Bleak House by Charles Dickens (page 8)

Mr. Bucket

Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, though the evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn’s windows are wide open, and the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool to-night.

Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn’s windows, and plenty more has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law-or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one of its trustiest representatives–may scatter, on occasion, in the eyes of the laity.

In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth, animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes.

Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever, he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his family history, and his money, and his will–all a mystery to every one–and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely home to the Temple and hanged himself.

But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him fill his glass.

“Now, Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “to go over this odd story again.”

“If you please, sir.”

“You told me when you were so good as to step round here last night–”

“For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person, and I thought it possible that you might–just–wish–to–”

Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr. Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, “I must ask you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure.”

“Not at all,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “You told me, Snagsby, that you put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to your wife. That was prudent I think, because it’s not a matter of such importance that it requires to be mentioned.”

“Well, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby, “you see, my little woman is–not to put too fine a point upon it–inquisitive. She’s inquisitive. Poor little thing, she’s liable to spasms, and it’s good for her to have her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it–I should say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it concerns her or not–especially not. My little woman has a very active mind, sir.”

Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his hand, “Dear me, very fine wine indeed!”

“Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “And to-night too?”

“Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in– not to put too fine a point on it–in a pious state, or in what she considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not quite favourable to his style myself. That’s neither here nor there. My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to step round in a quiet manner.”

Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. “Fill your glass, Snagsby.”

“Thank you, sir, I am sure,” returns the stationer with his cough of deference. “This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!”

“It is a rare wine now,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It is fifty years old.”

“Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It might be–any age almost.” After rendering this general tribute to the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his hand for drinking anything so precious.

“Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.

“With pleasure, sir.”

Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer repeats Jo’s statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks off with, “Dear me, sir, I wasn’t aware there was any other gentleman present!”

Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener. He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.

“Don’t mind this gentleman,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way. “This is only Mr. Bucket.”

“Oh, indeed, sir?” returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.

“I wanted him to hear this story,” says the lawyer, “because I have half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?”

“It’s very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and he’s not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don’t object to go down with me to Tom-all-Alone’s and point him out, we can have him here in less than a couple of hours’ time. I can do it without Mr. Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way.”

“Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby,” says the lawyer in explanation.

“Is he indeed, sir?” says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his clump of hair to stand on end.

“And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the place in question,” pursues the lawyer, “I shall feel obliged to you if you will do so.”

In a moment’s hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips down to the bottom of his mind.

“Don’t you be afraid of hurting the boy,” he says. “You won’t do that. It’s all right as far as the boy’s concerned. We shall only bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and he’ll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It’ll be a good job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent away all right. Don’t you be afraid of hurting him; you an’t going to do that.”

“Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!” cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And reassured, “Since that’s the case–”

“Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby,” resumes Bucket, taking him aside by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a confidential tone. “You’re a man of the world, you know, and a man of business, and a man of sense. That’s what YOU are.”

“I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion,” returns the stationer with his cough of modesty, “but–”

“That’s what YOU are, you know,” says Bucket. “Now, it an’t necessary to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in your business once)–it an’t necessary to say to a man like you that it’s the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet. Don’t you see? Quiet!”

“Certainly, certainly,” returns the other.

“I don’t mind telling YOU,” says Bucket with an engaging appearance of frankness, “that as far as I can understand it, there seems to be a doubt whether this dead person wasn’t entitled to a little property, and whether this female hasn’t been up to some games respecting that property, don’t you see?”

“Oh!” says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.

“Now, what YOU want,” pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, “is that every person should have their rights according to justice. That’s what YOU want.”

“To be sure,” returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.

“On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a–do you call it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used to call it.”

“Why, I generally say customer myself,” replies Mr. Snagsby.

“You’re right!” returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite affectionately. “–On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in confidence, to Tom-all-Alone’s and to keep the whole thing quiet ever afterwards and never mention it to any one. That’s about your intentions, if I understand you?”

“You are right, sir. You are right,” says Mr. Snagsby.

“Then here’s your hat,” returns his new friend, quite as intimate with it as if he had made it; “and if you’re ready, I am.”

They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the streets.

“You don’t happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of Gridley, do you?” says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend the stairs.

“No,” says Mr. Snagsby, considering, “I don’t know anybody of that name. Why?”

“Nothing particular,” says Bucket; “only having allowed his temper to get a little the better of him and having been threatening some respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have got against him–which it’s a pity that a man of sense should do.”

As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply, at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.

When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone’s, Mr. Bucket stops for a moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull’s-eye from the constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own particular bull’s-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr. Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained, unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water– though the roads are dry elsewhere–and reeking with such smells and sights that he, who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses. Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets and courts so infamous that Mr. Snagsby sickens in body and mind and feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal gulf.

“Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby,” says Bucket as a kind of shabby palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. “Here’s the fever coming up the street!”

As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth flits about them until they leave the place.

“Are those the fever-houses, Darby?” Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he turns his bull’s-eye on a line of stinking ruins.

Darby replies that “all them are,” and further that in all, for months and months, the people “have been down by dozens” and have been carried out dead and dying “like sheep with the rot.” Bucket observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn’t breathe the dreadful air.

There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few people are known in Tom-all-Alone’s by any Christian sign, there is much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever they move, and the angry bull’s-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as before.

At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject, lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the proprietress of the house–a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog- hutch which is her private apartment–leads to the establishment of this conclusion. Toughy has gone to the doctor’s to get a bottle of stuff for a sick woman but will be here anon.

“And who have we got here to-night?” says Mr. Bucket, opening another door and glaring in with his bull’s-eye. “Two drunken men, eh? And two women? The men are sound enough,” turning back each sleeper’s arm from his face to look at him. “Are these your good men, my dears?”

“Yes, sir,” returns one of the women. “They are our husbands.”

“Brickmakers, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you doing here? You don’t belong to London.”

“No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire.”

“Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?”

“Saint Albans.”

“Come up on the tramp?”

“We walked up yesterday. There’s no work down with us at present, but we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect.”

“That’s not the way to do much good,” says Mr. Bucket, turning his head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.

“It an’t indeed,” replies the woman with a sigh. “Jenny and me knows it full well.”

The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a very young child.

“Why, what age do you call that little creature?” says Bucket. “It looks as if it was born yesterday.” He is not at all rough about it; and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he has seen in pictures.

“He is not three weeks old yet, sir,” says the woman.

“Is he your child?”

“Mine.”

The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.

“You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself,” says Mr. Bucket.

“I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died.”

“Ah, Jenny, Jenny!” says the other woman to her. “Better so. Much better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!”

“Why, you an’t such an unnatural woman, I hope,” returns Bucket sternly, “as to wish your own child dead?”

“God knows you are right, master,” she returns. “I am not. I’d stand between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any pretty lady.”

“Then don’t talk in that wrong manner,” says Mr. Bucket, mollified again. “Why do you do it?”

“It’s brought into my head, master,” returns the woman, her eyes filling with tears, “when I look down at the child lying so. If it was never to wake no more, you’d think me mad, I should take on so. I know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers–warn’t I, Jenny?–and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this place. Look at them,” glancing at the sleepers on the ground. “Look at the boy you’re waiting for, who’s gone out to do me a good turn. Think of the children that your business lays with often and often, and that YOU see grow up!”

“Well, well,” says Mr. Bucket, “you train him respectable, and he’ll be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know.”

“I mean to try hard,” she answers, wiping her eyes. “But I have been a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of all the many things that’ll come in his way. My master will be against it, and he’ll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and ever so hard, there’s no one to help me; and if he should be turned bad ‘spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an’t it likely I should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as Jenny’s child died!”

“There, there!” says Jenny. “Liz, you’re tired and ill. Let me take him.”

In doing so, she displaces the mother’s dress, but quickly readjusts it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.

“It’s my dead child,” says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses, “that makes me love this child so dear, and it’s my dead child that makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!”

As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway and says to Mr. Snagsby, “Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE do?”

“That’s Jo,” says Mr. Snagsby.

Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however, giving him the consolatory assurance, “It’s only a job you will be paid for, Jo,” he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though out of breath.

“I have squared it with the lad,” says Mr. Bucket, returning, “and it’s all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we’re ready for you.”

First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic verbal direction that “it’s to be all took d’rectly.” Secondly, Mr. Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him, without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone’s.

By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration of the bull’s-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more. Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to Mr. Snagsby’s mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr. Tulkinghorn’s gate.

As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn’s chambers being on the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of preparation.

Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning, and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn’s usual room–the room where he drank his old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.

Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.

“What’s the matter?” says Bucket in a whisper.

“There she is!” cries Jo.

“Who!”

“The lady!”

A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room, where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their entrance and remains like a statue.

“Now, tell me,” says Bucket aloud, “how you know that to be the lady.”

“I know the wale,” replies Jo, staring, “and the bonnet, and the gownd.”

“Be quite sure of what you say, Tough,” returns Bucket, narrowly observant of him. “Look again.”

“I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look,” says Jo with starting eyes, “and that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd.”

“What about those rings you told me of?” asks Bucket.

“A-sparkling all over here,” says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the figure.

The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.

“Now, what do you say to that?” asks Bucket.

Jo shakes his head. “Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like that.”

“What are you talking of?” says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and well pleased too.

“Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,” returns Jo.

“Why, you’ll tell me I’m my own mother next,” says Mr. Bucket. “Do you recollect the lady’s voice?”

