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Bleak House

Dickens, Charles

Part - 5

Published: 1853 • Categorie(s): Fiction • Source: http://en.wikisource.org

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 61

Chapter 61

A Discovery The days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl brightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I never wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in my memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will shine for ever. Not a day passed without my going there, of course. At first I found Mr. Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano and talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, be-sides my very much mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada’s life. I clearly perceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved, after much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr. Skimpole and try delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great consideration that made me bold. I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley, for Somers Town. As I approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr. Skimpole and how extremely likely it was that he would signally defeat me. However, I thought that being there, I would go through with it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Skimpole’s door— literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone—and after a long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to light the fire with. Mr. Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a little, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he asked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies?

Would I have his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment daughter? Or would I have all the daughters at once in a perfect nosegay? I replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself only if he would give me leave. “My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! Of course,” he said, bringing his chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, “of course it’s not business. Then it’s pleasure!” I said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not quite a pleasant matter. “Then, my dear Miss Summerson,” said he with the frankest gaiety, “don’t allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is not a pleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature, in every point of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am imperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasant matter, how much less should you! So that’s disposed of, and we will talk of something else.” Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still wished to pursue the subject. “I should think it a mistake,” said Mr. Skimpole with his airy laugh, “if I thought Miss Summerson capable of making one. But I don’t!” “Mr. Skimpole,” said I, raising my eyes to his, “I have so of-ten heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of life—” “Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who’s the junior partner? D?” said Mr. Skimpole, brightly. “Not an idea of them!” “—That perhaps,” I went on, “you will excuse my boldness on that account. I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is poorer than he was.” “Dear me!” said Mr. Skimpole. “So am I, they tell me.” “And in very embarrassed circumstances.” “Parallel case, exactly!” said Mr. Skimpole with a delighted countenance. “This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind, it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that—if you would—not—”

I was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way anticipated it. “Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly not. Why should I go there? When I go any-where, I go for pleasure. I don’t go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain comes to me when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at our dear Richard’s lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates why. Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so captivating in them, begin to think, ‘This is a man who wants pounds.’ So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but be-cause tradespeople always want them of me. Next, our young friends begin to think, becoming mercenary, ‘This is the man who had pounds, who borrowed them,’ which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our young friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate in their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see them, therefore? Absurd!” Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite astonishing. “Besides,” he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of light-hearted conviction, “if I don’t go anywhere for pain—which would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous thing to do—why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of mind, I should give them pain. The associations with me would be disagreeable. They might say, ‘This is the man who had pounds and who can’t pay pounds,’ which I can’t, of course; nothing could be more out of the question! Then kindness requires that I shouldn’t go near them—and I won’t.” He finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. Nothing but Miss Summerson’s fine tact, he said, would have found this out for him. I was much disconcerted, but I reflected that if the main point were gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything leading to it. I had determined to mention something else, however, and I thought I was not to be put off in that. “Mr. Skimpole,” said I, “I must take the liberty of saying be-fore I conclude my visit that I was much surprised to learn, on the best authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor boy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that occasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would hurt him unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much surprised.” “No? Really surprised, my dear Miss Summerson?” he re-turned inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows. “Greatly surprised.” He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his most engaging manner, “You know what a child I am. Why surprised?” I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to understand in the gentlest words I could use that his con-duct seemed to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much amused and interested when he heard this and said, “No, really?” with ingenuous simplicity. “You know I don’t intend to be responsible. I never could do it. Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me—or below me,” said Mr. Skimpole. “I don’t even know which; but as I understand the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (al-ways remarkable for her practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine it was chiefly a question of money, do you know?” I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this. “Ah! Then you see,” said Mr. Skimpole, shaking his head, “I am hopeless of understanding it.” I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my guardian’s confidence for a bribe. “My dear Miss Summerson,” he returned with a candid hilarity that was all his own, “I can’t be bribed.” “Not by Mr. Bucket?” said I. “No,” said he. “Not by anybody. I don’t attach any value to money. I don’t care about it, I don’t know about it, I don’t want it, I don’t keep it—it goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?” I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the capacity for arguing the question. “On the contrary,” said Mr. Skimpole, “I am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far above suspicion as Caesar’s wife.” Anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in anybody else! “Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. The boy being in bed, a man arrives—like the house that Jack built. Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well. Should the Skimpole have refused the note? Why should the Skimpole have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket, ‘What’s this for? I don’t understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.’ Bucket still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole, not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole perceives them. What are they? Skim-pole reasons with himself, this is a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us comfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer and intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket’s weapons; shall I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And again. If it is blameable in Skim-pole to take the note, it is blameable in Bucket to offer the note—much more blameable in Bucket, because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the general cohesion of things, that he should think well of Bucket. The state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that’s all he does!” I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took my leave. Mr. Skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would not hear of my returning home attended only by “Little Coavinses,” and accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way with a variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that he should never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out for him about our young friends. As it so happened that I never saw Mr. Skimpole again, I may at once finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his having heartlessly disregarded my guardian’s entreaties (as we afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being heavily in my guardian’s debt had nothing to do with their separation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which was published and which showed him to have been the victim of a combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it my-self than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It was this: “Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is the incarnation of selfishness.” And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as belonging to a part of my life that was gone—gone like my infancy or my childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the last words of these pages, which I see now not so very far before me. The months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became one of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any of the gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there. So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh air now “but for Woodcourt.” It was only Mr. Woodcourt who could occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed us greatly, and the re-turns of which became more frequent as the months went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued his errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that his de-sire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more in-tense by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a gamester. I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach; sometimes my guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o’clock. I could not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for I was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to finish what I was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour when I bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss for the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr. Woodcourt went with me, as it was dusk. When we came to the usual place of meeting—it was close by, and Mr. Woodcourt had often accompanied me before—my guardian was not there. We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs of him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he had come and gone away, and Mr. Woodcourt proposed to walk home with me. It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and Ada the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done—my appreciation of it had risen above all words then—but I hoped he might not be without some under-standing of what I felt so strongly. Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was out and that Mrs. Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart, the very same room from which my guardian and I had watched them going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and promise. We were standing by the opened window looking down into the street when Mr. Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to him. I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I had. Too late. “When I returned,” he told me, “when I came back, no richer than when I went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish thought—” “Oh, Mr. Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!” I entreated him. “I do not deserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time, many!” “Heaven knows, beloved of my life,” said he, “that my praise is not a lover’s praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, what sacred admiration and what love she wins.” “Oh, Mr. Woodcourt,” cried I, “it is a great thing to win love, it is a great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and sorrow—joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it better; but I am not free to think of yours.” I said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when I heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true, I aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that. Although I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could be worthier of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me, and an impulse to me, and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was derived from him when I thought so. He broke the silence. “I should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will evermore be as dear to me as now”—and the deep earnestness with which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep— “if, after her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it. Dear Esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I took abroad was exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have always hoped, in the first hour when I seemed to stand in any ray of good fortune, to tell you this. I have always feared that I should tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night. I distress you. I have said enough.” Something seemed to pass into my place that was like the an-gel he thought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I wished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he showed that first commiseration for me. “Dear Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “before we part to-night, something is left for me to say. I never could say it as I wish—I never shall—but—” I had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his affliction before I could go on. “—I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I know you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know what a noble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me could have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none that could give it such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall make me better.” He covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. How could I ever be worthy of those tears?

