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt
26518 and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony,
26519 he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of
26520 severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a
26521 foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and
26522 marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these
26523 strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his
26524 familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury "just to mention
26525 quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's ready
26526 for me, I'm ready for him." A gracious message being returned that
26527 Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the
26528 library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and
26529 stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the
26530 blazing coals.
     
26531 Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do,
26532 but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he
26533 might be a famous whist-player for a large stake -- say a hundred
26534 guineas certain -- with the game in his hand, but with a high
26535 reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a
26536 masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket
26537 when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes
26538 slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in
26539 which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the
26540 idea, a touch of compassion.
     
26541 "I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later
26542 than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the
26543 indignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much
26544 for me. I am subject to -- gout" -- Sir Leicester was going to say
26545 indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket
26546 palpably knows all about it -- "and recent circumstances have brought
26547 it on."
     
26548 As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain,
26549 Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large
26550 hands on the library-table.
     
26551 "I am not aware, officer," Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes
26552 to his face, "whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely
26553 as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would
26554 be interested -- "
     
26555 "Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket with his
26556 head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear
26557 like an earring, "we can't be too private just at present. You will
26558 presently see that we can't be too private. A lady, under the
26559 circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock's elevated station of
26560 society, can't but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to
26561 myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can't
26562 be too private."
     
26563 "That is enough."
     
26564 "So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket resumes,
26565 "that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in
26566 the door."
     
26567 "By all means." Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that
26568 precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of
26569 habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in
26570 from the outerside.
     
26571 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I
26572 wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed
26573 it and collected proof against the person who did this crime."
     
26574 "Against the soldier?"
     
26575 "No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier."
     
26576 Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, "Is the man in custody?"
     
26577 Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, "It was a woman."
     
26578 Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates,
26579 "Good heaven!"
     
26580 "Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket begins, standing
26581 over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the
26582 forefinger of the other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare
26583 you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say
26584 that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you
26585 are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman
26586 is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly
26587 and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against
26588 almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
26589 If there's a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your
26590 family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away
26591 to Julius Caesar -- not to go beyond him at present -- have borne that
26592 blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and
26593 you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family
26594 credit. That's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, Sir
26595 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
     
26596 Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows,
26597 sits looking at him with a stony face.
     
26598 "Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "thus preparing
26599 you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to
26600 anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many
26601 characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less
26602 don't signify a straw. I don't suppose there's a move on the board
26603 that would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken
26604 place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move
26605 whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a probable move
26606 according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir
26607 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be put
26608 out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family
26609 affairs."
     
26610 "I thank you for your preparation," returns Sir Leicester after a
26611 silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, "which I hope is not
26612 necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so
26613 good as to go on. Also" -- Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow
26614 of his figure -- "also, to take a seat, if you have no objection."
     
26615 None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow.
26616 "Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come
26617 to the point. Lady Dedlock -- "
     
26618 Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely.
26619 Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.
     
26620 "Lady Dedlock, you see she's universally admired. That's what her
26621 ladyship is; she's universally admired," says Mr. Bucket.
     
26622 "I would greatly prefer, officer," Sir Leicester returns stiffly, "my
26623 Lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion."
     
26624 "So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but -- it's impossible."
     
26625 "Impossible?"
     
26626 Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.
     
26627 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What I
26628 have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns
26629 on."
     
26630 "Officer," retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering
26631 lip, "you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to
26632 overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring
26633 my Lady's name into this communication upon your responsibility -- upon
26634 your responsibility. My Lady's name is not a name for common persons
26635 to trifle with!"
     
26636 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more."
     
26637 "I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!" Glancing at
26638 the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling
26639 from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way
26640 with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds.
     
26641 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that
26642 the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and
26643 suspicions of Lady Dedlock."
     
26644 "If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir -- which he never did -- I
26645 would have killed him myself!" exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his
26646 hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he
26647 stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is
26648 slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes
26649 his head.
     
26650 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and
26651 close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I
26652 can't quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he
26653 long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the
26654 sight of some handwriting -- in this very house, and when you yourself,
26655 Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present -- the existence, in great poverty,
26656 of a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and
26657 who ought to have been her husband." Mr. Bucket stops and
26658 deliberately repeats, "Ought to have been her husband, not a doubt
26659 about it. I know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards
26660 died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and
26661 his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries
26662 and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visit in
26663 the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed
26664 me to reckon up her ladyship -- if you'll excuse my making use of the
26665 term we commonly employ -- and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I
26666 confronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a
26667 witness who had been Lady Dedlock's guide, and there couldn't be the
26668 shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown
26669 to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the
26670 way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying
26671 that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes.
26672 All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and
26673 through your own Lady. It's my belief that the deceased Mr.
26674 Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and
26675 that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the
26676 matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir
26677 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after
26678 he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the
26679 intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose
26680 black mantle with a deep fringe to it."
     
26681 Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is
26682 probing the life-blood of his heart.
     
26683 "You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from
26684 me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any
26685 difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's no use, that
26686 Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as
26687 you called him (though he's not in the army now) and knows that she
26688 knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
26689 Baronet, why do I relate all this?"
     
26690 Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a
26691 single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes
26692 his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness,
26693 though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair,
26694 that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed
26695 is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness,
26696 and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with
26697 now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to
26698 utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence,
26699 soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend
26700 why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn
26701 should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this
26702 distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible
26703 intelligence.
     
26704 "Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket, "put it
26705 to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you
26706 think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You'll find,
26707 or I'm much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the
26708 intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered
26709 it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to
26710 understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very
26711 morning when I examined the body! You don't know what I'm going to
26712 say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester
26713 Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might
26714 wonder why I hadn't done it, don't you see?"
     
26715 True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive
26716 sounds, says, "True." At this juncture a considerable noise of voices
26717 is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the
26718 library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he
26719 draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, "Sir
26720 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken
26721 air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut
26722 down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now
26723 in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet -- on the
26724 family account -- while I reckon 'em up? And would you just throw in a
26725 nod when I seem to ask you for it?"
     
26726 Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, "Officer. The best you can, the
26727 best you can!" and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of
26728 the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly
26729 die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury
26730 and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who
26731 bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another
26732 man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in
26733 an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and
26734 locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the
26735 sacred precincts with an icy stare.
     
26736 "Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says Mr. Bucket
26737 in a confidential voice. "I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I
26738 am; and this," producing the tip of his convenient little staff from
26739 his breast-pocket, "is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir
26740 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it
26741 ain't every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old
26742 gentleman, is Smallweed; that's what your name is; I know it well."
     
26743 "Well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cries Mr. Smallweed in a
26744 shrill loud voice.
     
26745 "You don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts
26746 Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.
     
26747 "No!"
     
26748 "Why, they killed him," says Mr. Bucket, "on account of his having so
26749 much cheek. Don't YOU get into the same position, because it isn't
26750 worthy of you. You ain't in the habit of conversing with a deaf
26751 person, are you?"
     
26752 "Yes," snarls Mr. Smallweed, "my wife's deaf."
     
26753 "That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain't
26754 here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I'll not
26755 only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit," says Mr.
26756 Bucket. "This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?"
     
26757 "Name of Chadband," Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a
26758 much lower key.
     
26759 "Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says Mr.
26760 Bucket, offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it.
26761 Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?"
     
26762 "And Mrs. Snagsby," Mr. Smallweed introduces.
     
26763 "Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own," says Mr. Bucket.
26764 "Love him like a brother! Now, what's up?"
     
26765 "Do you mean what business have we come upon?" Mr. Smallweed asks, a
26766 little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.
     
26767 "Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it's all about in
26768 presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come."
     
26769 Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment's counsel with
26770 him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of
26771 oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says
26772 aloud, "Yes. You first!" and retires to his former place.
     
26773 "I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn," pipes Grandfather
26774 Smallweed then; "I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he
26775 was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was
26776 own brother to a brimstone magpie -- leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come
26777 into Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all his effects.
26778 They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters
26779 belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a
26780 shelf in the side of Lady Jane's bed -- his cat's bed. He hid all
26781 manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and
26782 got 'em, but I looked 'em over first. I'm a man of business, and I
26783 took a squint at 'em. They was letters from the lodger's sweetheart,
26784 and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that's not a common name, Honoria,
26785 is it? There's no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh,
26786 no, I don't think so! Oh, no, I don't think so! And not in the same
26787 hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don't think so!"
     
26788 Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his
26789 triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I'm shaken
26790 all to pieces!"
     
26791 "Now, when you're ready," says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his
26792 recovery, "to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock,
26793 Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know."
     
26794 "Haven't I come to it, Mr. Bucket?" cries Grandfather Smallweed.
26795 "Isn't the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his
26796 ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come,
26797 then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it
26798 don't concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I
26799 won't have 'em disappear so quietly. I handed 'em over to my friend
26800 and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else."
     
26801 "Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too," says Mr.
26802 Bucket.
     
26803 "I don't care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell you
26804 what we want -- what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more
26805 painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the
26806 interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George
26807 the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice,
26808 and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man."
     
26809 "Now I tell you what," says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his
26810 manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary
26811 fascination to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am a-going to have
26812 my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half
26813 a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more
26814 painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do
26815 you think that I don't know the right time to stretch it out and put
26816 it on the arm that fired that shot?"
     
26817 Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is
26818 that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize.
26819 Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.
     
26820 "The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the
26821 murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and
26822 I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before long,
26823 if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say
26824 to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know
26825 who's got 'em. I don't mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the
26826 packet?"
     
26827 Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.
26828 Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it
26829 as the same.
     
26830 "What have you got to say next?" asks Mr. Bucket. "Now, don't open
26831 your mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it."
     
26832 "I want five hundred pound."
     
26833 "No, you don't; you mean fifty," says Mr. Bucket humorously.
     
26834 It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.
     
26835 "That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider
26836 (without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business," says
26837 Mr. Bucket -- Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head -- "and you ask me
26838 to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it's an
26839 unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than
26840 that. Hadn't you better say two fifty?"
     
26841 Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.
     
26842 "Then," says Mr. Bucket, "let's hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time
26843 I've heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he
26844 was in all respects, as ever I come across!"
     
26845 Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek
26846 smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,
26847 delivers himself as follows, "My friends, we are now -- Rachael, my
26848 wife, and I -- in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in
26849 the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are
26850 invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are
26851 bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute
26852 with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are
26853 we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do
26854 we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing,
26855 money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends."
     
26856 "You're a man of business, you are," returns Mr. Bucket, very
26857 attentive, "and consequently you're going on to mention what the
26858 nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn't do better."
     
26859 "Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love," says Mr. Chadband
26860 with a cunning eye, "proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!"
     
26861 Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband
26862 into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning
26863 smile.
     
26864 "Since you want to know what we know," says she, "I'll tell you. I
26865 helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship's daughter. I was in the
26866 service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the
26867 disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her
26868 ladyship, that the child was dead -- she WAS very nearly so -- when she
26869 was born. But she's alive, and I know her." With these words, and a
26870 laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word "ladyship," Mrs.
26871 Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.
     
26872 "I suppose now," returns that officer, "YOU will be expecting a
26873 twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?"
     
26874 Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can
26875 "offer" twenty pence.
     
26876 "My friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there," says Mr.
26877 Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. "What may YOUR
26878 game be, ma'am?"
     
26879 Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from
26880 stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to
26881 light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom
26882 Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in
26883 darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been
26884 the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much
26885 commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook's Court
26886 in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late
26887 habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the
26888 present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby's peace.
26889 There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as
26890 open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as
26891 midnight, under the influence -- no doubt -- of Mr. Snagsby's suborning
26892 and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived
26893 mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was
26894 Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo,
26895 deceased; and they were "all in it." In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not
26896 with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby's
26897 son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken it," and she followed Mr.
26898 Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not
26899 his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for
26900 some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down,
26901 and to piece suspicious circumstances together -- and every
26902 circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this
26903 way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false
26904 husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the
26905 Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr.
26906 Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the
26907 circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually,
26908 by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is
26909 to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial
26910 separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the
26911 friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the
26912 mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the
26913 seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement
26914 possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no
26915 scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and
26916 taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the
26917 ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.
     
26918 While this exordium is in hand -- and it takes some time -- Mr. Bucket,
26919 who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a
26920 glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd
26921 attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock
26922 remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he
26923 once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer
26924 alone of all mankind.
     
26925 "Very good," says Mr. Bucket. "Now I understand you, you know, and
26926 being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this
26927 little matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation
26928 of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. Now I
26929 won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort,
26930 because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to
26931 make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am
26932 surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall.
26933 It was so opposed to your interests. That's what I look at."
     
26934 "We wanted to get in," pleads Mr. Smallweed.
     
26935 "Why, of course you wanted to get in," Mr. Bucket asserts with
26936 cheerfulness; "but for a old gentleman at your time of life -- what I
26937 call truly venerable, mind you! -- with his wits sharpened, as I have
26938 no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which
26939 occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to
26940 consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as
26941 close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You
26942 see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground,"
26943 says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.
     
26944 "I only said I wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to Sir
26945 Leicester Dedlock," returns Mr. Smallweed.
     
26946 "That's it! That's where your temper got the better of you. Now, you
26947 keep it under another time and you'll make money by it. Shall I ring
26948 for them to carry you down?"
     
26949 "When are we to hear more of this?" Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.
     
26950 "Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful
26951 sex is!" replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. "I shall have the
26952 pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day -- not forgetting
26953 Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty."
     
26954 "Five hundred!" exclaims Mr. Smallweed.
     
26955 "All right! Nominally five hundred." Mr. Bucket has his hand on the
26956 bell-rope. "SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of
26957 myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating
26958 tone.
     
26959 Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it,
26960 and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the
26961 door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, "Sir
26962 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not
26963 to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought
26964 up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that
26965 little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides
26966 of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and
26967 ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he
26968 held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own
26969 way, I haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost,
26970 and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all
26971 dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The
26972 cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the
26973 water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended."
     
26974 Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and
26975 he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.
     
26976 "The party to be apprehended is now in this house," proceeds Mr.
26977 Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising
26978 spirits, "and I'm about to take her into custody in your presence.
26979 Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir.
26980 There'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I'll come back in the
26981 course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet
26982 your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the
26983 nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
26984 Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the apprehension at
26985 present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to
26986 last."
     
26987 Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts
26988 the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense
26989 of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters.
26990 Mademoiselle Hortense.
     
26991 The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts
26992 his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to
26993 turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in
26994 his chair.
     
26995 "I ask you pardon," she mutters hurriedly. "They tell me there was no
26996 one here."
     
26997 Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket.
26998 Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale.
     
26999 "This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock," says Mr. Bucket, nodding
27000 at her. "This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks
27001 back."
     
27002 "What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?" returns
27003 mademoiselle in a jocular strain.
     
27004 "Why, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket, "we shall see."
     
27005 Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face,
27006 which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, "You are very
27007 mysterieuse. Are you drunk?"
     
27008 "Tolerable sober, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket.
     
27009 "I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.
27010 Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs
27011 that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What
27012 is the intention of this fool's play, say then?" mademoiselle
27013 demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her
27014 dark cheek beating like a clock.
     
27015 Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.
     
27016 "Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!" cries mademoiselle with a
27017 toss of her head and a laugh. "Leave me to pass downstairs, great
27018 pig." With a stamp of her foot and a menace.
     
27019 "Now, mademoiselle," says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, "you
27020 go and sit down upon that sofy."
     
27021 "I will not sit down upon nothing," she replies with a shower of
27022 nods.
     
27023 "Now, mademoiselle," repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration
27024 except with the finger, "you sit down upon that sofy."
     
27025 "Why?"
     
27026 "Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't
27027 need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a
27028 foreigner if I can. If I can't, I must be rough, and there's rougher
27029 ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as
27030 a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your
27031 head, to go and sit down upon that sofy."
     
27032 Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that
27033 something in her cheek beats fast and hard, "You are a devil."
     
27034 "Now, you see," Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, "you're comfortable
27035 and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of
27036 your sense to do. So I'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this,
27037 don't you talk too much. You're not expected to say anything here,
27038 and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the
27039 less you PARLAY, the better, you know." Mr. Bucket is very complacent
27040 over this French explanation.
     
27041 Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black
27042 eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid
27043 state, with her hands clenched -- and her feet too, one might
27044 suppose -- muttering, "Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!"
     
27045 "Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," says Mr. Bucket, and from this
27046 time forth the finger never rests, "this young woman, my lodger, was
27047 her ladyship's maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this
27048 young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate
27049 against her ladyship after being discharged -- "
     
27050 "Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I discharge myself."
     
27051 "Now, why don't you take my advice?" returns Mr. Bucket in an
27052 impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. "I'm surprised at the
27053 indiscreetness you commit. You'll say something that'll be used
27054 against you, you know. You're sure to come to it. Never you mind what
27055 I say till it's given in evidence. It is not addressed to you."
     
27056 "Discharge, too," cries mademoiselle furiously, "by her ladyship! Eh,
27057 my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by
27058 remaining with a ladyship so infame!"
     
27059 "Upon my soul I wonder at you!" Mr. Bucket remonstrates. "I thought
27060 the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female
27061 going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!"
     
27062 "He is a poor abused!" cries mademoiselle. "I spit upon his house,
27063 upon his name, upon his imbecility," all of which she makes the
27064 carpet represent. "Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh,
27065 heaven! Bah!"
     
27066 "Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "this intemperate
27067 foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established
27068 a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion
27069 I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her
27070 time and trouble."
     
27071 "Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I ref-use his money all togezzer."
     
27072 "If you WILL PARLAY, you know," says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, "you
27073 must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir
27074 Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this
27075 deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house
27076 in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers
27077 of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and
27078 likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an
27079 unfortunate stationer."
     
27080 "Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "All lie!"
     
27081 "The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you
27082 know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close
27083 with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case
27084 was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the
27085 papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in
27086 the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen
27087 hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the
27088 murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased
27089 on former occasions -- even threatening him, as the witness made out.
27090 If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I
27091 believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he
27092 might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make
27093 it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!"
     
27094 As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement -- for him -- and
27095 inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his
27096 forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes
27097 upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly
27098 together.
     
27099 "I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this
27100 young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a
27101 mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering
27102 herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever -- in
27103 fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for
27104 the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living
27105 Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and
27106 saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!"
     
27107 Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and
27108 lips the words, "You are a devil."
     
27109 "Now where," pursues Mr. Bucket, "had she been on the night of the
27110 murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have
27111 since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an
27112 artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult;
27113 and I laid a trap for her -- such a trap as I never laid yet, and such
27114 a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was
27115 talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house
27116 being small and this young woman's ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet
27117 into Mrs. Bucket's mouth that she shouldn't say a word of surprise
27118 and told her all about it. My dear, don't you give your mind to that
27119 again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles." Mr. Bucket,
27120 breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid
27121 his heavy hand upon her shoulder.
     
27122 "What is the matter with you now?" she asks him.
     
27123 "Don't you think any more," returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory
27124 finger, "of throwing yourself out of window. That's what's the matter
27125 with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn't get up; I'll sit down by
27126 you. Now take my arm, will you? I'm a married man, you know; you're
27127 acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm."
     
27128 Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound
27129 she struggles with herself and complies.
     
27130 "Now we're all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case
27131 could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a
27132 woman in fifty thousand -- in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw
27133 this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house
27134 since, though I've communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker's
27135 loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to
27136 Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, 'My dear, can
27137 you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions
27138 against George, and this, and that, and t'other? Can you do without
27139 rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say,
27140 'She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner
27141 without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from
27142 death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I
27143 have got her, if she did this murder?' Mrs. Bucket says to me, as
27144 well as she could speak on account of the sheet, 'Bucket, I can!' And
27145 she has acted up to it glorious!"
     
27146 "Lies!" mademoiselle interposes. "All lies, my friend!"
     
27147 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out
27148 under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous
27149 young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right?
27150 I was right. What does she try to do? Don't let it give you a turn?
27151 To throw the murder on her ladyship."
     
27152 Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.
     
27153 "And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here,
27154 which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir
27155 Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards
27156 you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words
27157 'Lady Dedlock' in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I
27158 stopped this very morning, and read the three words 'Lady Dedlock,
27159 Murderess' in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower
27160 of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place
27161 having seen them all 'written by this young woman? What do you say to
27162 Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding
27163 ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to
27164 Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this young
27165 woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?" Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant
27166 in his admiration of his lady's genius.
     
27167 Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a
27168 conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a
27169 dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very
27170 atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if
27171 a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around
27172 her breathless figure.
     
27173 "There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful
27174 period," says Mr. Bucket, "and my foreign friend here saw her, I
27175 believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and
27176 George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's
27177 heels. But that don't signify any more, so I'll not go into it. I
27178 found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr.
27179 Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your
27180 house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you'll say, Sir Leicester
27181 Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so
27182 thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the
27183 rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and
27184 finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street."
     
27185 "These are very long lies," mademoiselle interposes. "You prose great
27186 deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking
27187 always?"
     
27188 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights
27189 in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with
27190 any fragment of it, "the last point in the case which I am now going
27191 to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never
27192 doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday
27193 without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company
27194 with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to
27195 convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so
27196 rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was
27197 altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call
27198 retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less
27199 experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night,
27200 when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home
27201 looking -- why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the
27202 ocean -- it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being
27203 charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to
27204 want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester
27205 Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here
27206 proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that
27207 they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at
27208 a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of
27209 entertainment there's a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to
27210 fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was;
27211 she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind.
27212 As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket,
27213 along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water
27214 dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the
27215 pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen
27216 hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and
27217 hold it steady, and I shan't hurt you!"
     