“I think I does,” says Jo.

The figure speaks. “Was it at all like this? I will speak as long as you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this voice?”

Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. “Not a bit!”

“Then, what,” retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, “did you say it was the lady for?”

“Cos,” says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken in his certainty, “cos that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd. It is her and it an’t her. It an’t her hand, nor yet her rings, nor yet her woice. But that there’s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd, and they’re wore the same way wot she wore ’em, and it’s her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov’ring and hooked it.”

“Well!” says Mr. Bucket slightly, “we haven’t got much good out of YOU. But, however, here’s five shillings for you. Take care how you spend it, and don’t get yourself into trouble.” Bucket stealthily tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters–which is a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of skill–and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy’s hand and takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby, not by any means comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn’s coming into the room, the veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual equanimity. “I will give you no further trouble about this little wager.”

“You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at present placed?” says mademoiselle.

“Certainly, certainly!”

“And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished recommendation?”

“By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense.”

“A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful.”

“It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle.”

“Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir.”

“Good night.”

Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr. Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not without gallantry.

“Well, Bucket?” quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.

“It’s all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an’t a doubt that it was the other one with this one’s dress on. The boy was exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby, I promised you as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don’t say it wasn’t done!”

“You have kept your word, sir,” returns the stationer; “and if I can be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman will be getting anxious–”

“Thank you, Snagsby, no further use,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I am quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already.”

“Not at all, sir. I wish you good night.”

“You see, Mr. Snagsby,” says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door and shaking hands with him over and over again, “what I like in you is that you’re a man it’s of no use pumping; that’s what YOU are. When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it’s done with and gone, and there’s an end of it. That’s what YOU do.”

“That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir,” returns Mr. Snagsby.

“No, you don’t do yourself justice. It an’t what you endeavour to do,” says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the tenderest manner, “it’s what you DO. That’s what I estimate in a man in your way of business.”

Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake and out–doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he goes–doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to the police-station with official intelligence of her husband’s being made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!

CHAPTER XXIII

Esther’s Narrative

We came home from Mr. Boythorn’s after six pleasant weeks. We were often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper’s wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they had done at first, to that old time of my life.

I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady so curiously was to me, I was to her–I mean that I disturbed her thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. But when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and unreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as much as I could.

One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Boythorn’s house, I had better mention in this place.

I was walking in the garden with Ada and when I was told that some one wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and lightened.

“Mademoiselle,” she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and speaking neither with boldness nor servility, “I have taken a great liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so amiable, mademoiselle.”

“No excuse is necessary,” I returned, “if you wish to speak to me.”

“That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?” she said in a quick, natural way.

“Certainly,” said I.

“Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high, so very high. Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!” Her quickness anticipated what I might have said presently but as yet had only thought. “It is not for me to come here to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high, so very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that.”

“Go on, if you please,” said I.

“Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness. Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good, accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour of being your domestic!”

“I am sorry–” I began.

“Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!” she said with an involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. “Let me hope a moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired than that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service would be less distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I am content.”

“I assure you,” said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having such an attendant, “that I keep no maid–”

“Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I wish with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present. Take me as I am. For nothing!”

She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her. Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always with a certain grace and propriety.

“Mademoiselle, I come from the South country where we are quick and where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for me; I was too high for her. It is done–past–finlshed! Receive me as your domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will– no matter, I will do my utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you will not repent it. Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will serve you well. You don’t know how well!”

There was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me while I explained the impossibility of my engagmg her (without thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so), which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets of Paris in the reign of terror.

She heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty accent and in her mildest voice, “Hey, mademoiselle, I have received my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and seek what I have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?”

She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. “I fear I surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?” she said with a parting curtsy.

I confessed that she had surprised us all.

“I took an oath, mademoiselle,” she said, smiling, “and I wanted to stamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will! Adieu, mademoiselle!”

So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I supposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until six weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now by saying.

At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard was constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday and remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back again early next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was very industrious, but I was not easy in my mind about him. It appeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. I could not find that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told us, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he and Ada were to take I don’t know how many thousands of pounds must be finally established if there were any sense or justice in the Court of Chancery–but oh, what a great IF that sounded in my ears–and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer delayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the infatuation. He had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he saw Miss Flite there daily, how they talked together, and how he did her little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied her from his heart. But he never thought–never, my poor, dear, sanguine Richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such better things before him– what a fatal link was riveting between his fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.

Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk together. I found him there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in arm.

“Well, Richard,” said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with him, “are you beginning to feel more settled now?”

“Oh, yes, my dear!” returned Richard. “I’m all right enough.”

“But settled?” said I.

“How do you mean, settled?” returned Richard with his gay laugh.