“If, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together—in tending Richard and Ada, and I hope in many happier scenes of life —you ever find anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and that I shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr. Woodcourt, never believe that I for-get this night or that while my heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been beloved by you.” He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt still more encouraged. “I am induced by what you said just now,” said I, “to hope that you have succeeded in your endeavour.” “I have,” he answered. “With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have succeeded.” “Heaven bless him for it,” said I, giving him my hand; “and heaven bless you in all you do!” “I shall do it better for the wish,” he answered; “it will make me enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you. “Ah! Richard!” I exclaimed involuntarily, “What will he do when you are gone!” “I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss Summerson, even if I were.” One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I reserved it. “Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “you will be glad to know from my lips before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or desire.” It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied. “From my childhood I have been,” said I, “the object of the untiring goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day.” “I share those feelings,” he returned. “You speak of Mr. Jarndyce.”

“You know his virtues well,” said I, “but few can know the greatness of his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage and respect had not been his already—which I know they are—they would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it would have awakened in you towards him for my sake.” He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave him my hand again. “Good night,” I said, “Good-bye.” “The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this theme between us for ever.” “Yes.” “Good night; good-bye.” He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears. But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me the beloved of his life and had said I would be ever-more as dear to him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the triumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died away. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy my path, how much easier than his!

Chapter 62

Chapter 62

Another Discovery I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light to read my guardian’s letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my pillow. I was up very early in the morning and called Charley to come for a walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I had a good time still for Charley’s lesson before breakfast; Charley (who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether very notable. When my guardian appeared he said, “Why, little woman, you look fresher than your flowers!” And Mrs. Woodcourt repeated and translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my being like a mountain with the sun upon it. This was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his own room—the room of last night—by himself. Then I made an excuse to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me. “Well, Dame Durden?” said my guardian; the post had brought him several letters, and he was writing. “You want money?” “No, indeed, I have plenty in hand.”

“There never was such a Dame Durden,” said my guardian, “for making money last.” He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me. I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it which made me think, “He has been doing some great kindness this morning.” “There never was,” said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me, “such a Dame Durden for making money last.” He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was always put at his side—for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him— I hardly liked to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not disturb it at all. “Dear guardian,” said I, “I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss in anything?” “Remiss in anything, my dear!” “Have I not been what I have meant to be since—I brought the answer to your letter, guardian?” “You have been everything I could desire, my love.” “I am very glad indeed to hear that,” I returned. “You know, you said to me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes.” “Yes,” said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my face, smiling. “Since then,” said I, “we have never spoken on the subject except once.” “And then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my dear.” “And I said,” I timidly reminded him, “but its mistress remained.” He still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same bright goodness in his face. “Dear guardian,” said I, “I know how you have felt all that has happened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again, perhaps you expect me to renew the subject.

Perhaps I ought to do so. I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please.” “See,” he returned gaily, “what a sympathy there must be between us! I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted—it’s a large exception—in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?” “When you please.” “Next month?” “Next month, dear guardian.” “The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life—the day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than any other man in the world—the day on which I give Bleak House its little mistress—shall be next month then,” said my guardian. I put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the day when I brought my answer. A servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite unnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant’s shoulder. “Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summer-son,” said he, rather out of breath, “with all apologies for intruding, will you allow me to order up a person that’s on the stairs and that objects to being left there in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will you?” said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters. This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap, unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it. “Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce,” he then began, putting down his hat and opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger, “you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise knows me, and his name is Small-weed. The discounting line is his line principally, and he’s what you may call a dealer in bills. That’s about what you are, you know, ain’t you?” said Mr. Bucket, stopping a little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly suspicious of him.