27218 In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. "That's one,"
27219 says Mr. Bucket. "Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!"
     
27220 He rises; she rises too. "Where," she asks him, darkening her large
27221 eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them -- and yet they
27222 stare, "where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?"
     
27223 "She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr. Bucket.
27224 "You'll see her there, my dear."
     
27225 "I would like to kiss her!" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting
27226 tigress-like.
     
27227 "You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr. Bucket.
     
27228 "I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her limb
27229 from limb."
     
27230 "Bless you, darling," says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure,
27231 "I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising
27232 animosity against one another when you do differ. You don't mind me
27233 half so much, do you?"
     
27234 "No. Though you are a devil still."
     
27235 "Angel and devil by turns, eh?" cries Mr. Bucket. "But I am in my
27236 regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy.
27237 I've been lady's maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to
27238 the bonnet? There's a cab at the door."
     
27239 Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes
27240 herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice,
27241 uncommonly genteel.
     
27242 "Listen then, my angel," says she after several sarcastic nods. "You
27243 are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?"
     
27244 Mr. Bucket answers, "Not exactly."
     
27245 "That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you
27246 make a honourable lady of her?"
     
27247 "Don't be so malicious," says Mr. Bucket.
     
27248 "Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?" cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir
27249 Leicester with ineffable disdain. "Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor
27250 infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
     
27251 "Come, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other," says Mr.
27252 Bucket. "Come along!"
     
27253 "You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me.
27254 It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu,
27255 you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!"
     
27256 With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth
27257 closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket
27258 gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar
27259 to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering
27260 away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of
27261 his affections.
     
27262 Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he
27263 were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length
27264 he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises
27265 unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps,
27266 supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of
27267 those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at
27268 something.
     
27269 Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold,
27270 the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing
27271 them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious
27272 heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces
27273 sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his
27274 bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with
27275 something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses
27276 his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms.
     
27277 It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for
27278 years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never
27279 had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired,
27280 honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the
27281 core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his
27282 life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as
27283 nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her,
27284 almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her
27285 cast down from the high place she has graced so well.
     
27286 And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his
27287 suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like
27288 distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of
27289 mourning and compassion rather than reproach.
     
     
     
     
27290 CHAPTER LV
     
27291 Flight
     
     
27292 Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow,
27293 as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep
27294 preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the
27295 freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire,
27296 making its way towards London.
     
27297 Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and
27298 a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide
27299 night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are
27300 non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected.
27301 Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out.
27302 Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at
27303 one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with
27304 an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up
27305 and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows
27306 tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where
27307 there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned
27308 in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the
27309 night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.
     
27310 Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits
27311 within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey
27312 cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as
27313 being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in
27314 accordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Rouncewell
27315 is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The
27316 old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately
27317 manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it
27318 often to her lips. "You are a mother, my dear soul," says she many
27319 times, "and you found out my George's mother!"
     
27320 "Why, George," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am,
27321 and when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things
27322 my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the
27323 comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line
27324 into his mother's face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt
27325 sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother
27326 into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that
27327 he had behaved bad to her."
     
27328 "Never, my dear!" returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. "My
27329 blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me,
27330 was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and
27331 went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know
27332 about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he
27333 didn't rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn't be
27334 a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from
27335 a baby!"
     
27336 The old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls,
27337 all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay
27338 good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at
27339 Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young
27340 gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been
27341 angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now
27342 to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher
27343 heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its
27344 load of affectionate distress.
     
27345 Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves
27346 the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while -- not without
27347 passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes -- and
27348 presently chirps up in her cheery manner, "So I says to George when I
27349 goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe
27350 outside), 'What ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I
27351 have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and
27352 out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy
27353 penitent.' 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says George, 'it's because I AM
27354 melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.'
27355 'What have you done, old fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says
27356 George, shaking his head, 'what I have done has been done this many a
27357 long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to
27358 heaven it won't be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no
27359 more.' Now, ma'am, when George says to me that it's best not tried to
27360 be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I
27361 draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that
27362 afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the
27363 lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain
27364 before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets
27365 himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon
27366 years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this old
27367 lady he has seen? And George tells me it's Mrs. Rouncewell,
27368 housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down
27369 at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before
27370 that he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night,
27371 'Lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!'"
     
27372 All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least
27373 within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with
27374 a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the
27375 hum of the wheels.
     
27376 "Bless you, and thank you," says Mrs. Rouncewell. "Bless you, and
27377 thank you, my worthy soul!"
     
27378 "Dear heart!" cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. "No
27379 thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so
27380 ready to pay 'em! And mind once more, ma'am, what you had best do
27381 on finding George to be your own son is to make him -- for your
27382 sake -- have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear
27383 himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won't
27384 do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and
27385 lawyers," exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter
27386 form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with
27387 truth and justice for ever and a day.
     
27388 "He shall have," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "all the help that can be got
27389 for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and
27390 thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole
27391 family will do their best. I -- I know something, my dear; and will
27392 make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years,
27393 and finding him in a jail at last."
     
27394 The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying
27395 this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful
27396 impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers
27397 them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet
27398 wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "My
27399 Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over and over again.
     
27400 The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise
27401 comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise
27402 departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and
27403 hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day.
27404 London reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great
27405 tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and collected -- as
27406 she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were
27407 the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any
27408 other military station.
     
27409 But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is
27410 confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her
27411 lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its
27412 usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece
27413 of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher
27414 is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has
27415 ruffled it these many years.
     
27416 Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the
27417 act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to
27418 him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as
27419 he shuts the door.
     
27420 So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be
27421 alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old
27422 housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite
27423 enough for Mrs. Bagnet's confirmation, even if she could see the
27424 mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their
27425 relationship.
     
27426 Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word
27427 betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all
27428 unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her
27429 emotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs.
27430 Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief,
27431 of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return
27432 since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less,
27433 and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such
27434 touching language that Mrs. Bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they
27435 run glistening down her sun-brown face.
     
27436 "George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!"
     
27437 The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls
27438 down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether
27439 in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands
27440 together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them
27441 towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.
     
27442 "My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite
27443 still, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a
27444 man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he
27445 must be, if it pleased God he was alive!"
     
27446 She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All
27447 that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the
27448 whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with
27449 her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of
27450 old girls as she is.
     
27451 "Mother," says the trooper when they are more composed, "forgive me
27452 first of all, for I know my need of it."
     
27453 Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has
27454 done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these
27455 many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never
27456 believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this
27457 happiness -- and she is an old woman now and can't look to live very
27458 long -- she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had
27459 her senses, as her beloved son George.
     
27460 "Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my
27461 reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a
27462 purpose in me too. When I left home I didn't care much, mother -- I am
27463 afraid not a great deal -- for leaving; and went away and 'listed,
27464 harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not
27465 I, and that nobody cared for me."
     
27466 The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but
27467 there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of
27468 expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in
27469 which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.
     
27470 "So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had
27471 'listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I
27472 thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and
27473 when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when
27474 I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I
27475 didn't think much about it. So on, from year to year, through a
27476 service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself
27477 why should I ever write."
     
27478 "I don't find any fault, child -- but not to ease my mind, George? Not
27479 a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?"
     
27480 This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with
27481 a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.
     
27482 "Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small
27483 consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you,
27484 respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance
27485 North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and
27486 famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like
27487 him, but self-unmade -- all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my
27488 little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for
27489 most things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself
27490 known? After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of
27491 it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a
27492 man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me;
27493 and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your
27494 mind as it was."
     
27495 The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his
27496 powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.
     
27497 "No, I don't say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be
27498 so. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear
27499 mother, some good might have come of it to myself -- and there was the
27500 meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have
27501 purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold;
27502 you would have brought me and my brother and my brother's family
27503 together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something
27504 for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of
27505 you feel sure of me when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself?
27506 How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you
27507 an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to
27508 himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother's
27509 children in the face and pretend to set them an example -- I, the
27510 vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and
27511 unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No, George.' Such were my words,
27512 mother, when I passed this in review before me: 'You have made your
27513 bed. Now, lie upon it.'"
     
27514 Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the
27515 old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "I told
27516 you so!" The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her
27517 interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke
27518 between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards
27519 repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never
27520 failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to
27521 resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.
     
27522 "This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best
27523 amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I
27524 should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once
27525 down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old
27526 comrade's wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank
27527 her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my heart and
27528 might."
     
27529 To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.
     
27530 And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear
27531 recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy
27532 close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must
27533 be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence,
27534 that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be
27535 got, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised
27536 to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise
27537 to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and suffering until he
27538 is released, or he will break her heart.
     
27539 "Mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper,
27540 stopping her with a kiss; "tell me what I shall do, and I'll make a
27541 late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you'll take care of my mother,
27542 I know?"
     
27543 A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.
     
27544 "If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,
27545 she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the
27546 best advice and assistance."
     
27547 "And, George," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for
27548 your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me -- out in the
27549 world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know much of it
27550 myself -- and will be of great service."
     
27551 "Mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?"
     
27552 "Surely not, my dear."
     
27553 "Then grant me this one great favour. Don't let my brother know."
     
27554 "Not know what, my dear?"
     
27555 "Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can't bear it; I can't make up my
27556 mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done
27557 so much to raise himself while I've been soldiering that I haven't
27558 brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under
27559 this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any
27560 pleasure in such a discovery? It's impossible. No, keep my secret
27561 from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my
27562 secret from my brother, of all men."
     
27563 "But not always, dear George?"
     
27564 "Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all -- though I may come to ask
27565 that too -- but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it's ever broke to
27566 him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish," says the
27567 trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, "to break it myself and be
27568 governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems
27569 to take it."
     
27570 As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth
27571 of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet's face, his mother yields her
27572 implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.
     
27573 "In all other respects, my dear mother, I'll be as tractable and
27574 obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am
27575 ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up," he glances at
27576 his writing on the table, "an exact account of what I knew of the
27577 deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair.
27578 It's entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in
27579 it but what's wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight
27580 on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I
27581 hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my
27582 own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not
27583 to have any."
     
27584 Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time
27585 being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again
27586 the old lady hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the
27587 trooper holds her to his broad chest.
     
27588 "Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?"
     
27589 "I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some
27590 business there that must be looked to directly," Mrs. Rouncewell
27591 answers.
     
27592 "Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of
27593 course I know you will. Why should I ask it!"
     
27594 Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.
     
27595 "Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you.
27596 Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the
27597 hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand
27598 pound in gold, my dear!" So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the
27599 old girl's tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.
     
27600 No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce
27601 Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping
27602 out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing Mrs.
27603 Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off,
27604 arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and
27605 falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened.
     
27606 My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with
27607 the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is
27608 looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so
27609 leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell.
27610 What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?
     
27611 "Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with
27612 you?"
     
27613 What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble
27614 so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why
27615 does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange
27616 mistrust?
     
27617 "What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath."
     
27618 "Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son -- my youngest, who went
27619 away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison."
     
27620 "For debt?"
     
27621 "Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful."
     
27622 "For what is he in prison then?"
     
27623 "Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as -- as I
27624 am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn."
     
27625 What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does
27626 she come so close? What is the letter that she holds?
     
27627 "Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must
27628 have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I
27629 was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But
27630 think of my dear son wrongfully accused."
     
27631 "I do not accuse him."
     
27632 "No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger.
27633 Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say
27634 it!"
     
27635 What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the
27636 person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust?
27637 Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with
27638 fear.
     
27639 "My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in
27640 my old age, and the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so
27641 solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after
27642 night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your
27643 rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last
27644 night, my Lady, I got this letter."
     
27645 "What letter is it?"
     
27646 "Hush! Hush!" The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened
27647 whisper, "My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don't believe
27648 what's written in it, I know it can't be true, I am sure and certain
27649 that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a
27650 heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to
27651 others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and
27652 any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think
27653 of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most
27654 I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your
27655 own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your
27656 friends; and all who admire you -- and all do -- as a beautiful and
27657 elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can't
27658 be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry
27659 reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray,
27660 oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been
27661 passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to
27662 clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady," the old housekeeper pleads with
27663 genuine simplicity, "I am so humble in my place and you are by nature
27664 so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child,
27665 but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg
27666 and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or
27667 justice at this fearful time!"
     
27668 Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter
27669 from her hand.
     
27670 "Am I to read this?"
     
27671 "When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the
27672 most that I consider possible."
     
27673 "I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can
27674 affect your son. I have never accused him."
     
27675 "My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after
27676 reading the letter."
     
27677 The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth
27678 she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the
27679 sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong
27680 earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long
27681 accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long
27682 schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts
27683 up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads
27684 one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and
27685 the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even
27686 her wonder until now.
     
27687 She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account
27688 of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor,
27689 shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with
27690 the word "murderess" attached.
     
27691 It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground
27692 she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before
27693 her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have
27694 probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her
27695 head before she begins to understand them.
     
27696 "Let him come in!"
     
27697 He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from
27698 the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr.
27699 Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud,
27700 chilling state.
     
27701 "Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from
27702 one who has never been welcome to your ladyship" -- which he don't
27703 complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any
27704 particular reason on the face of things why he should be -- "but I hope
27705 when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault
27706 with me," says Mr. Guppy.
     
27707 "Do so."
     
27708 "Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship," Mr.
27709 Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at
27710 his feet, "that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned
27711 to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my 'eart
27712 until erased by circumstances over which I had no control,
27713 communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your
27714 ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps
27715 whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson's
27716 wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over
27717 which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the
27718 distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again."
     
27719 And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.
     
27720 "And yet I am here now," Mr. Guppy admits. "My object being to
27721 communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am
27722 here."
     
27723 He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. "Nor can
27724 I," Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, "too
27725 particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that
27726 it's no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no
27727 interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for
27728 my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred -- I, in point
27729 of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have
27730 seen 'em further first."
     
27731 Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair
27732 with both hands.
     
27733 "Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I
27734 was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and
27735 whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time
27736 apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call
27737 sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely
27738 difficult for me to be sure that I hadn't inadvertently led up to
27739 something contrary to Miss Summerson's wishes. Self-praise is no
27740 recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man
27741 of business neither."
     
27742 Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately
27743 withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.
     
27744 "Indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea
27745 what that party was up to in combination with others that until the
27746 loss which we all deplore I was gravelled -- an expression which your
27747 ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to
27748 consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise -- a name by which
27749 I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not
27750 acquainted with -- got to be so close and double-faced that at times it
27751 wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. However, what with the
27752 exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual
27753 friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic
27754 turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging up in his room),
27755 I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your
27756 ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask
27757 you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don't
27758 mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss
27759 Barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower
27760 extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?"
     
27761 "No!"
     
27762 "Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and
27763 have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited
27764 at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an
27765 hour's turn afterwards to avoid them."
     
27766 "What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand
27767 you. What do you mean?"
     
27768 "Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no
27769 occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my
27770 promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has
27771 dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those
27772 letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed
27773 when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown
27774 upon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been
27775 here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or
27776 making."
     
27777 Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.
     
27778 "Your ladyship, you know best whether there's anything in what I say
27779 or whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to
27780 Miss Summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I
27781 had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In
27782 case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your
27783 guard when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should
27784 hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive
27785 your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and
27786 assure you that there's no danger of your ever being waited on by me
27787 again."
     
27788 She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when
27789 he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.
     
27790 "Where is Sir Leicester?"
     
27791 Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.
     
27792 "Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"
     
27793 Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them,
27794 which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go.
     
27795 So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband
27796 knows his wrongs, her shame will be published -- may be spreading while
27797 she thinks about it -- and in addition to the thunderbolt so long
27798 foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an
27799 invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.
     
27800 Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead.
27801 Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes
27802 upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she
27803 recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may
27804 be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before
27805 merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the
27806 hangman's hands were at her neck.
     
27807 She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all
27808 wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She
27809 rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks
27810 and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really
27811 were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.
     
27812 For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed,
27813 however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been
27814 closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing
27815 her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences
27816 would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure
27817 was laid low -- which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she
27818 sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to
27819 think, "if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take
27820 him from my way!" it was but wishing that all he held against her in
27821 his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places.
27822 So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was
27823 his death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the
27824 arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and
27825 mangling piecemeal!
     
27826 Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from
27827 this pursuer, living or dead -- obdurate and imperturbable before her
27828 in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable
27829 in his coffin-bed -- there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she
27830 flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery,
27831 overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance
27832 is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.
     
27833 She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves
27834 them on her table:
     
     
27835    If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe
27836    that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me,
27837    for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard,
27838    or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that
27839    fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After
27840    he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the
27841    garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him
27842    and make one last petition that he would not protract the
27843    dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you
27844    do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next
27845    morning.
     
27846    I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his
27847    door, but there was no reply, and I came home.
     
27848    I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May
27849    you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the
27850    unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous
27851    devotion -- who avoids you only with a deeper shame than
27852    that with which she hurries from herself -- and who writes
27853    this last adieu.
     
     
27854 She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money,
27855 listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens
27856 and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.
     
     
     
     
27857 CHAPTER LVI
     
27858 Pursuit
     
     
27859 Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house
27860 stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives
27861 no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle,
27862 doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers
27863 with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly
27864 bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating
27865 creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the
27866 eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging
27867 carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk
27868 into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries
27869 bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a
27870 spectacle for the angels.
     
27871 The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before
27872 its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair,
27873 being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that
27874 disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at
27875 length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle
27876 tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in;
27877 seeing no one there, takes possession.
     
27878 The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the
27879 ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels
27880 her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with
27881 a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description.
27882 Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of
27883 hovering over her kinsman's letters and papers like a bird, taking a
27884 short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at
27885 that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass
27886 at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of
27887 these researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass
27888 in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled
27889 tree.
     
27890 Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of
27891 reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion.
27892 Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors
27893 are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not
27894 found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her
27895 letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is
27896 doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another
27897 world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living
27898 languages, and all the dead, are as one to him.
     
27899 They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put
27900 ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day
27901 has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous
27902 breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the
27903 candle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change
27904 begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even
27905 his hand in token that he hears and comprehends.
     
27906 He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat
27907 infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies
27908 upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of
27909 himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been
27910 thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word
27911 he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were
27912 something in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers
27913 sounds like what it is -- mere jumble and jargon.
     
27914 His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is
27915 the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it.
27916 After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes
27917 signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first
27918 understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants
27919 and brings in a slate.
     
27920 After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that
27921 is not his, "Chesney Wold?"
     
27922 No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library
27923 this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to
27924 London and is able to attend upon him.
     
27925 "It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You
27926 will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say
27927 so." This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face.
     
27928 After making a survey of the room and looking with particular
27929 attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, "My
27930 Lady."
     
27931 "My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and
27932 don't know of your illness yet."
     
27933 He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try
27934 to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their
27935 looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate
27936 once more and writes "My Lady. For God's sake, where?" And makes an
27937 imploring moan.
     
27938 It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady
27939 Dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise.
27940 She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it
27941 twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be
27942 seen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a
27943 swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his
27944 faithful and attached old servant's arm. The doctors know that he is
27945 best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof.
     
27946 The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to
27947 write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction
27948 at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in
27949 the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he
27950 labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the
27951 letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his
27952 misery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket.
27953 Thank heaven! That's his meaning.
     
27954 Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come
27955 up?
     
27956 There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester's burning wish
27957 to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of
27958 every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket
27959 appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his
27960 high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.
     
27961 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sorry to see you like this. I
27962 hope you'll cheer up. I'm sure you will, on account of the family
27963 credit."
     
27964 Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his
27965 face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket's
27966 eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is
27967 still glancing over the words, he indicates, "Sir Leicester Dedlock,
27968 Baronet, I understand you."
     
27969 Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. "Full forgiveness. Find -- " Mr.
27970 Bucket stops his hand.
     
27971 "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll find her. But my search after
27972 her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost."
     
27973 With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock's
27974 look towards a little box upon a table.
     
27975 "Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it
27976 with one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? TO be sure.
27977 Take the notes out? So I will. Count 'em? That's soon done. Twenty
27978 and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twenty, and
27979 forty's one sixty. Take 'em for expenses? That I'll do, and render an
27980 account of course. Don't spare money? No I won't."
     
27981 The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket's interpretation on all
27982 these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Rouncewell, who holds
27983 the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he
27984 starts up, furnished for his journey.
     
27985 "You're George's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, I
27986 believe?" says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and
27987 buttoning his coat.
     
27988 "Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother."
     
27989 "So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well,
27990 then, I'll tell you something. You needn't be distressed no more.
27991 Your son's all right. Now, don't you begin a-crying, because what
27992 you've got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,
27993 and you won't do that by crying. As to your son, he's all right, I
27994 tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you're the same.
27995 He's discharged honourable; that's about what HE is; with no more
27996 imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a
27997 tidy one, I'LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He
27998 conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he's a
27999 fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady, and you're a mother
28000 and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan.
28001 Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you've trusted to me I'll go
28002 through with. Don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right
28003 or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found
28004 what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on
28005 your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you
28006 better, and these family affairs smoothed over -- as, Lord, many other
28007 family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of
28008 time."
     
28009 With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out,
28010 looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night
28011 in quest of the fugitive.
     
28012 His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock's rooms and look
28013 all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The
28014 rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in
28015 his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental
28016 inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with
28017 himself, would be to see a sight -- which nobody DOES see, as he is
28018 particular to lock himself in.
     
28019 "A spicy boudoir, this," says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner
28020 furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. "Must have
28021 cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must
28022 have been hard put to it!"
     
28023 Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and
28024 jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors,
28025 and moralizes thereon.
     
28026 "One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and
28027 getting myself up for almac's," says Mr. Bucket. "I begin to think I
28028 must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it."
     
28029 Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner
28030 drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can
28031 scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a
28032 white handkerchief.
     
28033 "Hum! Let's have a look at YOU," says Mr. Bucket, putting down the
28034 light. "What should YOU be kept by yourself for? What's YOUR motive?
28035 Are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's? You've got a
28036 mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?"
     
28037 He finds it as he speaks, "Esther Summerson."
     
28038 "Oh!" says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. "Come,
28039 I'll take YOU."
     
28040 He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has
28041 carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it,
28042 glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the
28043 street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir
28044 Leicester's room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest
28045 coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be
28046 driven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a
28047 scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the
28048 principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of
28049 the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he
28050 knows him.
     
28051 His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering
28052 over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his
28053 keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the
28054 midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where
28055 people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he
28056 rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the
28057 snow lies thin -- for something may present itself to assist him,
28058 anywhere -- he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he
28059 stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.
     
28060 "Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I'll be back."
     
28061 He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his
28062 pipe.
     
28063 "I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my
28064 lad. I haven't a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman.
28065 Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died -- that was the name, I
28066 know -- all right -- where does she live?"
     
28067 The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near
28068 Oxford Street.
     
28069 "You won't repent it, George. Good night!"
     
28070 He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by
28071 the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again,
28072 and gets out in a cloud of steam again.
     
28073 Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed,
28074 rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and
28075 comes down to the door in his dressing-gown.
     
28076 "Don't be alarmed, sir." In a moment his visitor is confidential with
28077 him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the
28078 lock. "I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket.
28079 Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson's. Found it
28080 myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock's, quarter of an hour
28081 ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady
28082 Dedlock?"
     
28083 "Yes."
     
28084 "There has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come
28085 out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit -- apoplexy or
28086 paralysis -- and couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been
28087 lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for
28088 him that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!"
     
28089 Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks.
     
28090 "I don't know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there's more and more
28091 danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I'd give a hundred
28092 pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr.
28093 Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow
28094 her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have
28095 money and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss
28096 Summerson."
     
28097 Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, "Miss Summerson?"
     
28098 "Now, Mr. Jarndyce" -- Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest
28099 attention all along -- "I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane
28100 heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't often happen.
28101 If ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever you
28102 couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the
28103 time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound
28104 apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am
28105 charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest
28106 that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of
28107 murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir
28108 Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to
28109 desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady,
28110 answering to the description of a young lady that she has a
28111 tenderness for -- I ask no question, and I say no more than that -- she
28112 will give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and
28113 be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for'ard,
28114 and I'll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come
28115 up with her alone -- a hard matter -- and I'll do my best, but I don't
28116 answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it's getting on for one
28117 o'clock. When one strikes, there's another hour gone, and it's worth
28118 a thousand pound now instead of a hundred."
     
28119 This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be
28120 questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to
28121 Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual
28122 principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping
28123 his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the
28124 gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr.
28125 Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him
28126 directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him
28127 where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and
28128 awaits her coming at the door.
     
28129 There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide.
28130 Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many
28131 solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks.
28132 But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he
28133 perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places
28134 down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object
28135 drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a
28136 drowning hold on his attention.
     
28137 Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the
28138 handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted
28139 power to bring before him the place where she found it and the
28140 night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child,
28141 would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are
28142 burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched
28143 huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind,
28144 where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the
28145 gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of
28146 human torture -- traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a
28147 lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and
28148 driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all
28149 companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably
28150 dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at
28151 the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
     
     
     
     
28152 CHAPTER LVII
     
28153 Esther's Narrative
     
     
28154 I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the
28155 door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to
28156 speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or
28157 two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester
28158 Dedlock's. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door
28159 who was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of
28160 affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find
28161 her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my
28162 entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this
28163 general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of
28164 alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could
28165 make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to
28166 recover my right mind until hours had passed.
     
28167 But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley or
28168 any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted
28169 with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and
28170 also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr.
28171 Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian's candle, read to
28172 me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I
28173 suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting
28174 beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets.
     
28175 His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me
28176 that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without
28177 confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were,
28178 chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom
28179 he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with
28180 her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I
28181 had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to
28182 consider -- taking time to think -- whether within my knowledge there was
28183 any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to
28184 confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of
28185 no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He
28186 came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of
28187 mentioning my mother's name and with what my guardian had informed me
28188 of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with
28189 her unhappy story.
     
28190 My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation,
28191 that we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on
28192 again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few
28193 moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite
28194 willing to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough
28195 to understand it.
     
28196 We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a
28197 by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket
28198 took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now
28199 past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police
28200 officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like
28201 people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the
28202 place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and
28203 calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any
28204 attention.
     
28205 A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he
28206 whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised
28207 together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket's subdued dictation. It was
28208 a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket
28209 brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was
28210 very accurate indeed.
     
28211 The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it
28212 out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an
28213 outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done
28214 with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet
28215 nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its
28216 travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing
28217 with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the
28218 soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire.
     
28219 "Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?" he asked me as his eyes
28220 met mine. "It's a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out
28221 in."
     
28222 I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed.
     
28223 "It may be a long job," he observed; "but so that it ends well, never
28224 mind, miss."
     
28225 "I pray to heaven it may end well!" said I.
     
28226 He nodded comfortingly. "You see, whatever you do, don't you go and
28227 fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may
28228 happen, and it'll be the better for you, the better for me, the
28229 better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock,
28230 Baronet."
     
28231 He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire
28232 warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a
28233 confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a
28234 quarter to two when I heard horses' feet and wheels outside. "Now,
28235 Miss Summerson," said he, "we are off, if you please!"
     
28236 He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out,
28237 and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and
28238 post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the
28239 box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then
28240 handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a
28241 few directions to the driver, we rattled away.
     
28242 I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great
28243 rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all
28244 idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the
28245 river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside,
28246 dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and
28247 basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships.
28248 At length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which
28249 the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my
28250 companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several
28251 men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the
28252 mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I
28253 could discern the words, "Found Drowned"; and this and an inscription
28254 about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in
28255 our visit to that place.
     
28256 I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence
28257 of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or
28258 to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but
28259 what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still
28260 it was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long
28261 swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat
28262 and whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some
28263 slippery steps -- as if to look at something secret that he had to
28264 show. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after
28265 turning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared!
     
28266 After some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to
28267 know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in
28268 the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to
28269 warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it
28270 made, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little
28271 rush towards me. It never did so -- and I thought it did so, hundreds
28272 of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and
28273 probably was less -- but the thought shuddered through me that it would
28274 cast my mother at the horses' feet.
     
28275 Mr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant,
28276 darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. "Don't you be
28277 alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here," he
28278 said, turning to me. "I only want to have everything in train and to
28279 know that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!"
     
28280 We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note
28281 of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging
28282 from the general character of the streets. We called at another
28283 office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During
28284 the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion,
28285 wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single
28286 moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be
28287 more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet,
28288 he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted
28289 past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a
28290 face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look,
28291 so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat
28292 lines of shore -- so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of
28293 substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it
28294 many times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free
28295 from the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon
28296 the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round
28297 the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling
28298 on, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely
28299 in upon me -- a face rising out of the dreaded water.
     
28300 Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at
28301 length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave
28302 the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to
28303 Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we
28304 changed and went on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country
28305 was white with snow, though none was falling then.
     
28306 "An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson," said Mr.
28307 Bucket cheerfully.
     
28308 "Yes," I returned. "Have you gathered any intelligence?"
     
28309 "None that can be quite depended on as yet," he answered, "but it's
28310 early times as yet."
     
28311 He had gone into every late or early public-house where there
28312 was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being
28313 then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the
28314 turnpike-keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money,
28315 and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he
28316 took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful
28317 steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business
28318 tone, "Get on, my lad!"
     
28319 With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o'clock and we
28320 were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of
28321 these houses and handed me in a cup of tea.
     
28322 "Drink it, Miss Summerson, it'll do you good. You're beginning to get
28323 more yourself now, ain't you?"
     
28324 I thanked him and said I hoped so.
     
28325 "You was what you may call stunned at first," he returned; "and Lord,
28326 no wonder! Don't speak loud, my dear. It's all right. She's on
28327 ahead."
     
28328 I don't know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but
28329 he put up his finger and I stopped myself.
     
28330 "Passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I
28331 heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but
28332 couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked
28333 her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us
28334 now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you
28335 wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can
28336 catch half a crown in your t'other hand. One, two, three, and there
28337 you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!"
     
28338 We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I
28339 was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the
28340 night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the
28341 carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready,
28342 my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home.
     
28343 "As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see," he
28344 observed, "I should like to know whether you've been asked for by any
28345 stranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Jarndyce has. I
28346 don't much expect it, but it might be."
     
28347 As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye -- the
28348 day was now breaking -- and reminded me that I had come down it one
28349 night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and
28350 poor Jo, whom he called Toughey.
     
28351 I wondered how he knew that.
     
28352 "When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know," said
28353 Mr. Bucket.
     
28354 Yes, I remembered that too, very well.
     
28355 "That was me," said Mr. Bucket.
     
28356 Seeing my surprise, he went on, "I drove down in a gig that afternoon
28357 to look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came
28358 out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your
28359 little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an
28360 inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he
28361 was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I
28362 observed you bringing him home here."
     
28363 "Had he committed any crime?" I asked.
     
28364 "None was charged against him," said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off
28365 his hat, "but I suppose he wasn't over-particular. No. What I wanted
28366 him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Lady
28367 Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome
28368 as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased
28369 Mr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do, at any sort of price, to have
28370 him playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made
28371 an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and
28372 go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn't
28373 catch him coming back again."
     
28374 "Poor creature!" said I.
     
28375 "Poor enough," assented Mr. Bucket, "and trouble enough, and well
28376 enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on
28377 my back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure
28378 you."
     
28379 I asked him why. "Why, my dear?" said Mr. Bucket. "Naturally there
28380 was no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a
28381 yard and a half of it, and a remnant over."
     
28382 Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion
28383 at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me
28384 to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me.
28385 With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of
28386 indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that
28387 we had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the
28388 garden-gate.
     
28389 "Ah!" said Mr. Bucket. "Here we are, and a nice retired place it is.
28390 Puts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker-tapping,
28391 that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They're early
28392 with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what
28393 you've always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see
28394 'em; you never know what they're up to if you don't know that. And
28395 another thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the
28396 kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being
28397 secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose."
     
28398 We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely
28399 at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the
28400 windows.
     
28401 "Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room
28402 when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" he inquired, glancing at
28403 Mr. Skimpole's usual chamber.
     
28404 "You know Mr. Skimpole!" said I.
     
28405 "What do you call him again?" returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his
28406 ear. "Skimpole, is it? I've often wondered what his name might be.
28407 Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?"
     
28408 "Harold," I told him.
     
28409 "Harold. Yes. He's a queer bird is Harold," said Mr. Bucket, eyeing
28410 me with great expression.
     
28411 "He is a singular character," said I.
     
28412 "No idea of money," observed Mr. Bucket. "He takes it, though!"
     
28413 I involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Bucket knew
28414 him.
     
28415 "Why, now I'll tell you, Miss Summerson," he replied. "Your mind will
28416 be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and
28417 I'll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where
28418 Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask
28419 for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first,
28420 if any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at
28421 that window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I
28422 have had a look at him, thinks I, you're the man for me. So I
28423 smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after
28424 they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that
28425 charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I
28426 pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote
28427 well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without
28428 causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows
28429 in the gayest way, 'It's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my
28430 friend, because I'm a mere child in such matters and have no idea of
28431 money.' Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and
28432 being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round
28433 a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and
28434 looks as innocent as you like, and says, 'But I don't know the value
28435 of these things. What am I to DO with this?' 'Spend it, sir,' says I.
28436 'But I shall be taken in,' he says, 'they won't give me the right
28437 change, I shall lose it, it's no use to me.' Lord, you never saw such
28438 a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find
28439 Toughey, and I found him."
     
28440 I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole
28441 towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish
28442 innocence.
     
28443 "Bounds, my dear?" returned Mr. Bucket. "Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson,
28444 I'll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful
28445 when you are happily married and have got a family about you.
28446 Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in
28447 all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are
28448 dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to
28449 you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person
28450 is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have
28451 got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am not a
28452 poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a
28453 company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this
28454 rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I
28455 never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution
28456 to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell,
28457 and so go back to our business."
     
28458 I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than
28459 it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household
28460 were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the
28461 morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by
28462 my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be
28463 doubted that this was the truth.
     
28464 "Then, Miss Summerson," said my companion, "we can't be too soon at
28465 the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries
28466 there I leave to you, if you'll be so good as to make 'em. The
28467 naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own
28468 way."
     
28469 We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it
28470 shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew
28471 me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed
28472 me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in
28473 another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin
28474 of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows
28475 of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place,
28476 which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I
28477 pushed it open.
     
28478 There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying
28479 asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead
28480 child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the
28481 men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a
28482 morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket
28483 followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently
28484 knew him.
     
28485 I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I
28486 knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool
28487 near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that
28488 I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I
28489 became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to
28490 begin, and I could not help bursting into tears.
     
28491 "Liz," said I, "I have come a long way in the night and through the
28492 snow to inquire after a lady -- "
     
28493 "Who has been here, you know," Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the
28494 whole group with a composed propitiatory face; "that's the lady the
28495 young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know."
     
28496 "And who told YOU as there was anybody here?" inquired Jenny's
28497 husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now
28498 measured him with his eye.
     
28499 "A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen
28500 waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons," Mr. Bucket
28501 immediately answered.
     
28502 "He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is," growled the
28503 man.
     
28504 "He's out of employment, I believe," said Mr. Bucket apologetically
28505 for Michael Jackson, "and so gets talking."
     
28506 The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her
28507 hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have
28508 spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this
28509 attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump
28510 of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck
28511 the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an
28512 oath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down.
     
28513 "I should like to have seen Jenny very much," said I, "for I am sure
28514 she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very
28515 anxious indeed -- you cannot think how anxious -- to overtake. Will Jenny
28516 be here soon? Where is she?"
     
28517 The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another
28518 oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to
28519 Jenny's husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the
28520 latter turned his shaggy head towards me.
     
28521 "I'm not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you've heerd
28522 me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it's
28523 curious they can't let my place be. There'd be a pretty shine made if
28524 I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don't so much
28525 complain of you as of some others, and I'm agreeable to make you a
28526 civil answer, though I give notice that I'm not a-going to be drawed
28527 like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won't. Where is she?
28528 She's gone up to Lunnun."
     
28529 "Did she go last night?" I asked.
     
28530 "Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night," he answered with a
28531 sulky jerk of his head.
     
28532 "But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to
28533 her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as
28534 to tell me," said I, "for I am in great distress to know."
     
28535 "If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm -- " the
28536 woman timidly began.
     
28537 "Your master," said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow
28538 emphasis, "will break your neck if you meddle with wot don't concern
28539 you."
     
28540 After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me
28541 again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.
     
28542 "Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady
28543 come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I'll tell you wot the lady
28544 said to her. She said, 'You remember me as come one time to talk to
28545 you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember
28546 me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had
28547 left?' Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young
28548 lady up at the house now? No, she warn't up at the house now. Well,
28549 then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as
28550 we might think it, and could she rest herself where you're a setten
28551 for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went -- it
28552 might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty
28553 minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time
28554 by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don't know where she go'd.
28555 She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun,
28556 and t'other went right from it. That's all about it. Ask this man. He
28557 heerd it all, and see it all. He knows."
     
28558 The other man repeated, "That's all about it."
     
28559 "Was the lady crying?" I inquired.
     
28560 "Devil a bit," returned the first man. "Her shoes was the worse, and
28561 her clothes was the worse, but she warn't -- not as I see."
     
28562 The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her
28563 husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his
28564 hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute
28565 his threat if she disobeyed him.
     
28566 "I hope you will not object to my asking your wife," said I, "how the
28567 lady looked."
     
28568 "Come, then!" he gruffly cried to her. "You hear what she says. Cut
28569 it short and tell her."
     
28570 "Bad," replied the woman. "Pale and exhausted. Very bad."
     
28571 "Did she speak much?"
     
28572 "Not much, but her voice was hoarse."
     
28573 She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.
     
28574 "Was she faint?" said I. "Did she eat or drink here?"
     
28575 "Go on!" said the husband in answer to her look. "Tell her and cut it
28576 short."
     
28577 "She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and
28578 tea. But she hardly touched it."
     
28579 "And when she went from here," I was proceeding, when Jenny's husband
28580 impatiently took me up.
     
28581 "When she went from here, she went right away nor'ard by the high
28582 road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so. Now,
28583 there's the end. That's all about it."
     
28584 I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and
28585 was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took
28586 my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he
28587 looked full at her.
     
28588 "Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me as we walked quickly away.
28589 "They've got her ladyship's watch among 'em. That's a positive fact."
     
28590 "You saw it?" I exclaimed.
     
28591 "Just as good as saw it," he returned. "Else why should he talk about
28592 his 'twenty minutes past' and about his having no watch to tell the
28593 time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as
28594 that. If he comes to half-hours, it's as much as HE does. Now, you
28595 see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think
28596 she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should
28597 she give it him for?"
     
28598 He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on,
28599 appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his
28600 mind.
     
28601 "If time could be spared," said Mr. Bucket, "which is the only thing
28602 that can't be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman;
28603 but it's too doubtful a chance to trust to under present
28604 circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any
28605 fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and
28606 scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that
28607 ill uses her through thick and thin. There's something kept back.
28608 It's a pity but what we had seen the other woman."
     
28609 I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt
28610 sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.
     
28611 "It's possible, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,
28612 "that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and
28613 it's possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don't
28614 come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it's on the cards.
28615 Now, I don't take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester
28616 Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don't see my way to the
28617 usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is
28618 for'ard -- straight ahead -- and keeping everything quiet!"
     
28619 We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my
28620 guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.
28621 The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we
28622 were on the road again in a few minutes.
     
28623 It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air
28624 was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall
28625 that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it
28626 was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it
28627 churned -- with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells -- under
28628 the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped
28629 and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a
28630 standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first
28631 stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to
28632 dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.
     
28633 I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under
28634 those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an
28635 unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my
28636 companion's better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this
28637 time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was
28638 engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing
28639 people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running
28640 in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and
28641 shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner,
28642 wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose
28643 time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady
28644 face and his business-like "Get on, my lad!"
     
28645 When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the
28646 stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off
28647 him -- plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been
28648 doing frequently since we left Saint Albans -- and spoke to me at the
28649 carriage side.
     
28650 "Keep up your spirits. It's certainly true that she came on here,
28651 Miss Summerson. There's not a doubt of the dress by this time, and
28652 the dress has been seen here."
     
28653 "Still on foot?" said I.
     
28654 "Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point
28655 she's aiming at, and yet I don't like his living down in her own part
28656 of the country neither."
     
28657 "I know so little," said I. "There may be some one else nearer here,
28658 of whom I never heard."
     
28659 "That's true. But whatever you do, don't you fall a-crying, my dear;
28660 and don't you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my
28661 lad!"
     
28662 The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early,
28663 and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never
28664 seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the
28665 ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had
28666 been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great
28667 duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free
28668 from the anxiety under which I then laboured.
     
28669 As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost
28670 confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people,
28671 but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his
28672 finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of
28673 one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of
28674 coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had
28675 seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their
28676 replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of
28677 his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but
28678 he seemed perplexed now when he said, "Get on, my lad!"
     
28679 At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track
28680 of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing,
28681 he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for
28682 another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an
28683 unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This
28684 corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at
28685 direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a
28686 quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to
28687 be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the
28688 next stage might set us right again.
     
28689 The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue.
28690 There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable
28691 substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before
28692 I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the
28693 carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the
28694 horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to
28695 refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.
     
28696 It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On
28697 one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were
28698 unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage,
28699 and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was
28700 heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees.
28701 Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off
28702 in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and
28703 its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire
28704 glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems
28705 of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the
28706 thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the
28707 motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now
28708 welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die.
     
28709 I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered
28710 that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was
28711 some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the
28712 fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no
28713 further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a
28714 tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her
28715 words and compromised for a rest of half an hour.
     
28716 A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all
28717 so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr.
28718 Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when
28719 a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was
28720 very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast
28721 and some hot negus, and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made
28722 some recompense.
     
28723 Punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end the carriage came
28724 rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed,
28725 comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any
28726 more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all,
28727 the youngest daughter -- a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the
28728 first married, they had told me -- got upon the carriage step, reached
28729 in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think
28730 of her to this hour as my friend.
     
28731 The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright
28732 and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and
28733 again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with
28734 toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had
28735 been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the
28736 box -- I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw
28737 him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco -- was
28738 as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to
28739 any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark
28740 lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to
28741 the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that
28742 I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head,
28743 but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.
     
28744 We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not
28745 recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I
28746 knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he
28747 had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back
28748 in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an
28749 excited and quite different man.
     
28750 "What is it?" said I, starting. "Is she here?"
     
28751 "No, no. Don't deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody's here. But I've got
28752 it!"
     
28753 The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in
28754 ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his
28755 breath before he spoke to me.
     
28756 "Now, Miss Summerson," said he, beating his finger on the apron,
28757 "don't you be disappointed at what I'm a-going to do. You know me.
28758 I'm Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We've come a long way;
28759 never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!"
     
28760 There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the
28761 stables to know if he meant up or down.
     
28762 "Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? Up!"
     