He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was seized with a violent fit of coughing. “Now, moral, you know!” said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident. “Don’t you contradict when there ain’t no occasion, and you won’t be took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I’ve been negotiating with this gentleman on be-half of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I’ve been in and out and about his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly occupied by Krook, marine store dealer—a relation of this gentleman’s that you saw in his lifetime if I don’t mistake?” My guardian replied, “Yes.” “Well! You are to understand,” said Mr. Bucket, “that this gentleman he come into Krook’s property, and a good deal of magpie property there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you, of no use to nobody!” The cunning of Mr. Bucket’s eye and the masterly manner in which he contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr. Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in quite understanding him. His difficulty was in-creased by Mr. Smallweed’s being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face with the closest attention. “Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don’t you see?” said Mr. Bucket. “To which? Say that again,” cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp voice. “To rummage,” repeated Mr. Bucket. “Being a prudent man and accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage among the papers as you have come into; don’t you?” “Of course I do,” cried Mr. Smallweed. “Of course you do,” said Mr. Bucket conversationally, “and much to blame you would be if you didn’t. And so you chance to find, you know,” Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated, “and so you chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to it. Don’t you?”

Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded assent. “And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and convenience—all in good time, for you’re not curious to read it, and why should you be?—what do you find it to be but a will, you see. That’s the drollery of it,” said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed, who still had the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; “what do you find it to be but a will?” “I don’t know that it’s good as a will or as anything else,” snarled Mr. Smallweed. Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment—he had slipped and shrunk down in his chair into a mere bundle—as if he were much disposed to pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us. “Notwithstanding which,” said Mr. Bucket, “you get a little doubtful and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of your own.” “Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?” asked Mr. Smallweed with his hand to his ear. “A very tender mind.” “Ho! Well, go on,” said Mr. Smallweed. “And as you’ve heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books, and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with ’em, and always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think— and you never was more correct in your born days—‘Ecod, if I don’t look about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.’” “Now, mind how you put it, Bucket,” cried the old man anxiously with his hand at his ear. “Speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken to bits!” Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed’s coughing and his vicious ejaculations of “Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I’ve no breath in my body! I’m worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!” Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before. “So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises, you take me into your confidence, don’t you?” I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he admitted this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was the very last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he could by any possibility have kept him out of it. “And I go into the business with you—very pleasant we are over it; and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get yourself into a most precious line if you don’t come out with that there will,” said Mr. Bucket emphatically; “and accordingly you arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr. Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you trusting yourself to him for your reward; that’s about where it is, ain’t it?” “That’s what was agreed,” Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad grace. “In consequence of which,” said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his agreeable manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, “you’ve got that will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing that remains for you to do is just to out with it!” Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr. Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce’s honour not to let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr. Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce. As he gave it to my guardian, he whispered behind his fingers,

“Hadn’t settled how to make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably long, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain’t one of the family that wouldn’t sell the other for a pound or two, except the old lady—and she’s only out of it because she’s too weak in her mind to drive a bargain.” “Mr Bucket,” said my guardian aloud, “whatever the worth of this paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Small-weed remunerated accordingly.” “Not according to your merits, you know,” said Mr. Bucket in friendly explanation to Mr. Smallweed. “Don’t you be afraid of that. According to its value.” “That is what I mean,” said my guardian. “You may observe, Mr. Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all other parties interested.” “Mr. Jarndyce can’t say fairer than that, you understand,” observed Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. “And it being now made clear to you that nobody’s a-going to be wronged—which must be a great relief to your mind—we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home again.” He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning, and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting went his way. We went our way too, which was to Lincoln’s Inn, as quickly as possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table in his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr. Kenge expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his double eye-glass as he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than ever. “I hope,” said Mr. Kenge, “that the genial influence of Miss Summerson,” he bowed to me, “may have induced Mr. Jarndyce,” he bowed to him, “to forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and towards a court which are—shall I say, which take their place in the stately vista of the pillars of our profession?” “I am inclined to think,” returned my guardian, “that Miss Summerson has seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I lay this paper on your desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my hands.” He did so shortly and distinctly. “It could not, sir,” said Mr. Kenge, “have been stated more plainly and to the purpose if it had been a case at law.” “Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the purpose?” said my guardian. “Oh, fie!” said Mr. Kenge. At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper, but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became amazed. “Mr. Jarndyce,” he said, looking off it, “you have perused this?” “Not I!” returned my guardian. “But, my dear sir,” said Mr. Kenge, “it is a will of later date than any in the suit. It appears to be all in the testator’s hand-writing. It is duly executed and attested. And even if intended to be cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks of fire, it is not cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!” “Well!” said my guardian. “What is that to me?” “Mr. Guppy!” cried Mr. Kenge, raising his voice. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Jarndyce.” “Sir.” “Mr. Vholes of Symond’s Inn. My compliments. Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Glad to speak with him.” Mr. Guppy disappeared. “You ask me what is this to you, Mr. Jarndyce. If you had per-used this document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still leaving it a very handsome one,” said Mr. Kenge, waving his hand persuasively and blandly. “You would further have seen that the interests of Mr. Richard Carstone and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs. Richard Carstone, are very materially advanced by it.” “Kenge,” said my guardian, “if all the flourishing wealth that the suit brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two young cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask me to believe that any good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” “Oh, really, Mr. Jarndyce! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is a very great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a very great system, a very great system. Really, really!” My guardian said no more, and Mr. Vholes arrived. He was modestly impressed by Mr. Kenge’s professional eminence. “How do you do, Mr. Vholes? Willl you be so good as to take a chair here by me and look over this paper?” Mr. Vholes did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. He was not excited by it, but he was not excited by any-thing. When he had well examined it, he retired with Mr. Kenge into a window, and shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length. I was not surprised to observe Mr. Kenge inclined to dispute what he said before he had said much, for I knew that no two people ever did agree about anything in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. But he seemed to get the better of Mr. Kenge too in a conversation that sounded as if it were almost composed of the words “Receiver- General,” “Accountant-General,” “report,” “estate,” and “costs.” When they had finished, they came back to Mr. Kenge’s table and spoke aloud. “Well! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr. Vholes,” said Mr. Kenge. Mr. Vholes said, “Very much so.” “And a very important document, Mr. Vholes,” said Mr. Kenge. Again Mr. Vholes said, “Very much so.” “And as you say, Mr. Vholes, when the cause is in the paper next term, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in it,” said Mr. Kenge, looking loftily at my guardian.

Mr. Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an authority. “And when,” asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr. Kenge had rattled his money and Mr. Vholes had picked his pimples, “when is next term?” “Next term, Mr. Jarndyce, will be next month,” said Mr. Kenge. “Of course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in the paper.” “To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention.” “Still bent, my dear sir,” said Mr. Kenge, showing us through the outer office to the door, “still bent, even with your enlarged mind, on echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr. Jarndyce, a very prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr. Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr. Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system? Now, really, really!” He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages.

Chapter 63

Chapter 63

Steel and Ir on George’s Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his rides and riding very near his bridle-rein be-cause of the uncertain hand with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is George so occupied. He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north to look about him. As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the features of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper, looking about him and always looking for something he has come to find. At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and asks a workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts. “Why, master,” quoth the workman, “do I know my own name?” “’Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?” asks the trooper. “Rouncewell’s? Ah! You’re right.” “And where might it be now?” asks the trooper with a glance before him. “The bank, the factory, or the house?” the workman wants to know. “Hum! Rouncewell’s is so great apparently,” mutters the trooper, stroking his chin, “that I have as good as half a mind to go back again. Why, I don’t know which I want. Should I find Mr. Rouncewell at the factory, do you think?”

“Tain’t easy to say where you’d find him—at this time of the day you might find either him or his son there, if he’s in town; but his contracts take him away.” And which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys—the tallest ones! Yes, he sees them. Well! Let him keep his eye on those chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he’ll see ’em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall which forms one side of the street. That’s Rouncewell’s. The trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about him. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of Rouncewell’s hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of Rouncewell’s hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to be invading the whole town. They are very sinewy and strong, are Rouncewell’s hands—a little sooty too. He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety of shapes—in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery; mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds. “This is a place to make a man’s head ache too!” says the trooper, looking about him for a counting-house. “Who comes here? This is very like me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir.” “Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?” “Excuse me. Young Mr. Rouncewell, I believe?” “Yes. “I was looking for your father, sir. I wish to have a word with him.” The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time, for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to be found. “Very like me before I was set up—devilish like me!” thinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a ”building in the yard with an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the office, Mr. George turns very red. “What name shall I say to my father?” asks the young man. George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers “Steel,” and is so presented. He is left alone with the gentle-man in the office, who sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes. It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view below. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron, purposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke is seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys. “I am at your service, Mr. Steel,” says the gentleman when his visitor has taken a rusty chair. “Well, Mr. Rouncewell,” George replies, leaning forward with his left arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting his brother’s eye, “I am not without my expectations that in the present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to was, if I don’t deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in keeping away?” “Are you quite sure,” returns the ironmaster in an altered voice, “that your name is Steel?” The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls him by his name, and grasps him by both hands. “You are too quick for me!” cries the trooper with the tears springing out of his eyes. “How do you do, my dear old fellow? I never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!” They shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the trooper still coupling his “How do you do, my dear old fellow!” with his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been half so glad to see him as all this! “So far from it,” he declares at the end of a full account of what has preceded his arrival there, “I had very little idea of making myself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me.” “We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,” returns his brother. “This is a great day at home, and you could not have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a bet-ter. I make an agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event, and you will be made the hero of it.” Mr. George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne, however, by his brother and his nephew—concerning whom he renews his protestations that he never could have thought they would have been half so glad to see him—he is taken home to an elegant house in all the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture of the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their children. Here Mr. George is much dismayed by the graces and accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of Rosa, his niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment, and Mr. George comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr. George that night when he lies down in the state-bed of his brother’s house to think of all these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the evening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner, over his counterpane. The brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster’s room, where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how he thinks he may best dispose of George in his business, when George squeezes his hand and stops him. “Brother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly welcome, and a million times more to that for your more than brotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word as to them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How,” says the trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at his brother, “how is my mother to be got to scratch me?” “I am not sure that I understand you, George,” replies the ironmaster. “I say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must be got to do it somehow.” “Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?” “Of course I do. In short,” says the trooper, folding his arms more resolutely yet, “I mean—TO—scratch me!” “My dear George,” returns his brother, “is it so indispensable that you should undergo that process?” “Quite! Absolutely! I couldn’t be guilty of the meanness of coming back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and hold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it’s to be brought about.” “I can tell you, George,” replies the ironmaster deliberately, “how it is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son? Do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it? If you do, you are wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to re-main UNscratched, I think.” There is an amused smile on the ironmaster’s face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply disappointed. “I think you may manage almost as well as if the thing were done, though.” “How, brother?”

“Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know.” “That’s true!” says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully asks, with his hand on his brother’s, “Would you mind mentioning that, brother, to your wife and family?” “Not at all.” “Thank you. You wouldn’t object to say, perhaps, that al-though an undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and not of the mean sort?” The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents. “Thank you. Thank you. It’s a weight off my mind,” says the trooper with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on each leg, “though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!” The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the world is all on the trooper’s side. “Well,” he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, “next and last, those plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me to fall in here and take my place among the products of your perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It’s more than brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,” shaking him a long time by the hand. “But the truth is, brother, I am a—I am a kind of a weed, and it’s too late to plant me in a regular garden.” “My dear George,” returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady brow upon him and smiling confidently, “leave that to me, and let me try.” George shakes his head. “You could do it, I have not a doubt, if anybody could; but it’s not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness— brought on by family sorrows—and that he would rather have that help from our mother’s son than from anybody else.” “Well, my dear George,” returns the other with a very slight shade upon his open face, “if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester Dedlock’s household brigade—” “There it is, brother,” cries the trooper, checking him, with his hand upon his knee again; “there it is! You don’t take kindly to that idea; I don’t mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am. Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry things with the same hand or to look at ’em from the same point. I don’t say much about my garrison manners because I found myself pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn’t be noticed here, I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold, where there’s more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s proposals. When I come over next year to give away the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your ground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the Rouncewells as they’ll be founded by you.” “You know yourself, George,” says the elder brother, returning the grip of his hand, “and perhaps you know me better than I know myself. Take your way. So that we don’t quite lose one another again, take your way.” “No fear of that!” returns the trooper. “Now, before I turn my horse’s head homewards, brother, I will ask you—if you’ll be so good—to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the person it’s written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I want it to be both straightforward and delicate.” Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows: Miss Esther Summerson, A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad, when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I duly observed the same. I further take the liberty to make known to you that it was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that otherwise I would not have given it up, as appearing to be the most harmless in my possession, without being previously shot through the heart. I further take the liberty to mention that if I could have sup-posed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in existence, I never could and never would have rested until I had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and assuredly went over the side of a transport- ship at night in an Irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from officers and men on board, and know to have been (officially) confirmed. I further take the liberty to state that in my humble quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring servant and that I es-teem the qualities you possess above all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch. I have the honour to be, George “A little formal,” observes the elder brother, refolding it with a puzzled face. “But nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?” asks the younger. “Nothing at all.” Therefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron correspondence of the day. This done, Mr. George takes a hearty farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His brother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to ride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will bait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a servant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old grey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accepted, is followed by a pleasant ride, a pleas-ant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and heartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of accoutrements under the old elm-trees.

Chapter 64

Chapter 64

Esther's Narrative Soon after I had that convertion with my guardian, he put a sealed paper in my hand one morning and said, “This is for next month, my dear.” I found in it two hundred pounds. I now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were necessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian’s taste, which I knew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and hoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because I was not quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be rather sorry and be-cause my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no doubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the most private and simple manner. Perhaps I should only have to say to Ada, “Would you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?” Perhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and I might not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like this best. The only exception I made was Mrs. Woodcourt. I told her that I was going to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some time. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and was remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we first knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have been of use to me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to take as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it. Of course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course it was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of occupation, which I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was absolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with great heaps of it—baskets full and tables full—and do a little, and spend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what there was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it, were Charley’s great dignities and delights. Meanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with my guardian on the subject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did encourage expectations. In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a burst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time, but he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to retain only its feverish anxieties. From something my guardian said one day when we were talking about this, I understood that my marriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been told to look forward to; and I thought the more, for that, how rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and Ada were a little more prosperous. The term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town and went down into Yorkshire on Mr. Woodcourt’s business. He had told me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just come in one night from my dear girl’s and was sitting in the midst of all my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when a letter from my guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him in the country and mentioned by what stage- coach my place was taken and at what time in the morning I should have to leave town. It added in a postscript that I would not be many hours from Ada. I expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next morning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be wanted for at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this purpose, and now I thought it might be for that purpose, but I was never, never, never near the truth. It was night when I came to my journey’s end and found my guardian waiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that he might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to be; and when I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I said to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. Not that it required much penetration to say that, because I knew that his being there at all was an act of kindness. Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he said, “Full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why I have brought you here?” “Well, guardian,” said I, “without thinking myself a Fatima or you a Blue Beard, I am a little curious about it.” “Then to ensure your night’s rest, my love,” he returned gaily, “I won’t wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have very much wished to express to Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor unfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his value to us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it came into my head that I might ask his acceptance of some unpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. I therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up for him and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day before yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not house-keeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to be. So I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly be got to come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is,” said my guardian, “laughing and crying both together!” Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him what I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word. “Tut, tut!” said my guardian. “You make too much of it, little woman. Why, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!” “It is with exquisite pleasure, guardian—with a heart full of thanks.” “Well, well,” said he. “I am delighted that you approve. I thought you would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress of Bleak House.” I kissed him and dried my eyes. “I know now!” said I. “I have seen this in your face a long while.” “No; have you really, my dear?” said he. “What a Dame Durden it is to read a face!” He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be other-wise, and was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all.