28763 "Up?" said I, astonished. "To London! Are we going back?"
     
28764 "Miss Summerson," he answered, "back. Straight back as a die. You
28765 know me. Don't be afraid. I'll follow the other, by G --  -- "
     
28766 "The other?" I repeated. "Who?"
     
28767 "You called her Jenny, didn't you? I'll follow her. Bring those two
28768 pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!"
     
28769 "You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not
28770 abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her
28771 to be in!" said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.
     
28772 "You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'll follow the other. Look
28773 alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in the saddle to the
28774 next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four
28775 on, up, right through. My darling, don't you be afraid!"
     
28776 These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them
28777 caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me
28778 than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted
28779 man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to
28780 with great speed.
     
28781 "My dear," said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again,
28782 " -- you'll excuse me if I'm too familiar -- don't you fret and worry
28783 yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present;
28784 but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?"
     
28785 I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of
28786 deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right?
28787 Could I not go forward by myself in search of -- I grasped his hand
28788 again in my distress and whispered it to him -- of my own mother.
     
28789 "My dear," he answered, "I know, I know, and would I put you wrong,
28790 do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don't you?"
     
28791 What could I say but yes!
     
28792 "Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me
28793 for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
28794 Now, are you right there?"
     
28795 "All right, sir!"
     
28796 "Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!"
     
28797 We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing
28798 up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a
28799 waterwheel.
     
     
     
     
28800 CHAPTER LVIII
     
28801 A Wintry Day and Night
     
     
28802 Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house
28803 carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There
28804 are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the
28805 hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky;
28806 and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself
28807 exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of
28808 doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire,
28809 but is expected to return presently.
     
28810 Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.
28811 It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that
28812 poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears,
28813 my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of
28814 five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something
28815 wrong at the Dedlocks' is to augur yourself unknown. One of the
28816 peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised
28817 of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the
28818 Lords on Sir Leicester's application for a bill of divorce.
     
28819 At Blaze and Sparkle's the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss's the
28820 mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age,
28821 the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,
28822 albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured
28823 there as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly
28824 understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter.
28825 "Our people, Mr. Jones," said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in
28826 question on engaging him, "our people, sir, are sheep -- mere sheep.
28827 Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those
28828 two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock." So,
28829 likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing
28830 where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they
28831 (Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring
28832 principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer
28833 of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, "Why yes, sir, there
28834 certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current indeed
28835 among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk
28836 about something, sir; and it's only to get a subject into vogue with
28837 one or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole.
28838 Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of
28839 any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of
28840 themselves in this case through knowing Lady Dedlock and being
28841 perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You'll find,
28842 sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If
28843 it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when
28844 I say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my
28845 business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like
28846 a clock, sir."
     
28847 Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into
28848 Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards' time,
28849 it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Stables,
28850 which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long
28851 rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the
28852 effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in
28853 the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received
28854 in turf-circles.
     
28855 At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and
28856 among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the
28857 prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it?
28858 How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the
28859 genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new
28860 manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite
28861 indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found
28862 to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never
28863 came out before -- positively say things! William Buffy carries one of
28864 these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House,
28865 where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to
28866 keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the
28867 Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under
28868 the corner of his wig) cries, "Order at the bar!" three times without
28869 making an impression.
     
28870 And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being
28871 vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of Mr.
28872 Sladdery's high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know
28873 nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend
28874 that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with
28875 the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl,
28876 and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at
28877 second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to
28878 fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among
28879 these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters
28880 on such majestic crutches!
     
28881 So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it?
     
28882 Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with
28883 difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest,
28884 and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old
28885 enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he
28886 seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be
28887 moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement
28888 weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving
28889 snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole
28890 wintry day.
     
28891 Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is
28892 at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he
28893 would write and whispers, "No, he has not come back yet, Sir
28894 Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a
28895 little time gone yet."
     
28896 He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow
28897 again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and
28898 fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy
28899 whirl of white flakes and icy blots.
     
28900 He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet
28901 far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should
28902 be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good
28903 fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself.
28904 He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Rouncewell with a
28905 heavy heart obeys.
     
28906 "For I dread, George," the old lady says to her son, who waits below
28907 to keep her company when she has a little leisure, "I dread, my dear,
28908 that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls."
     
28909 "That's a bad presentiment, mother."
     
28910 "Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear."
     
28911 "That's worse. But why, mother?"
     
28912 "When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me -- and I may
28913 say at me too -- as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked
28914 her down."
     
28915 "Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother."
     
28916 "No I don't, my dear. No I don't. It's going on for sixty year that I
28917 have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before.
28918 But it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is
28919 breaking up."
     
28920 "I hope not, mother."
     
28921 "I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in
28922 this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless
28923 to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be.
28924 But the step on the Ghost's Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it
28925 has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on."
     
28926 "Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not."
     
28927 "Ah, so do I, George," the old lady returns, shaking her head and
28928 parting her folded hands. "But if my fears come true, and he has to
28929 know it, who will tell him!"
     
28930 "Are these her rooms?"
     
28931 "These are my Lady's rooms, just as she left them."
     
28932 "Why, now," says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a
28933 lower voice, "I begin to understand how you come to think as you do
28934 think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are
28935 fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,
28936 and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows
28937 where."
     
28938 He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one,
28939 so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper
28940 what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady's state has a
28941 hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment,
28942 where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces
28943 of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to
28944 reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and
28945 vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and
28946 colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely
28947 exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates
28948 and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that
28949 let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is
28950 a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.
     
28951 The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are
28952 complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs.
28953 Rouncewell's place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge
28954 pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent
28955 comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not
28956 being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter,
28957 has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and
28958 consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of
28959 the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at
28960 her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, "He
28961 is asleep." In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has
28962 indignantly written on the slate, "I am not."
     
28963 Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old
28964 housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,
28965 sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and
28966 listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his
28967 old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old
28968 picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the
28969 silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, "Who will tell him!"
     
28970 He has been under his valet's hands this morning to be made
28971 presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He
28972 is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual
28973 manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a
28974 responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to
28975 his hand. It is necessary -- less to his own dignity now perhaps than
28976 for her sake -- that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much
28977 himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock,
28978 is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to
28979 prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his
28980 present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously.
     
28981 The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long
28982 continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon
28983 Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of
28984 undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by
28985 any other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Rouncewell
28986 on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures
28987 she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as
28988 what's his name, her favourite Life Guardsman -- the man she dotes on,
28989 the dearest of creatures -- who was killed at Waterloo.
     
28990 Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares
28991 about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it
28992 necessary to explain.
     
28993 "Miss Dedlock don't speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my
28994 youngest. I have found him. He has come home."
     
28995 Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. "George? Your son
28996 George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?"
     
28997 The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. "Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester."
     
28998 Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long
28999 gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he
29000 think, "Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after
29001 this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in
29002 his?"
     
29003 It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he
29004 does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be
29005 understood.
     
29006 "Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?"
     
29007 "It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being
29008 well enough to be talked to of such things."
     
29009 Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that
29010 nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell's son and that
29011 she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth
29012 enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir
29013 Leicester as soon as he got better.
     
29014 "Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?" asks Sir Leicester,
     
29015 Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the
29016 doctor's injunctions, replies, in London.
     
29017 "Where in London?"
     
29018 Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.
     
29019 "Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly."
     
29020 The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester,
29021 with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to
29022 receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling
29023 sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity
29024 of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises
29025 there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his
29026 hearing wheels.
     
29027 He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor
29028 surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper
29029 son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow,
29030 squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily
29031 ashamed of himself.
     
29032 "Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!" exclaims Sir
29033 Leicester. "Do you remember me, George?"
     
29034 The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that
29035 sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a
29036 little helped by his mother, he replies, "I must have a very bad
29037 memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember you."
     
29038 "When I look at you, George Rouncewell," Sir Leicester observes with
29039 difficulty, "I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold -- I remember
29040 well -- very well."
     
29041 He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he
29042 looks at the sleet and snow again.
     
29043 "I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester," says the trooper, "but would you
29044 accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir
29045 Leicester, if you would allow me to move you."
     
29046 "If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good."
     
29047 The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him,
29048 and turns him with his face more towards the window. "Thank you. You
29049 have your mother's gentleness," returns Sir Leicester, "and your own
29050 strength. Thank you."
     
29051 He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains
29052 at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.
     
29053 "Why did you wish for secrecy?" It takes Sir Leicester some time to
29054 ask this.
     
29055 "Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I -- I should
29056 still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed -- which I hope you
29057 will not be long -- I should still hope for the favour of being allowed
29058 to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very
29059 hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very
29060 creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of
29061 subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir
29062 Leicester, that I am not much to boast of."
     
29063 "You have been a soldier," observes Sir Leicester, "and a faithful
29064 one."
     
29065 George makes his military bow. "As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I
29066 have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."
     
29067 "You find me," says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted
29068 towards him, "far from well, George Rouncewell."
     
29069 "I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester."
     
29070 "I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a
29071 sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens," making an endeavour
29072 to pass one hand down one side, "and confuses," touching his lips.
     
29073 George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The
29074 different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the
29075 younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold
29076 arise before them both and soften both.
     
29077 Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his
29078 own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into
29079 silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more.
29080 George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and
29081 places him as he desires to be. "Thank you, George. You are another
29082 self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold,
29083 George. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very
29084 familiar." He has put Sir Leicester's sounder arm over his shoulder
29085 in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it away again
29086 as he says these words.
     
29087 "I was about to add," he presently goes on, "I was about to add,
29088 respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a
29089 slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not mean
29090 that there was any difference between us (for there has been none),
29091 but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances
29092 important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while,
29093 of my Lady's society. She has found it necessary to make a journey -- I
29094 trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible?
29095 The words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing
29096 them."
     
29097 Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself
29098 with far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a
29099 minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious
29100 and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his
29101 purpose enables him to make it.
     
29102 "Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence -- and in the
29103 presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose truth
29104 and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son
29105 George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in
29106 the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold -- in case I should relapse,
29107 in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech
29108 and the power of writing, though I hope for better things -- "
     
29109 The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest
29110 agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with
29111 his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.
     
29112 "Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to
29113 witness -- beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly -- that I am
29114 on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever
29115 of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest
29116 affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to
29117 herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will
29118 be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me."
     
29119 Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions
29120 to the letter.
     
29121 "My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too
29122 superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is
29123 surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it
29124 be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound
29125 mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made
29126 in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am
29127 on unaltered terms with her, and I recall -- having the full power to
29128 do it if I were so disposed, as you see -- no act I have done for her
29129 advantage and happiness."
     
29130 His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has
29131 often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious
29132 and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant
29133 shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own
29134 pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing
29135 less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the
29136 commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born
29137 gentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both
29138 children of the dust shine equally.
     
29139 Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows
29140 and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes
29141 his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds.
29142 In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their
29143 acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him.
29144 Nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or
29145 two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his
29146 mother's chair.
     
29147 The day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into
29148 which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze
29149 begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The
29150 gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the
29151 pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their
29152 source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like
29153 fiery fish out of water -- as they are. The world, which has been
29154 rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, "to inquire," begins
29155 to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with
29156 all the last new modes, as already mentioned.
     
29157 Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great
29158 pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for
29159 doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it
29160 is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will
29161 be all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not
29162 dark enough yet.
     
29163 His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to
29164 uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late.
     
29165 "Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master," she softly whispers, "I
29166 must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and
29167 praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and
29168 waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and
29169 light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The
29170 church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and
29171 the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just
29172 the same."
     
29173 "I know it, Mrs. Rouncewell, but I am weak -- and he has been so long
29174 gone."
     
29175 "Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet."
     
29176 "But that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!"
     
29177 He says it with a groan that wrings her heart.
     
29178 She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon
29179 him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her.
29180 Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then
29181 gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at
29182 the dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered
29183 self-command, "As you say, Mrs. Rouncewell, it is no worse for being
29184 confessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the
29185 room!" When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left
29186 to him to listen.
     
29187 But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when
29188 a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and
29189 being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as
29190 it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.
     
29191 Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the
29192 streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there
29193 are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the
29194 frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this
29195 wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is
29196 like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in
29197 this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that,
29198 and all is heavier than before.
     
29199 The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to
29200 go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Rouncewell and
29201 George keep watch in Sir Leicester's room. As the night lags tardily
29202 on -- or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and
29203 three o'clock -- they find a restless craving on him to know more about
29204 the weather, now he cannot see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly
29205 every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his
29206 march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best
29207 report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling
29208 and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge.
     
29209 Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase -- the
29210 second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly
29211 room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester
29212 banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard
29213 planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black
29214 tea -- is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among
29215 them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in
29216 the event, as she expresses it, "of anything happening" to Sir
29217 Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that
29218 the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in
29219 the known world.
     
29220 An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to
29221 bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come
29222 forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her
29223 fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost,
29224 particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one
29225 who still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being
29226 not to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who,
29227 impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very
29228 sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances
29229 to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to
29230 nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of
29231 countenance.
     
29232 The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the
29233 course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company
29234 both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the
29235 small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both
29236 make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other
29237 times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and
29238 dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock,
29239 sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into
29240 the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian
29241 genius the maid.
     
29242 "How is Sir Leicester now, Mr. George?" inquires Volumnia, adjusting
29243 her cowl over her head.
     
29244 "Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill,
29245 and he even wanders a little sometimes."
     
29246 "Has he asked for me?" inquires Volumnia tenderly.
     
29247 "Why, no, I can't say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to
29248 say."
     
29249 "This is a truly sad time, Mr. George."
     
29250 "It is indeed, miss. Hadn't you better go to bed?"
     
29251 "You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock," quoth the maid
29252 sharply.
     
29253 But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted
29254 at a moment's notice. She never should forgive herself "if anything
29255 was to happen" and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on
29256 the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and
29257 not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester's), but staunchly
29258 declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a
29259 merit of not having "closed an eye" -- as if she had twenty or
29260 thirty -- though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having
29261 most indisputably opened two within five minutes.
     
29262 But when it comes to four o'clock, and still the same blank,
29263 Volumnia's constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to
29264 strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for
29265 the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact,
29266 howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her,
29267 as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper
29268 reappears with his, "Hadn't you better go to bed, miss?" and when the
29269 maid protests, more sharply than before, "You had a deal better go to
29270 bed, Miss Dedlock!" she meekly rises and says, "Do with me what you
29271 think best!"
     
29272 Mr. George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the
29273 door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it
29274 best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly,
29275 these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the
29276 house to himself.
     
29277 There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the
29278 eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips
29279 the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of
29280 the great door -- under it, into the corners of the windows, into every
29281 chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is
29282 falling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the
29283 skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's
29284 Walk, on the stone floor below.
     
29285 The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur
29286 of a great house -- no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold -- goes up the
29287 stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm's
29288 length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks,
29289 and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so
29290 strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space;
29291 thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind;
29292 thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and
29293 the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the
29294 master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, "Who will tell
29295 him!" he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see
29296 something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his
29297 hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the
29298 darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again,
29299 blank as the oppressive silence.
     
29300 "All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?"
     
29301 "Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester."
     
29302 "No word of any kind?"
     
29303 The trooper shakes his head.
     
29304 "No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?"
     
29305 But he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down
29306 without looking for an answer.
     
29307 Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George
29308 Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder
29309 of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed
29310 wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first
29311 late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless,
29312 and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as
29313 if it cried out, "Look what I am bringing you who watch there! Who
29314 will tell him!"
     
     
     
     
29315 CHAPTER LIX
     
29316 Esther's Narrative
     
     
29317 It was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside London
29318 did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with
29319 streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition
29320 than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the
29321 thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never
29322 slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than
29323 the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had
29324 stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through
29325 streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become
29326 entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been
29327 always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard
29328 any variation in his cool, "Get on, my lads!"
     
29329 The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey
29330 back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped
29331 to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very
29332 few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we
29333 came, at between three and four o'clock in the morning, into
29334 Islington.
     
29335 I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected
29336 all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther
29337 behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be
29338 right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following
29339 this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing
29340 it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and
29341 what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also
29342 that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long
29343 dwelling on such reflections when we stopped.
     
29344 We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My
29345 companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with
29346 splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the
29347 carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take
29348 it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from
29349 the rest.
     
29350 "Why, my dear!" he said as he did this. "How wet you are!"
     
29351 I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way
29352 into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen
29353 horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated
29354 my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew
29355 him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his
29356 stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it
29357 out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and
29358 comfortable.
     
29359 "Now, my dear," said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after
29360 I was shut up. "We're a-going to mark this person down. It may take a
29361 little time, but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've
29362 got a motive. Ain't you?"
     
29363 I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I
29364 should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence
29365 in him.
     
29366 "So you may have, my dear," he returned. "And I tell you what! If you
29367 only repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after
29368 what I've experienced of you, that'll do. Lord! You're no trouble at
29369 all. I never see a young woman in any station of society -- and I've
29370 seen many elevated ones too -- conduct herself like you have conducted
29371 yourself since you was called out of your bed. You're a pattern, you
29372 know, that's what you are," said Mr. Bucket warmly; "you're a
29373 pattern."
     
29374 I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no
29375 hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.
     
29376 "My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game,
29377 and as game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect.
29378 She then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself."
     
29379 With these encouraging words -- they really were encouraging to me
29380 under those lonely and anxious circumstances -- he got upon the box,
29381 and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor
29382 have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and
29383 worst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I
29384 was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such
29385 streets, and we never failed to do so.
     
29386 Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger
29387 building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at
29388 offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I
29389 saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by
29390 an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of
29391 his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various
29392 dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would
29393 be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within
29394 narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now
29395 tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go.
29396 At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one
29397 of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of
29398 nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking
29399 very busy and very attentive.
     
29400 "Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever
29401 comes off, I know. It's not necessary for me to give you any further
29402 caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and
29403 that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to
29404 ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?"
     
29405 Of course I got out directly and took his arm.
     
29406 "It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr. Bucket, "but take
29407 time."
     
29408 Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the
29409 street, I thought I knew the place. "Are we in Holborn?" I asked him.
     
29410 "Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Do you know this turning?"
     
29411 "It looks like Chancery Lane."
     
29412 "And was christened so, my dear," said Mr. Bucket.
     
29413 We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I
29414 heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and
29415 as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming
29416 towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and
29417 stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an
29418 exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his
29419 voice very well.
     
29420 It was so unexpected and so -- I don't know what to call it, whether
29421 pleasant or painful -- to come upon it after my feverish wandering
29422 journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back
29423 the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange
29424 country.
     
29425 "My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in
29426 such weather!"
     
29427 He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some
29428 uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I
29429 told him that we had but just left a coach and were going -- but then I
29430 was obliged to look at my companion.
     
29431 "Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt" -- he had caught the name from me -- "we
29432 are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket."
     
29433 Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off
29434 his cloak and was putting it about me. "That's a good move, too,"
29435 said Mr. Bucket, assisting, "a very good move."
     
29436 "May I go with you?" said Mr. Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me
29437 or to my companion.
     
29438 "Why, Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. "Of
29439 course you may."
     
29440 It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped
29441 in the cloak.
     
29442 "I have just left Richard," said Mr. Woodcourt. "I have been sitting
29443 with him since ten o'clock last night."
     
29444 "Oh, dear me, he is ill!"
     
29445 "No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed
29446 and faint -- you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes -- and Ada
29447 sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came
29448 straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while,
29449 and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though
29450 God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him
29451 until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is
29452 now, I hope!"
     
29453 His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected
29454 devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had
29455 inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate
29456 all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it
29457 had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the
29458 change in my appearance: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall
29459 be a sacred one!"
     
29460 We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr. Woodcourt," said Mr.
29461 Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business
29462 takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr. Snagsby's. What,
29463 you know him, do you?" He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
     
29464 "Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place."
     
29465 "Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Bucket. "Then you will be so good as to let
29466 me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have
29467 half a word with him?"
     
29468 The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing
29469 silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my
29470 saying I heard some one crying.
     
29471 "Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."
     
29472 "Why, you see," said Mr. Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has
29473 'em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I
29474 want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to
29475 reason somehow."
     
29476 "At all events, they wouldn't be up yet if it wasn't for her, Mr.
29477 Bucket," said the other man. "She's been at it pretty well all night,
29478 sir."
     
29479 "Well, that's true," he returned. "My light's burnt out. Show yours a
29480 moment."
     
29481 All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I
29482 could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light
29483 produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked.
29484 The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in,
29485 leaving us standing in the street.
     
29486 "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Woodcourt, "if without obtruding myself on
29487 your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so."
     
29488 "You are truly kind," I answered. "I need wish to keep no secret of
29489 my own from you; if I keep any, it is another's."
     
29490 "I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as
29491 I can fully respect it."
     
29492 "I trust implicitly to you," I said. "I know and deeply feel how
29493 sacredly you keep your promise."
     
29494 After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr.
29495 Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "Please to
29496 come in, Miss Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr.
29497 Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a
29498 medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be
29499 done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I
29500 particularly want. It's not in her box, and I think it must be about
29501 her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to
29502 handle without hurting."
     
29503 We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and
29504 raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage
29505 behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a
29506 grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke
29507 meekly.
     
29508 "Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket," said he. "The lady will
29509 excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The
29510 back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing,
29511 to a frightful extent!"
     
29512 We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the
29513 little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs.
29514 Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
     
29515 "My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, "to
29516 wave -- not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear -- hostilities for
29517 one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is
29518 Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady."
     
29519 She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and
29520 looked particularly hard at me.
     
29521 "My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest
29522 corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not
29523 unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.
29524 Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street,
29525 at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. If I
29526 was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I'd rather
29527 not be told."
     
29528 He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I
29529 appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr.
29530 Bucket took the matter on himself.
     
29531 "Now, Mr. Snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do is to go
29532 along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster -- "
     
29533 "My Guster, Mr. Bucket!" cried Mr. Snagsby. "Go on, sir, go on. I
29534 shall be charged with that next."
     
29535 "And to hold the candle," pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting
29536 himself, "or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're
29537 asked. Which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for you're a
29538 man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of
29539 heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good
29540 as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me
29541 have it as soon as ever you can?"
     
29542 As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire
29543 and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender,
29544 talking all the time.
     
29545 "Don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look
29546 from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether.
29547 She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her
29548 generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a-going
29549 to explain it to her." Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat
29550 and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs.
29551 Snagsby. "Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman
29552 possessing what you may call charms, you know -- 'Believe Me, if All
29553 Those Endearing,' and cetrer -- you're well acquainted with the song,
29554 because it's in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are
29555 strangers -- charms -- attractions, mind you, that ought to give you
29556 confidence in yourself -- is, that you've done it."
     
29557 Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,
29558 what did Mr. Bucket mean.
     
29559 "What does Mr. Bucket mean?" he repeated, and I saw by his face that
29560 all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the
29561 letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it
29562 must be; "I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello
29563 acted. That's the tragedy for you."
     
29564 Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.
     
29565 "Why?" said Mr. Bucket. "Because you'll come to that if you don't
29566 look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your
29567 mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I
29568 tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an
29569 intellectual woman -- with your soul too large for your body, if you
29570 come to that, and chafing it -- and you know me, and you recollect
29571 where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don't
29572 you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady."
     
29573 Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did
29574 at the time.
     
29575 "And Toughey -- him as you call Jo -- was mixed up in the same business,
29576 and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the
29577 same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge
29578 of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn,
29579 deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and
29580 the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no
29581 other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts
29582 her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed
29583 head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr.
29584 Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)"
     
29585 Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
     
29586 "Is that all?" said Mr. Bucket excitedly. "No. See what happens.
29587 Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a
29588 wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your
29589 maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes
29590 a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do
29591 you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that
29592 maid-servant -- knowing what she's subject to and what a little thing
29593 will bring 'em on -- in that surprising manner and with that severity
29594 that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be
29595 hanging upon that girl's words!"
     
29596 He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped
29597 my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr.
29598 Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
     
29599 "Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr. Bucket,
29600 rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady
29601 in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to
29602 that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one
29603 thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your
29604 swiftest and best!" In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the
29605 door. "Now my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?"
     
29606 "Quite," said I.
     
29607 "Whose writing is that?"
     
29608 It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of
29609 paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed
29610 to me at my guardian's.
     
29611 "You know the hand," he said, "and if you are firm enough to read it
29612 to me, do! But be particular to a word."
     
29613 It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what
29614 follows:
     
     
29615    I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the
29616    dear one, if I could, once more -- but only to see her -- not
29617    to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other
29618    object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the
29619    mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me,
29620    she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the
29621    dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's
29622    consent I bought, but her help was freely given.
     
     
29623 "'I came.' That was written," said my companion, "when she rested
29624 there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right."
     
29625 The next was written at another time:
     
     
29626    I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and
29627    I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no
29628    purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am
29629    saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and
29630    fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but
29631    I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was
29632    right that all that had sustained me should give way at
29633    once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.
     
     
29634 "Take courage," said Mr. Bucket. "There's only a few words more."
     
29635 Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost
29636 in the dark:
     
     
29637    I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon
29638    forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing
29639    about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part
29640    with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get
29641    so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.
     
     
29642 Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my
29643 chair. "Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon
29644 as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."
     
29645 I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for
29646 my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I
29647 heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At
29648 length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important
29649 to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for
29650 whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that
29651 she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.
29652 The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what
29653 passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where
29654 the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these
29655 points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have
29656 remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.
     
29657 The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down.
29658 They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might
29659 have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a
29660 plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I
29661 kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my
29662 shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into
29663 tears.
     
29664 "My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead, for
29665 indeed I was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble
29666 you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter
29667 than I could tell you in an hour."
     
29668 She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she
29669 didn't mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
     
29670 "We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."
     
29671 "Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I'll tell true, indeed,
29672 Mrs. Snagsby."
     
29673 "I am sure of that," said I. "And how was it?"
     
29674 "I had been out on an errand, dear lady -- long after it was
29675 dark -- quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking
29676 person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me
29677 coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here.
29678 And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about
29679 here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I
29680 do, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She didn't say any harm
29681 to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!"
     
29682 It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her -- which she did, I
29683 must say, with a good deal of contrition -- before she could be got
29684 beyond this.
     
29685 "She could not find those places," said I.
     
29686 "No!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "No! Couldn't find them. And
29687 she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if
29688 you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, I
29689 know!"
     
29690 "Well, Guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say.
29691 "I hope I should."
     
29692 "And yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with
29693 wide open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. And so she said
29694 to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her
29695 which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I
29696 told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to
29697 parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far
29698 from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate."
     
29699 As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket
29700 received this with a look which I could not separate from one of
29701 alarm.
     
29702 "Oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her
29703 hands. "What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying
29704 ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff -- that
29705 you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby -- that frightened me so,
29706 Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!"
     
29707 "You are so much better now," sald I. "Pray, pray tell me more."
     
29708 "Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear
29709 lady, because I have been so ill."
     
29710 Angry with her, poor soul!
     
29711 "There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to
29712 find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with
29713 eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back.
29714 And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was
29715 to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded
29716 and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the
29717 messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no
29718 harm, and she said no -- no harm. And so I took it from her, and she
29719 said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and
29720 consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and
29721 went."
     
29722 "And did she go -- "
     
29723 "Yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. "Yes! She went the
29724 way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me
29725 from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."
     
29726 Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and
29727 immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I
29728 said, "Don't leave me now!" and Mr. Bucket added, "You'll be better
29729 with us, we may want you; don't lose time!"
     
29730 I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that
29731 it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the
29732 street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling
29733 and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled
29734 people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the
29735 clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of
29736 blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the
29737 courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor
29738 girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my
29739 hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained
29740 house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great
29741 water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the
29742 air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.
     
29743 At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one
29744 lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly
29745 struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground -- a
29746 dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where
29747 I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in
29748 by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose
29749 walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the
29750 gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and
29751 splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a
29752 woman lying -- Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
     
29753 I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me
29754 with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to
29755 the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did
29756 so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
     
29757 "Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They
29758 changed clothes at the cottage."
     
29759 They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my
29760 mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no
29761 meaning to them in any other connexion.
     
29762 "And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one
29763 that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and
29764 then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"
     
29765 I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what
29766 it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead
29767 child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron
29768 gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately
29769 spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered,
29770 senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could
29771 give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide
29772 us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to
29773 this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could
29774 not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that
29775 moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not
29776 comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face.
29777 I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to
29778 keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a
29779 reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
     
29780 I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"
     
29781 "She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They
29782 have a higher right than ours."
     
29783 I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,
29784 put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my
29785 mother, cold and dead.
     
     
     
     
29786 CHAPTER LX
     
29787 Perspective
     
     
29788 I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all
29789 about me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved.
29790 I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains,
29791 that I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was
29792 not a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could
29793 quite keep down the recollection of their sympathy.
     
29794 I proceed to other passages of my narrative.
     
29795 During the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs.
29796 Woodcourt had come, on my guardian's invitation, to stay with us.
29797 When my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him
29798 in our old way -- though I could have done that sooner if he would have
29799 believed me -- I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had
29800 appointed the time himself, and we were alone.
     
29801 "Dame Trot," said he, receiving me with a kiss, "welcome to the
29802 growlery again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I
29803 propose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer
29804 time -- as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short."
     
29805 "And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?" said I.
     
29806 "Aye, my dear? Bleak House," he returned, "must learn to take care of
29807 itself."
     
29808 I thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, I saw his
29809 kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile.
     
29810 "Bleak House," he repeated -- and his tone did NOT sound sorrowful, I
29811 found -- "must learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada,
29812 my dear, and Ada stands much in need of you."
     
29813 "It's like you, guardian," said I, "to have been taking that into
29814 consideration for a happy surprise to both of us."
     
29815 "Not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for
29816 that virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be
29817 seldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of
29818 Ada as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of
29819 her alone, but of him too, poor fellow."
     
29820 "Have you seen Mr. Woodcourt, this morning, guardian?"
     
29821 "I see Mr. Woodcourt every morning, Dame Durden."
     
29822 "Does he still say the same of Richard?"
     
29823 "Just the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on
29824 the contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about
29825 him; who CAN be?"
     
29826 My dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in
29827 a day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last
29828 until I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart
29829 was as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it
29830 had ever been, and we acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions
29831 upon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it
29832 a part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house.
29833 My guardian's delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to
29834 convey to her that he thought she was right.
     
29835 "Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard," said I. "When will he awake
29836 from his delusion!"
     
29837 "He is not in the way to do so now, my dear," replied my guardian.
29838 "The more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made
29839 me the principal representative of the great occasion of his
29840 suffering."
     
29841 I could not help adding, "So unreasonably!"
     
29842 "Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot," returned my guardian, "what shall we find
29843 reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! Unreason and injustice at the
29844 top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason
29845 and injustice from beginning to end -- if it ever has an end -- how
29846 should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He
29847 no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older
29848 men did in old times."
     
29849 His gentleness and consideration for Richard whenever we spoke of him
29850 touched me so that I was always silent on this subject very soon.
     
29851 "I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the
29852 whole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished
29853 by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors," pursued my
29854 guardian. "When those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses
29855 from the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be
29856 astonished too!"
     
29857 He checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the
29858 wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead.
     
29859 "Well, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave
29860 to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada
29861 upon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance
29862 of another separation from a friend. Therefore I have particularly
29863 begged of Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not
29864 to move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month,
29865 next year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can
29866 wait."
     
29867 But I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I
29868 thought, had Mr. Woodcourt.
     
29869 "So he tells me," returned my guardian. "Very good. He has made his
29870 protest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to
29871 be said about it. Now I come to Mrs. Woodcourt. How do you like her,
29872 my dear?"
     
29873 In answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked
29874 her very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be.
     
29875 "I think so too," said my guardian. "Less pedigree? Not so much of
29876 Morgan ap -- what's his name?"
     
29877 That was what I meant, I acknowledged, though he was a very harmless
29878 person, even when we had had more of him.
     
29879 "Still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains," said
29880 my guardian. "I agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better
29881 for a time than retain Mrs. Woodcourt here?"
     
29882 No. And yet -- 
     
29883 My guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say.
     
29884 I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could
29885 say. I had an undefined impression that it might have been better if
29886 we had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why
29887 even to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.
     
29888 "You see," said my guardian, "our neighbourhood is in Woodcourt's
29889 way, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is
29890 agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you."
     
29891 Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could
29892 not have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not quite easy in
29893 my mind. Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think!
     
29894 "It is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do
29895 better."
     
29896 "Sure, little woman?"
     
29897 Quite sure. I had had a moment's time to think, since I had urged
29898 that duty on myself, and I was quite sure.
     
29899 "Good," said my guardian. "It shall be done. Carried unanimously."
     
29900 "Carried unanimously," I repeated, going on with my work.
     
29901 It was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting.
29902 It had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never
29903 resumed. I showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I
29904 had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were
29905 to come out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme.
     
29906 "You said, dear guardian, when we spoke of Mr. Woodcourt before Ada
29907 left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another
29908 country. Have you been advising him since?"
     
29909 "Yes, little woman, pretty often."
     
29910 "Has he decided to do so?"
     
29911 "I rather think not."
     
29912 "Some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?" said I.
     
29913 "Why -- yes -- perhaps," returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a
29914 very deliberate manner. "About half a year hence or so, there is a
29915 medical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in
29916 Yorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated -- streams and
29917 streets, town and country, mill and moor -- and seems to present an
29918 opening for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may
29919 sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the
29920 ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough
29921 after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good
29922 service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I
29923 suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road,
29924 instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care
29925 for. It is Woodcourt's kind."
     
29926 "And will he get this appointment?" I asked.
     
29927 "Why, little woman," returned my guardian, smiling, "not being an
29928 oracle, I cannot confidently say, but I think so. His reputation
29929 stands very high; there were people from that part of the country in
29930 the shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has the
29931 best chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a
29932 very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great
29933 amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will
29934 gather about it, it may be fairly hoped."
     
29935 "The poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it
29936 falls on Mr. Woodcourt, guardian."
     
29937 "You are right, little woman; that I am sure they will."
     
29938 We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of
29939 Bleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his
29940 side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered.
     
29941 I now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner
29942 where she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenever I found
29943 I had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to
29944 Chancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and
29945 used to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming
29946 in (being quite at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of
29947 becoming troublesome just yet.
     
29948 On these occasions I frequently found Richard absent. At other times
29949 he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of
29950 his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I
29951 would come upon him lingering at the door of Mr. Vholes's office.
29952 Sometimes I would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and
29953 biting his nails. I often met him wandering in Lincoln's Inn, near
29954 the place where I had first seen him, oh how different, how
29955 different!
     
29956 That the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I
29957 used to see burning after dark in Mr. Vholes's office I knew very
29958 well. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in
29959 debt, and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was
29960 meant by Mr. Vholes's shoulder being at the wheel -- as I still heard
29961 it was. My dear made the best of housekeepers and tried hard to save,
29962 but I knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day.
     
29963 She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned
29964 and graced it so that it became another place. Paler than she had
29965 been at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when
29966 she was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that
29967 I half believed she was blinded by her love for Richard to his
29968 ruinous career.
     
29969 I went one day to dine with them while I was under this impression.
29970 As I turned into Symond's Inn, I met little Miss Flite coming out.
29971 She had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as
29972 she still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from
29973 that ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday
29974 at five o'clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which
29975 never appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule
29976 of documents on her arm.
     
29977 "My dear!" she began. "So delighted! How do you do! So glad to see
29978 you. And you are going to visit our interesting Jarndyce wards? TO be
29979 sure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see
29980 you."
     
29981 "Then Richard is not come in yet?" said I. "I am glad of that, for I
29982 was afraid of being a little late."
     
29983 "No, he is not come in," returned Miss Flite. "He has had a long day
29984 in court. I left him there with Vholes. You don't like Vholes, I
29985 hope? DON'T like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!"
     
29986 "I am afraid you see Richard oftener than ever now," said I.
     
29987 "My dearest," returned Miss Flite, "daily and hourly. You know what I
29988 told you of the attraction on the Chancellor's table? My dear, next
29989 to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to
29990 amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?"
     
29991 It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was
29992 no surprise.
     
29993 "In short, my valued friend," pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips
29994 to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, "I must tell
29995 you a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted,
29996 and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es."
     
29997 "Indeed?" said I.
     
29998 "Ye-es," repeated Miss Flite in her most genteel accents, "my
29999 executor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.)
30000 I have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch
30001 that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance."
     
30002 It made me sigh to think of him.
     
30003 "I did at one time mean," said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, "to
30004 nominate, constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my
30005 charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor
30006 man, so I have appointed his successor. Don't mention it. This is in
30007 confidence."
     
30008 She carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded
30009 piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke.
     
30010 "Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds."
     
30011 "Really, Miss Flite?" said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her
30012 confidence received with an appearance of interest.
     
30013 She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy.
30014 "Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with
30015 all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust,
30016 Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly,
30017 Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and
30018 Spinach!"
     
30019 The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen
30020 in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her
30021 birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips,
30022 quite chilled me.
     
30023 This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have
30024 dispensed with the company of Mr. Vholes, when Richard (who arrived
30025 within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner.
30026 Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some
30027 minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we
30028 were to eat and drink. Mr. Vholes took that opportunity of holding a
30029 little conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window
30030 where I was sitting and began upon Symond's Inn.
     
30031 "A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official
30032 one," said Mr. Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to
30033 make it clearer for me.
     
30034 "There is not much to see here," said I.
     
30035 "Nor to hear, miss," returned Mr. Vholes. "A little music does
30036 occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon
30037 eject it. I hope Mr. Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish
30038 him?"
     
30039 I thanked Mr. Vholes and said he was quite well.
     
30040 "I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his
30041 friends myself," said Mr. Vholes, "and I am aware that the gentlemen
30042 of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an
30043 unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and
30044 evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of
30045 prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find
30046 Mr. C. looking, Miss Summerson?"
     
30047 "He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious."
     
30048 "Just so," said Mr. Vholes.
     
30049 He stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the
30050 ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if
30051 they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there
30052 were not a human passion or emotion in his nature.
     
30053 "Mr. Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?" he resumed.
     
30054 "Mr. Woodcourt is his disinterested friend," I answered.
     
30055 "But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance."
     
30056 "That can do little for an unhappy mind," said I.
     
30057 "Just so," said Mr. Vholes.
     
30058 So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were
30059 wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were
30060 something of the vampire in him.
     
30061 "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved
30062 hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in
30063 black kid or out of it, "this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr.
30064 C.'s."
     
30065 I begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged
30066 when they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and
30067 when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When
30068 Richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now
30069 darkened his life.
     
30070 "Just so," assented Mr. Vholes again. "Still, with a view to
30071 everything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission,
30072 Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very
30073 ill-advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.'s
30074 connexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself,
30075 but also to my own reputation -- dear to myself as a professional man
30076 aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom
30077 I am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even
30078 say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support."
     
30079 "It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better
30080 marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Vholes," said I, "if
30081 Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which
30082 you are engaged with him."
     
30083 Mr. Vholes, with a noiseless cough -- or rather gasp -- into one of his
30084 black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even
30085 that.
     
30086 "Miss Summerson," he said, "it may be so; and I freely admit that the
30087 young lady who has taken Mr. C.'s name upon herself in so ill-advised
30088 a manner -- you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out
30089 that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.'s connexions -- is a
30090 highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much
30091 with general society in any but a professional character; still I
30092 trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young
30093 lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did
30094 give much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady
30095 is equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I
30096 have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in
30097 their way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.'s pursuit of his
30098 interests -- "
     
30099 "Oh! His interests, Mr. Vholes!"
     
30100 "Pardon me," returned Mr. Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward
30101 and dispassionate manner. "Mr. C. takes certain interests under
30102 certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference
30103 to Mr. C,'s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss
30104 Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my
30105 desire that everything should be openly carried on -- I used those
30106 words, for I happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is
30107 producible at any time -- I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down
30108 the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client
30109 of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to
30110 say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I HAVE
30111 carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over
30112 to any connexion of Mr. C.'s on any account. As open as I was to Mr.
30113 Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional
30114 duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say,
30115 unpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.'s affairs in a very
30116 bad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I
30117 regard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. Am I here, sir?
30118 Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of
30119 some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, for which I have to
30120 thank you very much, sir!"
     
30121 He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came
30122 into the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Vholes's
30123 scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel
30124 that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client's progress.
     
30125 We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard,
30126 anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Vholes (who took off his gloves
30127 to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I
30128 doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host's
30129 face. I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress,
30130 abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at
30131 other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large
30132 bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a
30133 restlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the
30134 expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not
30135 like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty
30136 had all fallen away.
     
30137 He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to
30138 be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with
30139 Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all
30140 gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known
30141 little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from
30142 the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like
30143 the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful.
     
30144 Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me
30145 there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not
30146 appear to be interesting to Mr. Vholes, though he occasionally made a
30147 gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and
30148 said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his
30149 office.
     
30150 "Always devoted to business, Vholes!" cried Richard.
     
30151 "Yes, Mr. C.," he returned, "the interests of clients are never to be
30152 neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional
30153 man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his
30154 fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the
30155 pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly
30156 irrespective of your own interests, Mr. C."
     
30157 Richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Vholes
30158 out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good
30159 fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very
30160 good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he
30161 had begun to doubt Mr. Vholes.
     
30162 Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put
30163 things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who
30164 attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and
30165 quietly sat down to sing some of Richard's favourites, the lamp being
30166 first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his
30167 eyes.
     
30168 I sat between them, at my dear girl's side, and felt very melancholy
30169 listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he
30170 darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time,
30171 rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr.
30172 Woodcourt came in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully,
30173 half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and
30174 where he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in
30175 a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night;
30176 and Richard readily consenting, they went out together.
     
30177 They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still
30178 sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her
30179 waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side),
30180 but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without
30181 striking any note.
     
30182 "Esther, my dearest," she said, breaking silence, "Richard is never
30183 so well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Allan
30184 Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that."
     
30185 I pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because Mr.
30186 Woodcourt had come to her cousin John's house and had known us all
30187 there, and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had
30188 always liked him, and -- and so forth.
     
30189 "All true," said Ada, "but that he is such a devoted friend to us we
30190 owe to you."
     
30191 I thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more
30192 about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her
30193 trembling.
     
30194 "Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife
30195 indeed. You shall teach me."
     
30196 I teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand that was fluttering
30197 over the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak, that
30198 it was she who had something to say to me.
     
30199 "When I married Richard I was not insensible to what was before him.
30200 I had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never
30201 known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I
30202 understood the danger he was in, dear Esther."
     
30203 "I know, I know, my darling."
     
30204 "When we were married I had some little hope that I might be able to
30205 convince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new
30206 way as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my
30207 sake -- as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have
30208 married him just the same, Esther. Just the same!"
     
30209 In the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still -- a
30210 firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying
30211 away with them -- I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones.
     
30212 "You are not to think, my dearest Esther, that I fail to see what you
30213 see and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I
30214 do. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely
30215 know Richard better than my love does."
     