When I went to bed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I repeated every word of the letter twice over. A most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we went out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to give my mighty housekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the beds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds and flowers at home. “You see, my dear,” observed my guardian, standing still with a delighted face to watch my looks, “knowing there could be no better plan, I borrowed yours.” We went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees were sporting on the grass, to the house itself—a cottage, quite a rustic cottage of doll’s rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil and so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around it; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung with summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest point glancing through a mead-ow by the cheerful town, where cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded with woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on the walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all the pretty objects, my little tastes and fancies, my little methods and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them, my odd ways everywhere. I could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful, but one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I thought, oh, would he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his peace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because although I was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly, and it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I did not wish him to forget me—perhaps he might not have done so, without these aids to his memory—but my way was easier than his, and I could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the happier for it. “And now, little woman,” said my guardian, whom I had never seen so proud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my appreciation of them, “now, last of all, for the name of this house.” “What is it called, dear guardian?” “My child,” said he, “come and see,” He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said, pausing before we went out, “My dear child, don’t you guess the name?” “No!” said I. We went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, Bleak House. He led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, “My darling girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which you brought the answer,” smiling as he referred to it, “I had my own too much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different circumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes dreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I need not ask my-self. I did renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you brought your answer. You are following what I say, my child?” I was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was lost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun’s rays descended, softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as if the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels. “Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When it was that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really make you happy is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon had no doubt at all.” I clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and wept. “Lie lightly, confidently here, my child,” said he, pressing me gently to him. “I am your guardian and your father now. Rest confidently here.”

Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially, like the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the sunshine, he went on. “Understand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with whom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame Durden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could never change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been in Allan Woodcourt’s confidence, although he was not, until yesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. But I would not have my Esther’s bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my dear girl’s virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I would not have her admitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap-Kerrig, no, not for the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!” He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh. For I felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise. “Hush, little woman! Don’t cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have looked forward to it,” he said exultingly, “for months on months! A few words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to throw away one atom of my Esther’s worth, I took Mrs. Woodcourt into a separate confidence. ‘Now, madam,’ said I, ‘I clearly perceive—and indeed I know, to boot—that your son loves my ward. I am further very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to a sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely, so entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though you watched her night and day.’ Then I told her all our story—ours—yours and mine. ‘Now, madam,’ said I, ‘come you, knowing this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to hour; set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this’—for I scorned to mince it—‘and tell me what is the true legitimacy when you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.’ Why, honour to her old Welsh blood, my dear,” cried my guardian with enthusiasm, “I believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less admiringly, no less lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!”

He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his old fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the protecting manner I had thought about! “One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he spoke with my knowledge and consent—but I gave him no encouragement, not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all that passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead —stood beside your mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my life!” He rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My husband—I have called him by that name full seven happy years now —stood at my side. “Allan,” said my guardian, “take from me a willing gift, the best wife that ever man had. What more can I say for you than that I know you deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You know what she will make it, Allan; you know what she has made its namesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I sacrifice? Nothing, nothing.” He kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he said more softly, “Esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is a kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has caused you some distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Allan, take my dear.” He moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, “I shall be found about here somewhere. It’s a west wind, little woman, due west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I’ll run away and never come back!” What happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope, what gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married be-fore the month was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own house was to depend on Richard and Ada. We all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in town, Allan went straight to see Richard and to carry our joyful news to him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few minutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian first to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his side, for I did not like to think of its being empty so soon. When we came home we found that a young man had called three times in the course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the occasion of his third call that I was not expected to return before ten o’clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then. He had left his card three times. Mr. Guppy. As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out that in laughing about Mr. Guppy I told my guardian of his old proposal and his subsequent retraction. “After that,” said my guardian, “we will certainly receive this hero.” So instructions were given that Mr. Guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they were scarcely given when he did come again. He was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered himself and said, “How de do, sir?” “How do you do, sir?” returned my guardian. “Thank you, sir, I am tolerable,” returned Mr. Guppy. “Will you allow me to introduce my mother, Mrs. Guppy of the Old Street Road, and my particular friend, Mr. Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling.” My guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down. “Tony,” said Mr. Guppy to his friend after an awkward silence. “Will you open the case?” “Do it yourself,” returned the friend rather tartly. “Well, Mr. Jarndyce, sir,” Mr. Guppy, after a moment’s consideration, began, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by nudging Mr. Jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most remarkable manner, “I had an idea that I should see Miss Summerson by herself and was not quite pre-pared for your esteemed presence. But Miss Summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has passed between us on former occasions?”

“Miss Summerson,” returned my guardian, smiling, “has made a communication to that effect to me.” “That,” said Mr. Guppy, “makes matters easier. Sir, I have come out of my articles at Kenge and Carboy’s, and I believe with satisfaction to all parties. I am now admitted (after under-going an examination that’s enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that he don’t want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it.” “Thank you, Mr. Guppy,” returned my guardian. “I am quite willing —I believe I use a legal phrase—to admit the certificate.” Mr. Guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket and proceeded without it. “I have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which takes the form of an annuity”—here Mr. Guppy’s mother rolled her head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me—“and a few pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never be wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know,” said Mr. Guppy feelingly. “Certainly an advantage,” returned my guardian. “I have some connexion,” pursued Mr. Guppy, “and it lays in the direction of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a ’ouse in that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent), and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith.” Here Mr. Guppy’s mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her. “It’s a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens,” said Mr. Guppy, “and in the opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my friends, I refer principally to my friend Job-ling, who I believe has known me,” Mr. Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, “from boyhood’s hour.” Mr. Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs. “My friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of clerk and will live in the ’ouse,” said Mr. Guppy. “My mother will likewise live in the ’ouse when her present quarter in the Old Street Road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no want of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper circles, fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing.” Mr. Jobling said “Certainly” and withdrew a little from the el-bow of Mr Guppy’s mother. “Now, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the confidence of Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Guppy, “(mother, I wish you’d be so good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson’s image was formerly imprinted on my ‘eart and that I made her a proposal of marriage.” “That I have heard,” returned my guardian. “Circumstances,” pursued Mr. Guppy, “over which I had no control, but quite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time. At which time Miss Summerson’s con-duct was highly genteel; I may even add, magnanimous.” My guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused. “Now, sir,” said Mr. Guppy, “I have got into that state of mind myself that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to a heighth of which perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I did suppose had been eradicated from my ‘eart is not eradicated. Its influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am willing to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had any control and to re-new those proposals to Miss Summerson which I had the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay the ’ouse in Walcot Square, the business, and myself before Miss Summerson for her acceptance.” “Very magnanimous indeed, sir,” observed my guardian. “Well, sir,” replied Mr. Guppy with candour, “my wish is to be magnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss Summerson I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the opinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I submit may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks of mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at.”

“I take upon myself, sir,” said my guardian, laughing as he rang the bell, “to reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Summerson. She is very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good evening, and wishes you well.” “Oh!” said Mr. Guppy with a blank look. “Is that tantamount, sir, to acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?” “To decided rejection, if you please,” returned my guardian. Mr. Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling. “Indeed?” said he. “Then, Jobling, if you was the friend you represent yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain’t wanted.” But Mrs. Guppy positively refused to come out of the gang-way. She wouldn’t hear of it. “Why, get along with you,” said she to my guardian, “what do you mean? Ain’t my son good enough for you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!” “My good lady,” returned my guardian, “it is hardly reason-able to ask me to get out of my own room.” “I don’t care for that,” said Mrs. Guppy. “Get out with you. If we ain’t good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good enough. Go along and find ’em.” I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Guppy’s power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest offence. “Go along and find somebody that’s good enough for you,” repeated Mrs. Guppy. “Get out!” Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Guppy’s mother so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out. “Why don’t you get out?” said Mrs. Guppy. “What are you stopping here for?” “Mother,” interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, “will you hold your tongue?” “No, William,” she returned, “I won’t! Not unless he gets out, I won’t!” However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy’s mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and above all things that we should get out.

Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Beginning the World The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr. Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl in-deed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked forward—a very little way now—to the help that was to come to her, and never drooped. It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest myself of an idea that it might lead to some result now. We left home directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and walked down there through the lively streets—so happily and strangely it seemed!—together. As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and Ada, I heard somebody calling “Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!” And there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards’ distance. I had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done, but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back, and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers, and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don’t know what for her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan, standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as she could see us. This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to Westminster Hall we found that the day’s business was begun. Worse than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of “Silence!” It appeared to be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional gentle-men very merry, for there were several young counsellors in wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about the pavement of the Hall. We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it. He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he said, over for good. Over for good! When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich? It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was! Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd, and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out—bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more. Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over. Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing too. At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see us. “Here is Miss Summerson, sir,” he said. “And Mr. Woodcourt.” “Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!” said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with polished politeness. “How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is not here?” No. He never came there, I reminded him. “Really,” returned Mr. Kenge, “it is as well that he is not here to-day, for his—shall I say, in my good friend’s absence, his indomitable singularity of opinion?—might have been strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened.” “Pray what has been done to-day?” asked Allan. “I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity. “What has been done to-day?” “What has been done,” repeated Mr. Kenge. “Quite so. Yes. Why, not much has been done; not much. We have been checked—brought up suddenly, I would say—upon the—shall I term it threshold?” “Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?” said Allan. “Will you tell us that?” “Most certainly, if I could,” said Mr. Kenge; “but we have not gone into that, we have not gone into that.” “We have not gone into that,” repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low inward voice were an echo. “You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt,” observed Mr. Kenge, using his silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, “that this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice.” “And patience has sat upon it a long time,” said Allan.

“Very well indeed, sir,” returned Mr. Kenge with a certain condeseending laugh he had. “Very well! You are further to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt,” becoming dignified almost to severity, “that on the numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high intellect. For many years, the—a—I would say the flower of the bar, and the—a—I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of the woolsack—have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money’s worth, sir.” “Mr. Kenge,” said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. “Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?” “Hem! I believe so,” returned Mr. Kenge. “Mr. Vholes, what do you say?” “I believe so,” said Mr. Vholes. “And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?” “Probably,” returned Mr. Kenge. “Mr. Vholes?” “Probably,” said Mr. Vholes. “My dearest life,” whispered Allan, “this will break Richard’s heart!” There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears. “In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir,” said Mr. Vholes, coming after us, “you’ll find him in court. I left him there resting himself a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson.” As he gave me that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low door at the end of the Hall. “My dear love,” said Allan, “leave to me, for a little while, the charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada’s by and by!”