30216 She spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand expressed
30217 such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear,
30218 dear girl!
     
30219 "I see him at his worst every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know
30220 every change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite
30221 determined, Esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him that I
30222 grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him,
30223 when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when
30224 he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this,
30225 and this supports me."
     
30226 I felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I
30227 now thought I began to know what it was.
     
30228 "And something else supports me, Esther."
     
30229 She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in
30230 motion.
     
30231 "I look forward a little while, and I don't know what great aid may
30232 come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be
30233 something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with
30234 greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him
30235 back."
     
30236 Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her
30237 in mine.
     
30238 "If that little creature should fail too, Esther, I still look
30239 forward. I look forward a long while, through years and years, and
30240 think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a
30241 beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him
30242 and a blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as
30243 he used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the
30244 sunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, 'I
30245 thank God this is my father! Ruined by a fatal inheritance, and
30246 restored through me!'"
     
30247 Oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against
30248 me!
     
30249 "These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, and I know they will. Though
30250 sometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when I
30251 look at Richard."
     
30252 I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. Sobbing and
30253 weeping, she replied, "That he may not live to see his child."
     
     
     
     
30254 CHAPTER LXI
     
30255 A Discovery
     
     
30256 The days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl
30257 brightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I
30258 never wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in
30259 my memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will
30260 shine for ever.
     
30261 Not a day passed without my going there, of course. At first I found
30262 Mr. Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano
30263 and talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides my very much
30264 mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard
30265 poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too
30266 inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada's life. I clearly
30267 perceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved,
30268 after much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr. Skimpole
30269 and try delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great
30270 consideration that made me bold.
     
30271 I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley, for Somers Town. As I
30272 approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I
30273 felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr.
30274 Skimpole and how extremely likely it was that he would signally
30275 defeat me. However, I thought that being there, I would go through
30276 with it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Skimpole's
30277 door -- literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone -- and after a
30278 long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area
30279 when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to
30280 light the fire with.
     
30281 Mr. Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a
30282 little, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he
30283 asked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I
30284 have his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment
30285 daughter? Or would I have all the daughters at once in a perfect
30286 nosegay?
     
30287 I replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself
30288 only if he would give me leave.
     
30289 "My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! Of course," he said, bringing
30290 his chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, "of
30291 course it's not business. Then it's pleasure!"
     
30292 I said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not
30293 quite a pleasant matter.
     
30294 "Then, my dear Miss Summerson," said he with the frankest gaiety,
30295 "don't allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is NOT a
30296 pleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature,
30297 in every point of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am
30298 imperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasant
30299 matter, how much less should you! So that's disposed of, and we will
30300 talk of something else."
     
30301 Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still
30302 wished to pursue the subject.
     
30303 "I should think it a mistake," said Mr. Skimpole with his airy laugh,
30304 "if I thought Miss Summerson capable of making one. But I don't!"
     
30305 "Mr. Skimpole," said I, raising my eyes to his, "I have so often
30306 heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of
30307 life -- "
     
30308 "Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who's the junior
30309 partner? D?" said Mr. Skimpole, brightly. "Not an idea of them!"
     
30310 " -- That perhaps," I went on, "you will excuse my boldness on that
30311 account. I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is
30312 poorer than he was."
     
30313 "Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "So am I, they tell me."
     
30314 "And in very embarrassed circumstances."
     
30315 "Parallel case, exactly!" said Mr. Skimpole with a delighted
30316 countenance.
     
30317 "This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I
30318 think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by
30319 visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind,
30320 it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that -- if you
30321 would -- not -- "
     
30322 I was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by
30323 both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way
30324 anticipated it.
     
30325 "Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly
30326 not. Why SHOULD I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I
30327 don't go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain
30328 comes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at
30329 our dear Richard's lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates
30330 why. Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so
30331 captivating in them, begin to think, 'This is a man who wants
30332 pounds.' So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but because
30333 tradespeople always want them of me. Next, our young friends begin to
30334 think, becoming mercenary, 'This is the man who HAD pounds, who
30335 borrowed them,' which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our young
30336 friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate
30337 in their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see
30338 them, therefore? Absurd!"
     
30339 Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned
30340 thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite
30341 astonishing.
     
30342 "Besides," he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of
30343 light-hearted conviction, "if I don't go anywhere for pain -- which
30344 would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous
30345 thing to do -- why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I
30346 went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of
30347 mind, I should give them pain. The associations with me would be
30348 disagreeable. They might say, 'This is the man who had pounds and who
30349 can't pay pounds,' which I can't, of course; nothing could be more
30350 out of the question! Then kindness requires that I shouldn't go near
30351 them -- and I won't."
     
30352 He finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. Nothing but
30353 Miss Summerson's fine tact, he said, would have found this out for
30354 him.
     
30355 I was much disconcerted, but I reflected that if the main point were
30356 gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything
30357 leading to it. I had determined to mention something else, however,
30358 and I thought I was not to be put off in that.
     
30359 "Mr. Skimpole," said I, "I must take the liberty of saying before I
30360 conclude my visit that I was much surprised to learn, on the best
30361 authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor
30362 boy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that
30363 occasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would
30364 hurt him unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much
30365 surprised."
     
30366 "No? Really surprised, my dear Miss Summerson?" he returned
30367 inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows.
     
30368 "Greatly surprised."
     
30369 He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and
30370 whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his
30371 most engaging manner, "You know what a child I am. Why surprised?"
     
30372 I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he
30373 begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to
30374 understand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct seemed
30375 to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much
30376 amused and interested when he heard this and said, "No, really?" with
30377 ingenuous simplicity.
     
30378 "You know I don't intend to be responsible. I never could do it.
30379 Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me -- or below
30380 me," said Mr. Skimpole. "I don't even know which; but as I understand
30381 the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (always remarkable for her
30382 practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine
30383 it was chiefly a question of money, do you know?"
     
30384 I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this.
     
30385 "Ah! Then you see," said Mr. Skimpole, shaking his head, "I am
30386 hopeless of understanding it."
     
30387 I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my
30388 guardian's confidence for a bribe.
     
30389 "My dear Miss Summerson," he returned with a candid hilarity that was
30390 all his own, "I can't be bribed."
     
30391 "Not by Mr. Bucket?" said I.
     
30392 "No," said he. "Not by anybody. I don't attach any value to money. I
30393 don't care about it, I don't know about it, I don't want it, I don't
30394 keep it -- it goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?"
     
30395 I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the
30396 capacity for arguing the question.
     
30397 "On the contrary," said Mr. Skimpole, "I am exactly the man to be
30398 placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the
30399 rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in
30400 such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian
30401 baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far
30402 above suspicion as Caesar's wife."
     
30403 Anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful
30404 impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed
30405 the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in
30406 anybody else!
     
30407 "Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received
30408 into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.
30409 The boy being in bed, a man arrives -- like the house that Jack built.
30410 Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house
30411 and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a
30412 bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received
30413 into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.
30414 Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man
30415 who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in
30416 a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well.
30417 Should the Skimpole have refused the note? WHY should the Skimpole
30418 have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket, 'What's this for?
30419 I don't understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.' Bucket
30420 still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole,
30421 not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole
30422 perceives them. What are they? Skimpole reasons with himself, this is
30423 a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person
30424 of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception
30425 and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they
30426 run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us
30427 comfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer and
30428 intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong
30429 faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very
30430 useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want
30431 it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket's weapons; shall
30432 I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And
30433 again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is
30434 blameable in Bucket to offer the note -- much more blameable in Bucket,
30435 because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of
30436 Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the
30437 general cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The
30438 state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that's
30439 all he does!"
     
30440 I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took
30441 my leave. Mr. Skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would
30442 not hear of my returning home attended only by "Little Coavinses,"
30443 and accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way with a
30444 variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that
30445 he should never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out
30446 for him about our young friends.
     
30447 As it so happened that I never saw Mr. Skimpole again, I may at once
30448 finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and
30449 my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his
30450 having heartlessly disregarded my guardian's entreaties (as we
30451 afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being
30452 heavily in my guardian's debt had nothing to do with their
30453 separation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary
30454 behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which
30455 was published and which showed him to have been the victim of a
30456 combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was
30457 considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself
30458 than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It
30459 was this: "Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is
30460 the incarnation of selfishness."
     
30461 And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly
30462 indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance
30463 occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in
30464 my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as
30465 belonging to a part of my life that was gone -- gone like my infancy or
30466 my childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that
30467 subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has
30468 recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the
30469 last words of these pages, which I see now not so very far before me.
     
30470 The months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the
30471 hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the
30472 miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court
30473 day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew
30474 there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became
30475 one of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any of the
30476 gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there.
     
30477 So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow
30478 in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh
30479 air now "but for Woodcourt." It was only Mr. Woodcourt who could
30480 occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse
30481 him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed
30482 us greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the
30483 months went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued
30484 his errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that
30485 his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense
30486 by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a
30487 gamester.
     
30488 I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at
30489 night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach; sometimes my
30490 guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home
30491 together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o'clock. I
30492 could not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for
30493 I was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to
30494 finish what I was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour
30495 when I bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss
30496 for the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr. Woodcourt went with me, as
30497 it was dusk.
     
30498 When we came to the usual place of meeting -- it was close by, and Mr.
30499 Woodcourt had often accompanied me before -- my guardian was not there.
30500 We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs
30501 of him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he
30502 had come and gone away, and Mr. Woodcourt proposed to walk home with
30503 me.
     
30504 It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very
30505 short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and Ada
30506 the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done -- my
30507 appreciation of it had risen above all words then -- but I hoped he
30508 might not be without some understanding of what I felt so strongly.
     
30509 Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was
30510 out and that Mrs. Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same
30511 room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful
30512 lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart,
30513 the very same room from which my guardian and I had watched them
30514 going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and
30515 promise.
     
30516 We were standing by the opened window looking down into the street
30517 when Mr. Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved
30518 me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to
30519 him. I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and
30520 compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know
30521 it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I
30522 had. Too late.
     
30523 "When I returned," he told me, "when I came back, no richer than when
30524 I went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so
30525 inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish
30526 thought -- "
     
30527 "Oh, Mr. Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!" I entreated him. "I do not
30528 deserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time,
30529 many!"
     
30530 "Heaven knows, beloved of my life," said he, "that my praise is not a
30531 lover's praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you
30532 see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens,
30533 what sacred admiration and what love she wins."
     
30534 "Oh, Mr. Woodcourt," cried I, "it is a great thing to win love, it is
30535 a great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and
30536 the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and
30537 sorrow -- joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it
30538 better; but I am not free to think of yours."
     
30539 I said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when
30540 I heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true,
30541 I aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that.
30542 Although I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could
30543 be worthier of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me,
30544 and an impulse to me, and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was
30545 derived from him when I thought so.
     
30546 He broke the silence.
     
30547 "I should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will
30548 evermore be as dear to me as now" -- and the deep earnestness with
30549 which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep -- "if, after
30550 her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it.
30551 Dear Esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I
30552 took abroad was exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have
30553 always hoped, in the first hour when I seemed to stand in any ray of
30554 good fortune, to tell you this. I have always feared that I should
30555 tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night.
30556 I distress you. I have said enough."
     
30557 Something seemed to pass into my place that was like the angel he
30558 thought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I
30559 wished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he
30560 showed that first commiseration for me.
     
30561 "Dear Mr. Woodcourt," said I, "before we part to-night, something is
30562 left for me to say. I never could say it as I wish -- I never
30563 shall -- but -- "
     
30564 I had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his
30565 affliction before I could go on.
     
30566 " -- I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its
30567 remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I
30568 know you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know what a
30569 noble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me
30570 could have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none
30571 that could give it such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall
30572 make me better."
     
30573 He covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. How could
30574 I ever be worthy of those tears?
     
30575 "If, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together -- in tending
30576 Richard and Ada, and I hope in many happier scenes of life -- you ever
30577 find anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it
30578 used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and
30579 that I shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr.
30580 Woodcourt, never believe that I forget this night or that while my
30581 heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been
30582 beloved by you."
     
30583 He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt
30584 still more encouraged.
     
30585 "I am induced by what you said just now," said I, "to hope that you
30586 have succeeded in your endeavour."
     
30587 "I have," he answered. "With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who
30588 know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have
30589 succeeded."
     
30590 "Heaven bless him for it," said I, giving him my hand; "and heaven
30591 bless you in all you do!"
     
30592 "I shall do it better for the wish," he answered; "it will make me
30593 enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you."
     
30594 "Ah! Richard!" I exclaimed involuntarily, "What will he do when you
30595 are gone!"
     
30596 "I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss
30597 Summerson, even if I were."
     
30598 One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I
30599 knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I
30600 reserved it.
     
30601 "Mr. Woodcourt," said I, "you will be glad to know from my lips
30602 before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright
30603 before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or
30604 desire."
     
30605 It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
     
30606 "From my childhood I have been," said I, "the object of the untiring
30607 goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every
30608 tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in
30609 the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day."
     
30610 "I share those feelings," he returned. "You speak of Mr. Jarndyce."
     
30611 "You know his virtues well," said I, "but few can know the greatness
30612 of his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities
30613 have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping
30614 out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage
30615 and respect had not been his already -- which I know they are -- they
30616 would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it
30617 would have awakened in you towards him for my sake."
     
30618 He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave
30619 him my hand again.
     
30620 "Good night," I said, "Good-bye."
     
30621 "The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this
30622 theme between us for ever."
     
30623 "Yes."
     
30624 "Good night; good-bye."
     
30625 He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His
30626 love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon
30627 me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again
30628 and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.
     
30629 But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me
30630 the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to
30631 him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the
30632 triumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died
30633 away. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be
30634 animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy
30635 my path, how much easier than his!
     
     
     
     
30636 CHAPTER LXII
     
30637 Another Discovery
     
     
30638 I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the
30639 courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little
30640 reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the
30641 dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light
30642 to read my guardian's letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it
30643 from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own
30644 clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my
30645 pillow.
     
30646 I was up very early in the morning and called Charley to come for a
30647 walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and
30648 arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I
30649 had a good time still for Charley's lesson before breakfast; Charley
30650 (who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of
30651 grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether
30652 very notable. When my guardian appeared he said, "Why, little woman,
30653 you look fresher than your flowers!" And Mrs. Woodcourt repeated and
30654 translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my
30655 being like a mountain with the sun upon it.
     
30656 This was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the
30657 mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my
30658 opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his
30659 own room -- the room of last night -- by himself. Then I made an excuse
30660 to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.
     
30661 "Well, Dame Durden?" said my guardian; the post had brought him
30662 several letters, and he was writing. "You want money?"
     
30663 "No, indeed, I have plenty in hand."
     
30664 "There never was such a Dame Durden," said my guardian, "for making
30665 money last."
     
30666 He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me.
30667 I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never
30668 seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it
30669 which made me think, "He has been doing some great kindness this
30670 morning."
     
30671 "There never was," said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me,
30672 "such a Dame Durden for making money last."
     
30673 He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much
30674 that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was
30675 always put at his side -- for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I
30676 talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him -- I hardly liked
30677 to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not
30678 disturb it at all.
     
30679 "Dear guardian," said I, "I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss
30680 in anything?"
     
30681 "Remiss in anything, my dear!"
     
30682 "Have I not been what I have meant to be since -- I brought the answer
30683 to your letter, guardian?"
     
30684 "You have been everything I could desire, my love."
     
30685 "I am very glad indeed to hear that," I returned. "You know, you said
30686 to me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes."
     
30687 "Yes," said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about
30688 me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my
30689 face, smiling.
     
30690 "Since then," said I, "we have never spoken on the subject except
30691 once."
     
30692 "And then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my
30693 dear."
     
30694 "And I said," I timidly reminded him, "but its mistress remained."
     
30695 He still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same
30696 bright goodness in his face.
     
30697 "Dear guardian," said I, "I know how you have felt all that has
30698 happened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has
30699 passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again,
30700 perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so.
30701 I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please."
     
30702 "See," he returned gaily, "what a sympathy there must be between us!
30703 I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted -- it's a large
30704 exception -- in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall
30705 we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?"
     
30706 "When you please."
     
30707 "Next month?"
     
30708 "Next month, dear guardian."
     
30709 "The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life -- the
30710 day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than
30711 any other man in the world -- the day on which I give Bleak House its
30712 little mistress -- shall be next month then," said my guardian.
     
30713 I put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the
30714 day when I brought my answer.
     
30715 A servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite
30716 unnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant's
30717 shoulder. "Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson," said he, rather out of
30718 breath, "with all apologies for intruding, WILL you allow me to order
30719 up a person that's on the stairs and that objects to being left there
30720 in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank
30721 you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will
30722 you?" said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters.
     
30723 This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,
30724 unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and
30725 deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid
30726 of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.
     
30727 "Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce," he then began, putting down his hat and
30728 opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger,
30729 "you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise
30730 knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line is his line
30731 principally, and he's what you may call a dealer in bills. That's
30732 about what YOU are, you know, ain't you?" said Mr. Bucket, stopping a
30733 little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly
30734 suspicious of him.
     
30735 He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was
30736 seized with a violent fit of coughing.
     
30737 "Now, moral, you know!" said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.
30738 "Don't you contradict when there ain't no occasion, and you won't be
30739 took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I've
30740 been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester
30741 Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I've been in and out and
30742 about his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly
30743 occupied by Krook, marine store dealer -- a relation of this
30744 gentleman's that you saw in his lifetime if I don't mistake?"
     
30745 My guardian replied, "Yes."
     
30746 "Well! You are to understand," said Mr. Bucket, "that this gentleman
30747 he come into Krook's property, and a good deal of magpie property
30748 there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you,
30749 of no use to nobody!"
     
30750 The cunning of Mr. Bucket's eye and the masterly manner in which he
30751 contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful
30752 auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case
30753 according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.
30754 Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in
30755 quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.
30756 Smallweed's being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face
30757 with the closest attention.
     
30758 "Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes
30759 into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don't you see?" said
30760 Mr. Bucket.
     
30761 "To which? Say that again," cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp
30762 voice.
     
30763 "To rummage," repeated Mr. Bucket. "Being a prudent man and
30764 accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage
30765 among the papers as you have come into; don't you?"
     
30766 "Of course I do," cried Mr. Smallweed.
     
30767 "Of course you do," said Mr. Bucket conversationally, "and much to
30768 blame you would be if you didn't. And so you chance to find, you
30769 know," Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful
30770 raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated, "and so you
30771 chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to
30772 it. Don't you?"
     
30773 Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded
30774 assent.
     
30775 "And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and
30776 convenience -- all in good time, for you're not curious to read it, and
30777 why should you be? -- what do you find it to be but a will, you see.
30778 That's the drollery of it," said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air
30779 of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed, who still had
30780 the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; "what do
30781 you find it to be but a will?"
     
30782 "I don't know that it's good as a will or as anything else," snarled
30783 Mr. Smallweed.
     
30784 Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment -- he had slipped and shrunk
30785 down in his chair into a mere bundle -- as if he were much disposed to
30786 pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the
30787 same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us.
     
30788 "Notwithstanding which," said Mr. Bucket, "you get a little doubtful
30789 and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of
30790 your own."
     
30791 "Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?" asked Mr. Smallweed with
30792 his hand to his ear.
     
30793 "A very tender mind."
     
30794 "Ho! Well, go on," said Mr. Smallweed.
     
30795 "And as you've heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated
30796 Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card
30797 Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books,
30798 and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with 'em, and
30799 always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think -- and you
30800 never was more correct in your born days -- 'Ecod, if I don't look
30801 about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.'"
     
30802 "Now, mind how you put it, Bucket," cried the old man anxiously with
30803 his hand at his ear. "Speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick
30804 me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken to bits!"
     
30805 Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as
30806 he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed's coughing and his vicious
30807 ejaculations of "Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I've no breath in my body!
30808 I'm worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!"
30809 Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before.
     
30810 "So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises,
30811 you take me into your confidence, don't you?"
     
30812 I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill
30813 will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he admitted
30814 this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was the very
30815 last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he
30816 could by any possibility have kept him out of it.
     
30817 "And I go into the business with you -- very pleasant we are over it;
30818 and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get
30819 yourself into a most precious line if you don't come out with that
30820 there will," said Mr. Bucket emphatically; "and accordingly you
30821 arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr.
30822 Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you
30823 trusting yourself to him for your reward; that's about where it is,
30824 ain't it?"
     
30825 "That's what was agreed," Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad
30826 grace.
     
30827 "In consequence of which," said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his agreeable
30828 manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, "you've got
30829 that will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing
30830 that remains for you to do is just to out with it!"
     
30831 Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and
30832 having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr.
30833 Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and
30834 his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my
30835 guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many
30836 declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor
30837 industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce's honour not to
30838 let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took
30839 from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much
30840 singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had
30841 long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr.
30842 Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of
30843 a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce. As he gave it to my
30844 guardian, he whispered behind his fingers, "Hadn't settled how to
30845 make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out
30846 twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon
30847 him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably
30848 long, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain't one of
30849 the family that wouldn't sell the other for a pound or two, except
30850 the old lady -- and she's only out of it because she's too weak in her
30851 mind to drive a bargain."
     
30852 "Mr Bucket," said my guardian aloud, "whatever the worth of this
30853 paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it
30854 be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Smallweed remunerated
30855 accordingly."
     
30856 "Not according to your merits, you know," said Mr. Bucket in friendly
30857 explanation to Mr. Smallweed. "Don't you be afraid of that. According
30858 to its value."
     
30859 "That is what I mean," said my guardian. "You may observe, Mr.
30860 Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain
30861 truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many
30862 years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will
30863 immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the
30864 cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all
30865 other parties interested."
     
30866 "Mr. Jarndyce can't say fairer than that, you understand," observed
30867 Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. "And it being now made clear to you
30868 that nobody's a-going to be wronged -- which must be a great relief to
30869 YOUR mind -- we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home
30870 again."
     
30871 He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning,
30872 and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting
30873 went his way.
     
30874 We went our way too, which was to Lincoln's Inn, as quickly as
30875 possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table in
30876 his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of
30877 papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr. Kenge
30878 expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight
30879 of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his double eye-glass as
30880 he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than ever.
     
30881 "I hope," said Mr. Kenge, "that the genial influence of Miss
30882 Summerson," he bowed to me, "may have induced Mr. Jarndyce," he bowed
30883 to him, "to forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and
30884 towards a court which are -- shall I say, which take their place in the
30885 stately vista of the pillars of our profession?"
     
30886 "I am inclined to think," returned my guardian, "that Miss Summerson
30887 has seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert
30888 any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the
30889 occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I lay this paper on your
30890 desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my
30891 hands."
     
30892 He did so shortly and distinctly.
     
30893 "It could not, sir," said Mr. Kenge, "have been stated more plainly
30894 and to the purpose if it had been a case at law."
     
30895 "Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the
30896 purpose?" said my guardian.
     
30897 "Oh, fie!" said Mr. Kenge.
     
30898 At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper,
30899 but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had
30900 opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became
30901 amazed. "Mr. Jarndyce," he said, looking off it, "you have perused
30902 this?"
     
30903 "Not I!" returned my guardian.
     
30904 "But, my dear sir," said Mr. Kenge, "it is a will of later date than
30905 any in the suit. It appears to be all in the testator's handwriting.
30906 It is duly executed and attested. And even if intended to be
30907 cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks
30908 of fire, it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!"
     
30909 "Well!" said my guardian. "What is that to me?"
     
30910 "Mr. Guppy!" cried Mr. Kenge, raising his voice. "I beg your pardon,
30911 Mr. Jarndyce."
     
30912 "Sir."
     
30913 "Mr. Vholes of Symond's Inn. My compliments. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
30914 Glad to speak with him."
     
30915 Mr. Guppy disappeared.
     
30916 "You ask me what is this to you, Mr. Jarndyce. If you had perused
30917 this document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest
30918 considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still
30919 leaving it a very handsome one," said Mr. Kenge, waving his hand
30920 persuasively and blandly. "You would further have seen that the
30921 interests of Mr. Richard Carstone and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs.
30922 Richard Carstone, are very materially advanced by it."
     
30923 "Kenge," said my guardian, "if all the flourishing wealth that the
30924 suit brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two
30925 young cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask ME to
30926 believe that any good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?"
     
30927 "Oh, really, Mr. Jarndyce! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is
30928 a very great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a
30929 very great system, a very great system. Really, really!"
     
30930 My guardian said no more, and Mr. Vholes arrived. He was modestly
30931 impressed by Mr. Kenge's professional eminence.
     
30932 "How do you do, Mr. Vholes? Will you be so good as to take a chair
30933 here by me and look over this paper?"
     
30934 Mr. Vholes did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. He
30935 was not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything. When he
30936 had well examined it, he retired with Mr. Kenge into a window, and
30937 shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length.
30938 I was not surprised to observe Mr. Kenge inclined to dispute what
30939 he said before he had said much, for I knew that no two people ever
30940 did agree about anything in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. But he seemed
30941 to get the better of Mr. Kenge too in a conversation that sounded
30942 as if it were almost composed of the words "Receiver-General,"
30943 "Accountant-General," "report," "estate," and "costs." When they had
30944 finished, they came back to Mr. Kenge's table and spoke aloud.
     
30945 "Well! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr. Vholes," said Mr.
30946 Kenge.
     
30947 Mr. Vholes said, "Very much so."
     
30948 "And a very important document, Mr. Vholes," said Mr. Kenge.
     
30949 Again Mr. Vholes said, "Very much so."
     
30950 "And as you say, Mr. Vholes, when the cause is in the paper next
30951 term, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in
30952 it," said Mr. Kenge, looking loftily at my guardian.
     
30953 Mr. Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep
30954 respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an
30955 authority.
     
30956 "And when," asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr.
30957 Kenge had rattled his money and Mr. Vholes had picked his pimples,
30958 "when is next term?"
     
30959 "Next term, Mr. Jarndyce, will be next month," said Mr. Kenge. "Of
30960 course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this
30961 document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of
30962 course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in
30963 the paper."
     
30964 "To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention."
     
30965 "Still bent, my dear sir," said Mr. Kenge, showing us through the
30966 outer office to the door, "still bent, even with your enlarged mind,
30967 on echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr.
30968 Jarndyce, a very prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr.
30969 Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr.
30970 Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system?
30971 Now, really, really!"
     
30972 He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it
30973 were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on
30974 the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages.
     
     
     
     
30975 CHAPTER LXIII
     
30976 Steel and Iron
     
     
30977 George's Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and
30978 George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his
30979 rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain
30980 hand with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is George so
30981 occupied. He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north
30982 to look about him.
     
30983 As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green
30984 woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and
30985 ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching
30986 fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the
30987 features of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper,
30988 looking about him and always looking for something he has come to
30989 find.
     
30990 At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of
30991 iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the
30992 trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and
30993 asks a workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts.
     
30994 "Why, master," quoth the workman, "do I know my own name?"
     
30995 "'Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?" asks the trooper.
     
30996 "Rouncewell's? Ah! You're right."
     
30997 "And where might it be now?" asks the trooper with a glance before
30998 him.
     
30999 "The bank, the factory, or the house?" the workman wants to know.
     
31000 "Hum! Rouncewell's is so great apparently," mutters the trooper,
31001 stroking his chin, "that I have as good as half a mind to go back
31002 again. Why, I don't know which I want. Should I find Mr. Rouncewell
31003 at the factory, do you think?"
     
31004 "Tain't easy to say where you'd find him -- at this time of the day you
31005 might find either him or his son there, if he's in town; but his
31006 contracts take him away."
     
31007 And which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys -- the tallest
31008 ones! Yes, he sees THEM. Well! Let him keep his eye on those
31009 chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he'll
31010 see 'em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall
31011 which forms one side of the street. That's Rouncewell's.
     
31012 The trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about
31013 him. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much
31014 disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of
31015 Rouncewell's hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of
31016 Rouncewell's hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to
31017 be invading the whole town. They are very sinewy and strong, are
31018 Rouncewell's hands -- a little sooty too.
     
31019 He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great
31020 perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety
31021 of shapes -- in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in
31022 axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched
31023 into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery;
31024 mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of
31025 it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it
31026 showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron,
31027 white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a
31028 Babel of iron sounds.
     
31029 "This is a place to make a man's head ache too!" says the trooper,
31030 looking about him for a counting-house. "Who comes here? This is very
31031 like me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if
31032 likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir."
     
31033 "Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?"
     
31034 "Excuse me. Young Mr. Rouncewell, I believe?"
     
31035 "Yes."
     
31036 "I was looking for your father, sir. I wish to have a word with him."
     
31037 The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time,
31038 for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to
31039 be found. "Very like me before I was set up -- devilish like me!"
31040 thinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a building in the yard
31041 with an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the
31042 office, Mr. George turns very red.
     
31043 "What name shall I say to my father?" asks the young man.
     
31044 George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers "Steel," and
31045 is so presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office,
31046 who sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of
31047 paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes.
31048 It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view
31049 below. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron,
31050 purposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in
31051 various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke
31052 is seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys
31053 to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys.
     
31054 "I am at your service, Mr. Steel," says the gentleman when his
31055 visitor has taken a rusty chair.
     
31056 "Well, Mr. Rouncewell," George replies, leaning forward with his left
31057 arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting
31058 his brother's eye, "I am not without my expectations that in the
31059 present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served
31060 as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather
31061 partial to was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. I
31062 believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran
31063 away, and never did any good but in keeping away?"
     
31064 "Are you quite sure," returns the ironmaster in an altered voice,
31065 "that your name is Steel?"
     
31066 The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls
31067 him by his name, and grasps him by both hands.
     
31068 "You are too quick for me!" cries the trooper with the tears
31069 springing out of his eyes. "How do you do, my dear old fellow? I
31070 never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me
31071 as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!"
     
31072 They shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the
31073 trooper still coupling his "How do you do, my dear old fellow!" with
31074 his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been
31075 half so glad to see him as all this!
     
31076 "So far from it," he declares at the end of a full account of what
31077 has preceded his arrival there, "I had very little idea of making
31078 myself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my
31079 name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a
31080 letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had
31081 considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me."
     
31082 "We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,"
31083 returns his brother. "This is a great day at home, and you could not
31084 have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an
31085 agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he
31086 shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your
31087 travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a
31088 little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event,
31089 and you will be made the hero of it."
     
31090 Mr. George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he
31091 resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne,
31092 however, by his brother and his nephew -- concerning whom he renews his
31093 protestations that he never could have thought they would have been
31094 half so glad to see him -- he is taken home to an elegant house in all
31095 the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture
31096 of the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as
31097 are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their
31098 children. Here Mr. George is much dismayed by the graces and
31099 accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of Rosa, his
31100 niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these
31101 young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely
31102 taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a
31103 woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there
31104 is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment,
31105 and Mr. George comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge
31106 to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received
31107 with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr. George that night when
31108 he lies down in the state-bed of his brother's house to think of all
31109 these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the
31110 evening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner,
31111 over his counterpane.
     
31112 The brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster's room,
31113 where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how
31114 he thinks he may best dispose of George in his business, when George
31115 squeezes his hand and stops him.
     
31116 "Brother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly
31117 welcome, and a million times more to that for your more than
31118 brotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word as
31119 to them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How," says the
31120 trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at
31121 his brother, "how is my mother to be got to scratch me?"
     
31122 "I am not sure that I understand you, George," replies the
31123 ironmaster.
     
31124 "I say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must
31125 be got to do it somehow."
     
31126 "Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?"
     
31127 "Of course I do. In short," says the trooper, folding his arms more
31128 resolutely yet, "I mean -- TO -- scratch me!"
     
31129 "My dear George," returns his brother, "is it so indispensable that
31130 you should undergo that process?"
     
31131 "Quite! Absolutely! I couldn't be guilty of the meanness of coming
31132 back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have
31133 not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of
31134 your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and
31135 hold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of
31136 celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it's
31137 to be brought about."
     
31138 "I can tell you, George," replies the ironmaster deliberately, "how
31139 it is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as
31140 well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she
31141 recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world
31142 that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son?
31143 Do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against
31144 the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it?
31145 If you do, you are wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to
31146 remain UNscratched, I think." There is an amused smile on the
31147 ironmaster's face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply
31148 disappointed. "I think you may manage almost as well as if the thing
31149 were done, though."
     
31150 "How, brother?"
     
31151 "Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the
31152 misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know."
     
31153 "That's true!" says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully
31154 asks, with his hand on his brother's, "Would you mind mentioning
31155 that, brother, to your wife and family?"
     
31156 "Not at all."
     
31157 "Thank you. You wouldn't object to say, perhaps, that although an
31158 undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and
31159 not of the mean sort?"
     
31160 The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents.
     
31161 "Thank you. Thank you. It's a weight off my mind," says the trooper
31162 with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on
31163 each leg, "though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!"
     
31164 The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a
31165 certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the
31166 world is all on the trooper's side.
     
31167 "Well," he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, "next and last,
31168 those plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me
31169 to fall in here and take my place among the products of your
31170 perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It's more than
31171 brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,"
31172 shaking him a long time by the hand. "But the truth is, brother, I am
31173 a -- I am a kind of a weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular
31174 garden."
     
31175 "My dear George," returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady
31176 brow upon him and smiling confidently, "leave that to me, and let me
31177 try."
     
31178 George shakes his head. "You could do it, I have not a doubt, if
31179 anybody could; but it's not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas
31180 it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some
31181 trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness -- brought on
31182 by family sorrows -- and that he would rather have that help from our
31183 mother's son than from anybody else."
     
31184 "Well, my dear George," returns the other with a very slight shade
31185 upon his open face, "if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester
31186 Dedlock's household brigade -- "
     
31187 "There it is, brother," cries the trooper, checking him, with his
31188 hand upon his knee again; "there it is! You don't take kindly to that
31189 idea; I don't mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am.
31190 Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything
31191 about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry
31192 things with the same hand or to look at 'em from the same point. I
31193 don't say much about my garrison manners because I found myself
31194 pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn't be noticed here,
31195 I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold,
31196 where there's more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear
31197 old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir
31198 Leicester Dedlock's proposals. When I come over next year to give
31199 away the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep
31200 the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your
31201 ground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the
31202 Rouncewells as they'll be founded by you."
     
31203 "You know yourself, George," says the elder brother, returning the
31204 grip of his hand, "and perhaps you know me better than I know myself.
31205 Take your way. So that we don't quite lose one another again, take
31206 your way."
     
31207 "No fear of that!" returns the trooper. "Now, before I turn my
31208 horse's head homewards, brother, I will ask you -- if you'll be so
31209 good -- to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from
31210 these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the
31211 person it's written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence
31212 myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I
31213 want it to be both straightforward and delicate."
     
31214 Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but
31215 in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows:
     
     
31216    Miss Esther Summerson,
     
31217    A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket
31218    of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a
31219    certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you
31220    that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad,
31221    when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a
31222    young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I
31223    duly observed the same.
     
31224    I further take the liberty to make known to you that it
31225    was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that
31226    otherwise I would not have given it up, as appearing to
31227    be the most harmless in my possession, without being
31228    previously shot through the heart.
     
31229    I further take the liberty to mention that if I could have
31230    supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in
31231    existence, I never could and never would have rested until
31232    I had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing
31233    with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally
31234    been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and
31235    assuredly went over the side of a transport-ship at night
31236    in an Irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from
31237    the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from officers
31238    and men on board, and know to have been (officially)
31239    confirmed.
     
31240    I further take the liberty to state that in my humble
31241    quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever
31242    continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring
31243    servant and that I esteem the qualities you possess above
31244    all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch.
     
31245    I have the honour to be,
     
31246    GEORGE
     
     
31247 "A little formal," observes the elder brother, refolding it with a
31248 puzzled face.
     
31249 "But nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?" asks
31250 the younger.
     
31251 "Nothing at all."
     
31252 Therefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron
31253 correspondence of the day. This done, Mr. George takes a hearty
31254 farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His
31255 brother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to
31256 ride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will
31257 bait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a
31258 servant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old
31259 grey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accepted, is followed
31260 by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all
31261 in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and
31262 heartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and
31263 fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon
31264 the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in
31265 the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of
31266 accoutrements under the old elm-trees.
     
     
     
     
31267 CHAPTER LXIV
     
31268 Esther's Narrative
     
     
31269 Soon after I had that conversation with my guardian, he put a sealed
31270 paper in my hand one morning and said, "This is for next month, my
31271 dear." I found in it two hundred pounds.
     
31272 I now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were
31273 necessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian's taste, which I
31274 knew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and
31275 hoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because
31276 I was not quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be
31277 rather sorry and because my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no
31278 doubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the
31279 most private and simple manner. Perhaps I should only have to say to
31280 Ada, "Would you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?"
31281 Perhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and I
31282 might not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was
31283 over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like this best.
     
31284 The only exception I made was Mrs. Woodcourt. I told her that I was
31285 going to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some
31286 time. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and was
31287 remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we
31288 first knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have
31289 been of use to me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to
31290 take as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it.
     
31291 Of course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course
31292 it was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of
31293 occupation, which I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was
31294 absolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with
31295 great heaps of it -- baskets full and tables full -- and do a little, and
31296 spend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what
31297 there was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it,
31298 were Charley's great dignities and delights.
     
31299 Meanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with my guardian on the
31300 subject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarndyce and
31301 Jarndyce. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did
31302 encourage expectations. In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a
31303 burst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time,
31304 but he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to
31305 retain only its feverish anxieties. From something my guardian said
31306 one day when we were talking about this, I understood that my
31307 marriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been
31308 told to look forward to; and I thought the more, for that, how
31309 rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and Ada were
31310 a little more prosperous.
     
31311 The term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town
31312 and went down into Yorkshire on Mr. Woodcourt's business. He had told
31313 me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just
31314 come in one night from my dear girl's and was sitting in the midst of
31315 all my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when
31316 a letter from my guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him
31317 in the country and mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken
31318 and at what time in the morning I should have to leave town. It added
31319 in a postscript that I would not be many hours from Ada.
     
31320 I expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was
31321 ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next
31322 morning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be
31323 wanted for at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this
31324 purpose, and now I thought it might be for that purpose, but I was
31325 never, never, never near the truth.
     
31326 It was night when I came to my journey's end and found my guardian
31327 waiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had
31328 begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that
31329 he might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to
31330 be; and when I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I
31331 said to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. Not that
31332 it required much penetration to say that, because I knew that his
31333 being there at all was an act of kindness.
     
31334 Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he
31335 said, "Full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why I have
31336 brought you here?"
     
31337 "Well, guardian," said I, "without thinking myself a Fatima or you a
31338 Blue Beard, I am a little curious about it."
     
31339 "Then to ensure your night's rest, my love," he returned gaily, "I
31340 won't wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have very much wished to
31341 express to Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor
31342 unfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his
31343 value to us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it
31344 came into my head that I might ask his acceptance of some
31345 unpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. I
31346 therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place
31347 was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up for him
31348 and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day
31349 before yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not
31350 housekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to
31351 be. So I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly
31352 be got to come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is,"
31353 said my guardian, "laughing and crying both together!"
     
31354 Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him
31355 what I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word.
     
31356 "Tut, tut!" said my guardian. "You make too much of it, little woman.
31357 Why, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!"
     
31358 "It is with exquisite pleasure, guardian -- with a heart full of
31359 thanks."
     
31360 "Well, well," said he. "I am delighted that you approve. I thought
31361 you would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress
31362 of Bleak House."
     
31363 I kissed him and dried my eyes. "I know now!" said I. "I have seen
31364 this in your face a long while."
     
31365 "No; have you really, my dear?" said he. "What a Dame Durden it is to
31366 read a face!"
     
31367 He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be otherwise, and
31368 was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I went to
31369 bed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was
31370 with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I
31371 repeated every word of the letter twice over.
     
31372 A most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we
31373 went out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to give my mighty
31374 housekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side
31375 wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the
31376 beds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds
31377 and flowers at home.
     
31378 "You see, my dear," observed my guardian, standing still with a
31379 delighted face to watch my looks, "knowing there could be no better
31380 plan, I borrowed yours."
     
31381 We went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were
31382 nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees
31383 were sporting on the grass, to the house itself -- a cottage, quite a
31384 rustic cottage of doll's rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil
31385 and so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around
31386 it; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung
31387 with summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest
31388 point glancing through a meadow by the cheerful town, where
31389 cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was
31390 flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And
31391 still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic
31392 verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded
31393 with woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on
31394 the walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all
31395 the pretty objects, MY little tastes and fancies, MY little methods
31396 and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them,
31397 my odd ways everywhere.
     
31398 I could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful,
31399 but one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I thought, oh,
31400 would he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his
31401 peace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because
31402 although I was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly,
31403 and it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I
31404 did not wish him to forget me -- perhaps he might not have done so,
31405 without these aids to his memory -- but my way was easier than his, and
31406 I could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the
31407 happier for it.
     
31408 "And now, little woman," said my guardian, whom I had never seen so
31409 proud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my
31410 appreciation of them, "now, last of all, for the name of this house."
     
31411 "What is it called, dear guardian?"
     
31412 "My child," said he, "come and see,"
     
31413 He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said,
31414 pausing before we went out, "My dear child, don't you guess the
31415 name?"
     
31416 "No!" said I.
     
31417 We went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, Bleak
31418 House.
     
31419 He led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down
31420 beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, "My darling
31421 girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really
31422 solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which
31423 you brought the answer," smiling as he referred to it, "I had my own
31424 too much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different
31425 circumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes
31426 dreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I
31427 need not ask myself. I did renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you
31428 brought your answer. You are following what I say, my child?"
     
31429 I was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was
31430 lost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun's rays descended,
31431 softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as if
31432 the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels.
     
31433 "Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When
31434 it was that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really
31435 make you happy is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon had no
31436 doubt at all."
     
31437 I clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and
31438 wept. "Lie lightly, confidently here, my child," said he, pressing me
31439 gently to him. "I am your guardian and your father now. Rest
31440 confidently here."
     
31441 Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially,
31442 like the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the
31443 sunshine, he went on.
     
31444 "Understand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented
31445 and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with
31446 whom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame
31447 Durden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could
31448 never change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been
31449 in Allan Woodcourt's confidence, although he was not, until
31450 yesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. But I would not
31451 have my Esther's bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my
31452 dear girl's virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I would not have her
31453 admitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap-Kerrig, no, not for
31454 the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!"
     
31455 He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh.
31456 For I felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise.
     
31457 "Hush, little woman! Don't cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have
31458 looked forward to it," he said exultingly, "for months on months! A
31459 few words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to
31460 throw away one atom of my Esther's worth, I took Mrs. Woodcourt into
31461 a separate confidence. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'I clearly perceive -- and
31462 indeed I know, to boot -- that your son loves my ward. I am further
31463 very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to
31464 a sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely,
31465 so entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though
31466 you watched her night and day.' Then I told her all our
31467 story -- ours -- yours and mine. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'come you, knowing
31468 this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to hour;
31469 set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this' -- for
31470 I scorned to mince it -- 'and tell me what is the true legitimacy when
31471 you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.' Why, honour
31472 to her old Welsh blood, my dear," cried my guardian with enthusiasm,
31473 "I believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less
31474 admiringly, no less lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!"
     