I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to Richard without a moment’s delay and leave me to do as he wished. Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what news I had returned. “Little woman,” said he, quite unmoved for himself, “to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!” We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to Symond’s Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home. He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day. I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, “Dame Durden, kiss me, my dear!” It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband’s hand and hold it to his breast. We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. “Yes, surely, dearest Richard!” But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so near—I knew—I knew! It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all, “Where is Woodcourt?” Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian standing in the little hall. “Who is that, Dame Durden?” Richard asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face that some one was there. I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded “Yes,” bent over Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard’s. “Oh, sir,” said Richard, “you are a good man, you are a good man!” and burst into tears for the first time. My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping his hand on Richard’s. “My dear Rick,” said he, “the clouds have cleared away, and it is bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?” “I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin the world.” “Aye, truly; well said!” cried my guardian. “I will not begin it in the old way now,” said Richard with a sad smile. “I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it.” “Well, well,” said my guardian, comforting him; “well, well, well, dear boy!” “I was thinking, sir,” resumed Richard, “that there is nothing on earth I should so much like to see as their house—Dame Durden’s and Woodcourt’s house. If I could be removed there when I begin to recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than anywhere.” “Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick,” said my guardian, “and our little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very day. I dare say her husband won’t object. What do you think?”

Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind the head of the couch. “I say nothing of Ada,” said Richard, “but I think of her, and have thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself, my dear love, my poor girl!” He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and moved her lips. “When I get down to Bleak House,” said Richard, “I shall have much to tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won’t you?” “Undoubtedly, dear Rick.” “Thank you; like you, like you,” said Richard. “But it’s all like you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you remembered all Esther’s familiar tastes and ways. It will be like coming to the old Bleak House again.” “And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now, you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come to me, my love!” he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.) “It was a troubled dream?” said Richard, clasping both my guardian’s hands eagerly. “Nothing more, Rick; nothing more.” “And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?” “Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?” “I will begin the world!” said Richard with a light in his eyes. My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly lift up his hand to warn my guardian. “When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn child?” said Richard. “When shall I go?”

“Dear Rick, when you are strong enough,” returned my guardian. “Ada, my darling!” He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted. “I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my Ada, before I begin the world?” A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck, and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not this! The world that sets this right. When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.

Chapter 66

Chapter 66

Down in Lincolnshire There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace; but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the peachycheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large fans—like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing all their other beaux—did once occasionally say, when the world assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks, entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have never been known to object. Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle- road among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of horses’ hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester—invalided, bent, and almost blind, but of worthy presence yet—riding with a stalwart man beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester’s accustomed horse stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is still for a few moments before they ride away. War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself. Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home; similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now, is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the satisfaction of both. In one of the lodges of the park—that lodge within sight of the house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper’s child—the stalwart man, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction. A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to the name of Phil. A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to observe— which few do, for the house is scant of company in these times—the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening air from the trooper’s door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the lodge on the inspiring topic of the “British Grenadiers”; and as the evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while two men pace together up and down, “But I never own to it before the old girl. Discipline must be maintained.” The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my Lady’s picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more, in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so obdurate, will have opened and received him. Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be one of the two, and can-not be anything else), are the staple of her reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes broad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a memorandum concerning herself in the event of “anything happening” to her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay. The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness, but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that such fernal old jail’s—nough t’sew fler up—frever. The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated, when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way of gracing a public ball. Then, in-deed, does the tuckered sylph come out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of antipodean lumber- room full of old chairs and tables upside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skip-ping about as in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem Volumnias. For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the window- panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and departs. Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry lowering; so sombre and motionless always—no flag flying now by day, no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life about it—passion and pride, even to the stranger’s eye, have died away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull repose.

Chapter 67

Chapter 67

The Close of Esther's Narrative Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned; then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope, on his or hers. They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born before the turf was planted on its father’s grave. It was a boy; and I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father’s name. The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand and how its touch could heal my darling’s heart and raised hope within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of God. They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married then. I was the happiest of the happy. It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she would come home. “Both houses are your home, my dear,” said he, “but the older Bleak House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do it, come and take possession of your home.” Ada called him “her dearest cousin, John.” But he said, no, it must be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy’s; and he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian, and has called him guardian ever since.

The children know him by no other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters. It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley’s sister, is exactly what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley’s brother, I am really afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being ashamed of it. Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life. Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and lives full two miles further west-ward than Newman Street. She works very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one. I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great mortification from her daughter’s ignoble marriage and pursuits, but I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in con-sequence of the king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody—who survived the climate—for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy’s poor little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the affliction of her child.

As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French clock in his dressingroom—which is not his property. With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see us. I try to write all this lightly, be-cause my heart is full in drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their way. I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is my husband’s best and dearest friend, he is our children’s darling, he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side, Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman—all just the same as ever; and I answer, “Yes, dear guardian!” just the same. I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that very day. I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that has been in her face—for it is not there now—seems to have purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality. Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel—it is difficult to express—as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear Esther in her prayers. I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am one.

We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this to be rich? The people even praise me as the doctor’s wife. The people even like me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I do everything I do in life for his sake. A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, when Allan came home. So he said, “My precious little woman, what are you doing here?” And I said, “The moon is shining so brightly, Allan, and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here thinking.” “What have you been thinking about, my dear?” said Allan then. “How curious you are!” said I. “I am almost ashamed to tell you, but I will. I have been thinking about my old looks—such as they were.” “And what have you been thinking about them, my busy bee?” said Allan. “I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you could have loved me any better, even if I had retained them.” “‘Such as they were’?” said Allan, laughing. “Such as they were, of course.” “My dear Dame Durden,” said Allan, drawing my arm through his, “do you ever look in the glass?” “You know I do; you see me do it.” “And don’t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?” “I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me—even supposing—.”

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