31475 He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his
31476 old fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the
31477 protecting manner I had thought about!
     
31478 "One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he
31479 spoke with my knowledge and consent -- but I gave him no encouragement,
31480 not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too
31481 miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all
31482 that passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan
31483 Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead -- stood beside
31484 your mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its
31485 little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my
31486 life!"
     
31487 He rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My
31488 husband -- I have called him by that name full seven happy years
31489 now -- stood at my side.
     
31490 "Allan," said my guardian, "take from me a willing gift, the best
31491 wife that ever man had. What more can I say for you than that I know
31492 you deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You
31493 know what she will make it, Allan; you know what she has made its
31494 namesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I
31495 sacrifice? Nothing, nothing."
     
31496 He kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he
31497 said more softly, "Esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is
31498 a kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has caused you
31499 some distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old
31500 place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Allan, take
31501 my dear."
     
31502 He moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in
31503 the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, "I
31504 shall be found about here somewhere. It's a west wind, little woman,
31505 due west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to
31506 my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I'll run
31507 away and never come back!"
     
31508 What happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope,
31509 what gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before the month
31510 was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own
31511 house was to depend on Richard and Ada.
     
31512 We all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in
31513 town, Allan went straight to see Richard and to carry our joyful news
31514 to him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few
31515 minutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian
31516 first to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his
31517 side, for I did not like to think of its being empty so soon.
     
31518 When we came home we found that a young man had called three times in
31519 the course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the
31520 occasion of his third call that I was not expected to return before
31521 ten o'clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then.
31522 He had left his card three times. Mr. Guppy.
     
31523 As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I
31524 always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out
31525 that in laughing about Mr. Guppy I told my guardian of his old
31526 proposal and his subsequent retraction. "After that," said my
31527 guardian, "we will certainly receive this hero." So instructions were
31528 given that Mr. Guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they
31529 were scarcely given when he did come again.
     
31530 He was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered
31531 himself and said, "How de do, sir?"
     
31532 "How do you do, sir?" returned my guardian.
     
31533 "Thank you, sir, I am tolerable," returned Mr. Guppy. "Will you allow
31534 me to introduce my mother, Mrs. Guppy of the Old Street Road, and my
31535 particular friend, Mr. Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by
31536 the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling."
     
31537 My guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down.
     
31538 "Tony," said Mr. Guppy to his friend after an awkward silence. "Will
31539 you open the case?"
     
31540 "Do it yourself," returned the friend rather tartly.
     
31541 "Well, Mr. Jarndyce, sir," Mr. Guppy, after a moment's consideration,
31542 began, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by
31543 nudging Mr. Jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most
31544 remarkable manner, "I had an idea that I should see Miss Summerson by
31545 herself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. But
31546 Miss Summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has
31547 passed between us on former occasions?"
     
31548 "Miss Summerson," returned my guardian, smiling, "has made a
31549 communication to that effect to me."
     
31550 "That," said Mr. Guppy, "makes matters easier. Sir, I have come out
31551 of my articles at Kenge and Carboy's, and I believe with satisfaction
31552 to all parties. I am now admitted (after undergoing an examination
31553 that's enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that
31554 he don't want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my
31555 certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it."
     
31556 "Thank you, Mr. Guppy," returned my guardian. "I am quite willing -- I
31557 believe I use a legal phrase -- to admit the certificate."
     
31558 Mr. Guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket
31559 and proceeded without it.
     
31560 "I have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which
31561 takes the form of an annuity" -- here Mr. Guppy's mother rolled her
31562 head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and
31563 put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me -- "and a few
31564 pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never
31565 be wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know," said
31566 Mr. Guppy feelingly.
     
31567 "Certainly an advantage," returned my guardian.
     
31568 "I HAVE some connexion," pursued Mr. Guppy, "and it lays in the
31569 direction of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a 'ouse
31570 in that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow
31571 bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent),
31572 and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith."
     
31573 Here Mr. Guppy's mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling
31574 her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her.
     
31575 "It's a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens," said Mr. Guppy, "and in
31576 the opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my
31577 friends, I refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I believe has
31578 known me," Mr. Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, "from
31579 boyhood's hour."
     
31580 Mr. Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs.
     
31581 "My friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of
31582 clerk and will live in the 'ouse," said Mr. Guppy. "My mother will
31583 likewise live in the 'ouse when her present quarter in the Old Street
31584 Road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no
31585 want of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by
31586 taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper
31587 circles, fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing."
     
31588 Mr. Jobling said "Certainly" and withdrew a little from the elbow of
31589 Mr Guppy's mother.
     
31590 "Now, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the
31591 confidence of Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "(mother, I wish you'd
31592 be so good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson's image was
31593 formerly imprinted on my 'eart and that I made her a proposal of
31594 marriage."
     
31595 "That I have heard," returned my guardian.
     
31596 "Circumstances," pursued Mr. Guppy, "over which I had no control, but
31597 quite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time.
31598 At which time Miss Summerson's conduct was highly genteel; I may even
31599 add, magnanimous."
     
31600 My guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused.
     
31601 "Now, sir," said Mr. Guppy, "I have got into that state of mind
31602 myself that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish
31603 to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to a heighth of which
31604 perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I
31605 did suppose had been eradicated from my 'eart is NOT eradicated. Its
31606 influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am
31607 willing to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had
31608 any control and to renew those proposals to Miss Summerson which I
31609 had the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay the 'ouse in
31610 Walcot Square, the business, and myself before Miss Summerson for her
31611 acceptance."
     
31612 "Very magnanimous indeed, sir," observed my guardian.
     
31613 "Well, sir," replied Mr. Guppy with candour, "my wish is to BE
31614 magnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss
31615 Summerson I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the
31616 opinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I submit
31617 may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks
31618 of mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at."
     
31619 "I take upon myself, sir," said my guardian, laughing as he rang the
31620 bell, "to reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Summerson. She is
31621 very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good
31622 evening, and wishes you well."
     
31623 "Oh!" said Mr. Guppy with a blank look. "Is that tantamount, sir, to
31624 acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?"
     
31625 "To decided rejection, if you please," returned my guardian.
     
31626 Mr. Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who
31627 suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling.
     
31628 "Indeed?" said he. "Then, Jobling, if you was the friend you
31629 represent yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of
31630 the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain't
31631 wanted."
     
31632 But Mrs. Guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. She
31633 wouldn't hear of it. "Why, get along with you," said she to my
31634 guardian, "what do you mean? Ain't my son good enough for you? You
31635 ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!"
     
31636 "My good lady," returned my guardian, "it is hardly reasonable to ask
31637 me to get out of my own room."
     
31638 "I don't care for that," said Mrs. Guppy. "Get out with you. If we
31639 ain't good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good
31640 enough. Go along and find 'em."
     
31641 I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Guppy's
31642 power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest
31643 offence.
     
31644 "Go along and find somebody that's good enough for you," repeated
31645 Mrs. Guppy. "Get out!" Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Guppy's mother
31646 so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out.
31647 "Why don't you get out?" said Mrs. Guppy. "What are you stopping here
31648 for?"
     
31649 "Mother," interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing
31650 her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, "WILL you
31651 hold your tongue?"
     
31652 "No, William," she returned, "I won't! Not unless he gets out, I
31653 won't!"
     
31654 However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy's
31655 mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much
31656 against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every
31657 time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should
31658 immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and
31659 above all things that we should get out.
     
     
     
     
31660 CHAPTER LXV
     
31661 Beginning the World
     
     
31662 The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr.
31663 Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient
31664 hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to
31665 go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and
31666 was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that
31667 my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked
31668 forward -- a very little way now -- to the help that was to come to her,
31669 and never drooped.
     
31670 It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on
31671 there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest
31672 myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home
31673 directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and
31674 walked down there through the lively streets -- so happily and
31675 strangely it seemed! -- together.
     
31676 As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and
31677 Ada, I heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And
31678 there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little
31679 carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so
31680 many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I
31681 had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done,
31682 but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back,
31683 and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so
31684 overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers,
31685 and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her
31686 hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of
31687 precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don't know what for
31688 her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm
31689 her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan,
31690 standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased
31691 as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than
31692 that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking
31693 after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as
31694 she could see us.
     
31695 This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to
31696 Westminster Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse
31697 than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery
31698 that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what
31699 was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for
31700 occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "Silence!" It appeared to
31701 be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to
31702 get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional
31703 gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in
31704 wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them
31705 told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and
31706 quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about
31707 the pavement of the Hall.
     
31708 We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us
31709 Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it.
31710 He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he
31711 could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he
31712 said, over for good.
     
31713 Over for good!
     
31714 When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another
31715 quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set
31716 things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich?
31717 It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was!
     
31718 Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd,
31719 and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and
31720 bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all
31721 exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce
31722 or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching
31723 for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper
31724 began to be carried out -- bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got
31725 into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes,
31726 which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being,
31727 anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more.
31728 Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing
31729 Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person
31730 who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over.
31731 Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing
31732 too.
     
31733 At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an
31734 affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was
31735 deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see
31736 us. "Here is Miss Summerson, sir," he said. "And Mr. Woodcourt."
     
31737 "Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with
31738 polished politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is
31739 not here?"
     
31740 No. He never came there, I reminded him.
     
31741 "Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here
31742 to-day, for his -- shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his
31743 indomitable singularity of opinion? -- might have been strengthened,
31744 perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened."
     
31745 "Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan.
     
31746 "I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity.
     
31747 "What has been done to-day?"
     
31748 "What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not
31749 much has been done; not much. We have been checked -- brought up
31750 suddenly, I would say -- upon the -- shall I term it threshold?"
     
31751 "Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan. "Will
31752 you tell us that?"
     
31753 "Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone
31754 into that, we have not gone into that."
     
31755 "We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low
31756 inward voice were an echo.
     
31757 "You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his
31758 silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a
31759 great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has
31760 been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not
31761 inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice."
     
31762 "And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.
     
31763 "Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain
31764 condeseending laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect,
31765 Mr. Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the
31766 numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of
31767 procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study,
31768 ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high
31769 intellect. For many years, the -- a -- I would say the flower of the bar,
31770 and the -- a -- I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of
31771 the woolsack -- have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the
31772 public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of
31773 this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth,
31774 sir."
     
31775 "Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment.
31776 "Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate
31777 is found to have been absorbed in costs?"
     
31778 "Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU
31779 say?"
     
31780 "I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.
     
31781 "And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"
     
31782 "Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"
     
31783 "Probably," said Mr. Vholes.
     
31784 "My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's
31785 heart!"
     
31786 There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew
31787 Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual
31788 decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her
31789 foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.
     
31790 "In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming
31791 after us, "you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself
31792 a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me
31793 that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of
31794 his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant
31795 shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he
31796 gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client,
31797 and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low
31798 door at the end of the Hall.
     
31799 "My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the
31800 charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's
31801 by and by!"
     
31802 I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to
31803 Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished.
31804 Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what
31805 news I had returned. "Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for
31806 himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater
31807 blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!"
     
31808 We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was
31809 possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to
31810 Symond's Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my
31811 darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and
31812 threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and
31813 said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him
31814 sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.
31815 On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have
31816 spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth
31817 being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.
     
31818 He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There
31819 were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as
31820 possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan
31821 stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be
31822 quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing
31823 me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he
31824 looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.
     
31825 I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he
31826 said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, "Dame Durden, kiss me,
31827 my dear!"
     
31828 It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low
31829 state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our
31830 intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had
31831 been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and
31832 wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if
31833 my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband's hand
31834 and hold it to his breast.
     
31835 We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times
31836 that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his
31837 feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely,
31838 dearest Richard!" But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so
31839 serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so
31840 near -- I knew -- I knew!
     
31841 It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we
31842 were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for
31843 my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada
31844 leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed
31845 often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all,
31846 "Where is Woodcourt?"
     
31847 Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian
31848 standing in the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard
31849 asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face
31850 that some one was there.
     
31851 I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over
31852 Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me
31853 in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard's. "Oh, sir," said Richard,
31854 "you are a good man, you are a good man!" and burst into tears for
31855 the first time.
     
31856 My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping
31857 his hand on Richard's.
     
31858 "My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is
31859 bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or
31860 less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?"
     
31861 "I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin
31862 the world."
     
31863 "Aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian.
     
31864 "I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad
31865 smile. "I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you
31866 shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it."
     
31867 "Well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well,
31868 dear boy!"
     
31869 "I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on
31870 earth I should so much like to see as their house -- Dame Durden's and
31871 Woodcourt's house. If I could be removed there when I begin to
31872 recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than
31873 anywhere."
     
31874 "Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick," said my guardian, "and our
31875 little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very
31876 day. I dare say her husband won't object. What do you think?"
     
31877 Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind
31878 the head of the couch.
     
31879 "I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have
31880 thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending
31881 over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself,
31882 my dear love, my poor girl!"
     
31883 He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually
31884 released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and
31885 moved her lips.
     
31886 "When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to
31887 tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't
31888 you?"
     
31889 "Undoubtedly, dear Rick."
     
31890 "Thank you; like you, like you," said Richard. "But it's all like
31891 you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you
31892 remembered all Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It will be like
31893 coming to the old Bleak House again."
     
31894 "And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now,
31895 you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come
31896 to me, my love!" he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over
31897 her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed
31898 within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)
     
31899 "It was a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my guardian's
31900 hands eagerly.
     
31901 "Nothing more, Rick; nothing more."
     
31902 "And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity
31903 the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?"
     
31904 "Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?"
     
31905 "I will begin the world!" said Richard with a light in his eyes.
     
31906 My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly
31907 lift up his hand to warn my guardian.
     
31908 "When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the
31909 old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been
31910 to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and
31911 blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn
31912 child?" said Richard. "When shall I go?"
     
31913 "Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian.
     
31914 "Ada, my darling!"
     
31915 He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she
31916 could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.
     
31917 "I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray
31918 shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have
31919 scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my
31920 Ada, before I begin the world?"
     
31921 A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid
31922 his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck,
31923 and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not
31924 this! The world that sets this right.
     
31925 When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came
31926 weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.
     
     
     
     
31927 CHAPTER LXVI
     
31928 Down in Lincolnshire
     
     
31929 There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is
31930 upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir
31931 Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;
31932 but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any
31933 brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for
31934 certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the
31935 park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at
31936 night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be
31937 laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all
31938 mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the
31939 peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once
31940 occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large
31941 fans -- like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing
31942 all their other beaux -- did once occasionally say, when the world
31943 assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks,
31944 entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her
31945 company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have
31946 never been known to object.
     
31947 Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road
31948 among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of
31949 horses' hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester -- invalided, bent, and
31950 almost blind, but of worthy presence yet -- riding with a stalwart man
31951 beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain
31952 spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester's accustomed horse
31953 stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is
31954 still for a few moments before they ride away.
     
31955 War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain
31956 intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady
31957 fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to
31958 Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to
31959 abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which
31960 Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or
31961 misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently
31962 aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of
31963 committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself.
31964 Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the
31965 disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth
31966 vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home;
31967 similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by
31968 testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is
31969 whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is
31970 really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of
31971 being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little
31972 does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered
31973 in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now,
31974 is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the
31975 satisfaction of both.
     
31976 In one of the lodges of the park -- that lodge within sight of the
31977 house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in
31978 Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper's child -- the stalwart
31979 man, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling
31980 hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a
31981 little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy
31982 little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of
31983 stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way
31984 of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction.
31985 A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some
31986 mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to
31987 the name of Phil.
     
31988 A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of
31989 hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to
31990 observe -- which few do, for the house is scant of company in these
31991 times -- the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards
31992 them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey
31993 cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are
31994 seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found
31995 gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and
31996 when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening
31997 air from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the
31998 lodge on the inspiring topic of the "British Grenadiers"; and as the
31999 evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while
32000 two men pace together up and down, "But I never own to it before the
32001 old girl. Discipline must be maintained."
     
32002 The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no
32003 longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long
32004 drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my
32005 Lady's picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined
32006 only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually
32007 contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more,
32008 in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the
32009 damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so
32010 obdurate, will have opened and received him.
     
32011 Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her
32012 face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the
32013 long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her
32014 yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of
32015 the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on
32016 the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and
32017 Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle
32018 and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be
32019 one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her
32020 reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not
32021 appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes
32022 broad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously
32023 repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she
32024 finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her
32025 bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a
32026 memorandum concerning herself in the event of "anything happening" to
32027 her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course
32028 of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay.
     
32029 The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness,
32030 but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard
32031 in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at
32032 the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of
32033 cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness
32034 of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under
32035 penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that
32036 such fernal old jail's -- nough t'sew fler up -- frever.
     
32037 The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the
32038 place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated,
32039 when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way
32040 of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come
32041 out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the
32042 exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during
32043 three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year,
32044 is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables
32045 upside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her
32046 condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as
32047 in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of
32048 teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she
32049 twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes
32050 of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with
32051 sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and
32052 unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular
32053 kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of
32054 another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre
32055 stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no
32056 drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have
32057 both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem
32058 Volumnias.
     
32059 For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of
32060 overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their
32061 hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the
32062 window-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less
32063 the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly
32064 likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which
32065 start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding
32066 through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in
32067 which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a
32068 stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few
32069 people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops
32070 from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the
32071 victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and
32072 departs.
     
32073 Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and
32074 vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry
32075 lowering; so sombre and motionless always -- no flag flying now by day,
32076 no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go,
32077 no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of
32078 life about it -- passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have
32079 died away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull
32080 repose.
     
     
     
     
32081 CHAPTER LXVII
     
32082 The Close of Esther's Narrative
     
     
32083 Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The
32084 few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned;
32085 then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not
32086 without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope,
32087 on his or hers.
     
32088 They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never
32089 left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born
32090 before the turf was planted on its father's grave. It was a boy; and
32091 I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father's name.
     
32092 The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in
32093 the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore
32094 his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power
32095 was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand
32096 and how its touch could heal my darling's heart and raised hope
32097 within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of
32098 God.
     
32099 They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country
32100 garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married
32101 then. I was the happiest of the happy.
     
32102 It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she
32103 would come home.
     
32104 "Both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older Bleak
32105 House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do
32106 it, come and take possession of your home."
     
32107 Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, no, it must
32108 be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and
32109 he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian,
32110 and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no
32111 other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.
     
32112 It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at
32113 all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so
32114 it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the
32115 morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go
32116 round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond
32117 of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to
32118 do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I
32119 might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill
32120 did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley's sister, is exactly
32121 what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley's brother, I am really
32122 afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was
32123 decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a
32124 good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being
32125 ashamed of it.
     
32126 Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer
32127 creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with
32128 the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life.
32129 Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and
32130 lives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works
32131 very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do
32132 very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has
32133 to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new
32134 house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one.
32135 I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great
32136 mortification from her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but
32137 I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in
32138 Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the
32139 king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody -- who survived the
32140 climate -- for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to
32141 sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more
32142 correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy's poor
32143 little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I
32144 believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in
32145 her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to
32146 soften the affliction of her child.
     
32147 As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of
32148 Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing
32149 extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits
32150 his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is
32151 still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of
32152 Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French
32153 clock in his dressing-room -- which is not his property.
     
32154 With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house
32155 by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we
32156 inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see
32157 us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in
32158 drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their
32159 way.
     
32160 I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a
32161 good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me
32162 he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is
32163 my husband's best and dearest friend, he is our children's darling,
32164 he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel
32165 towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him
32166 and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never
32167 lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is
32168 with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side,
32169 Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman -- all just the same as ever; and
32170 I answer, "Yes, dear guardian!" just the same.
     
32171 I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment
32172 since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I
32173 remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and
32174 he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that
32175 very day.
     
32176 I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that
32177 has been in her face -- for it is not there now -- seems to have purified
32178 even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.
32179 Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that
32180 she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel -- it is difficult to
32181 express -- as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear
32182 Esther in her prayers.
     
32183 I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am
32184 one.
     
32185 We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we
32186 have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the
32187 people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear
32188 his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night
32189 but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and
32190 soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from
32191 the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often
32192 gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this
32193 to be rich?
     
32194 The people even praise me as the doctor's wife. The people even like
32195 me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I
32196 owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I
32197 do everything I do in life for his sake.
     
32198 A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and
32199 my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was
32200 sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch,
32201 when Allan came home. So he said, "My precious little woman, what are
32202 you doing here?" And I said, "The moon is shining so brightly, Allan,
32203 and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here
32204 thinking."
     
32205 "What have you been thinking about, my dear?" said Allan then.
     
32206 "How curious you are!" said I. "I am almost ashamed to tell you, but
32207 I will. I have been thinking about my old looks -- such as they were."
     
32208 "And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?" said
32209 Allan.
     
32210 "I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD
32211 have loved me any better, even if I had retained them."
     
32212 "'Such as they were'?" said Allan, laughing.
     
32213 "Such as they were, of course."
     
32214 "My dear Dame Durden," said Allan, drawing my arm through his, "do
32215 you ever look in the glass?"
     
32216 "You know I do; you see me do it."
     
32217 "And don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?"
     
32218 "I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know
32219 that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is
32220 very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my
32221 guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was
32222 seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me -- even
32223 supposing -- ."
     
32224 END