“Settled in the law,” said I.

“Oh, aye,” replied Richard, “I’m all right enough.”

“You said that before, my dear Richard.”

“And you don’t think it’s an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it’s not. Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?”

“Yes.”

“Why, no, I can’t say I am settling down,” said Richard, strongly emphasizing “down,” as if that expressed the difficulty, “because one can’t settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled state. When I say this business, of course I mean the– forbidden subject.”

“Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?” said I.

“Not the least doubt of it,” answered Richard.

We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: “My dear Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant sort of fellow. I don’t mean constant to Ada, for I love her dearly–better and better every day–but constant to myself. (Somehow, I mean something that I can’t very well express, but you’ll make it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like grim death, and should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and shouldn’t be in debt, and–”

“ARE you in debt, Richard?”

“Yes,” said Richard, “I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder’s out; you despise me, Esther, don’t you?”

“You know I don’t,” said I.

“You are kinder to me than I often am to myself,” he returned. “My dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you couldn’t settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to anything; and yet that’s my unhappy case. I was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada.”

We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and sobbed as he said the words.

“Oh, Richard!” said I. “Do not be so moved. You have a noble nature, and Ada’s love may make you worthier every day.”

“I know, my dear,” he replied, pressing my arm, “I know all that. You mustn’t mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn’t do it. I am too unsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I do her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can’t last for ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in our favour, and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!”

It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.

“I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in them for months,” he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment, “and you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! And there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a speedy close; in fact, it’s on the paper now. It will be all right at last, and then you shall see!”

Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in the same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to be articled in Lincoln’s Inn.

“There again! I think not at all, Esther,” he returned with an effort. “I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Jarndyce and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law and satisfied myself that I shouldn’t like it. Besides, I find it unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of action. So what,” continued Richard, confident again by this time, “do I naturally turn my thoughts to?”

“I can’t imagine,” said I.

“Don’t look so serious,” returned Richard, “because it’s the best thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It’s not as if I wanted a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination, and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my temporary condition–I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I naturally turn my thoughts to?”

I looked at him and shook my head.

“What,” said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, “but the army!”

“The army?” said I.

“The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission; and–there I am, you know!” said Richard.

And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted no debt at all within a corresponding period in the army–as to which he had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years, which was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time from Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired–as in thought he always did, I know full well–to repay her love, and to ensure her happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely. For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal blight that ruined everything it rested on!

I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada’s sake not to put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assented, riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing the brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into–alas, when the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long talk, but it always came back to that, in substance.

At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed to wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman Street. Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us together.

“Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther,” said Caddy, “and got the key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we can lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see your dear good face about.”

“Very well, my dear,” said I. “Nothing could be better.” So Caddy, after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it, locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the garden very cosily.

“You see, Esther,” said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little confidence, “after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry without Ma’s knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark respecting our engagement–though I don’t believe Ma cares much for me, I must say–I thought it right to mention your opinions to Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything you tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from Prince.”

“I hope he approved, Caddy?”

“Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could say. You have no idea what an opimon he has of you!”

“Indeed!”

“Esther, it’s enough to make anybody but me jealous,” said Caddy, laughing and shaking her head; “but it only makes me joyful, for you are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have, and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me.”

“Upon my word, Caddy,” said I, “you are in the general conspiracy to keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?”

“Well! I am going to tell you,” replied Caddy, crossing her hands confidentially upon my arm. “So we talked a good deal about it, and so I said to Prince, ‘Prince, as Miss Summerson–”

“I hope you didn’t say ‘Miss Summerson’?”

“No. I didn’t!” cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the brightest of faces. “I said, ‘Esther.’ I said to Prince, ‘As Esther is decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it to me, and always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think, Prince,’ said I, ‘that Esther thinks that I should be in a better, and truer, and more honourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.'”

“Yes, my dear,” said I. “Esther certainly does think so.”

“So I was right, you see!” exclaimed Caddy. “Well! This troubled Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr. Turveydrop; and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop might break his heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting manner or other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr. Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop’s deportment is very beautiful, you know, Esther,” said Caddy, “and his feelings are extremely sensitive.”

“Are they, my dear?”

“Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my darling child–I didn’t mean to use the expression to you, Esther,” Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, “but I generally call Prince my darling child.”

I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on’

“This has caused him, Esther–”

“Caused whom, my dear?”

“Oh, you tiresome thing!” said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face on fire. “My darling child, if you insist upon it! This has caused him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a very anxious manner. At last he said to me, ‘Caddy, if Miss Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I could do it.’ So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind, besides,” said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, “that if you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a great favour and a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant it, Esther, we should both be very grateful.”

“Let me see, Caddy,” said I, pretending to consider. “Really, I think I could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. I am at your service and the darling child’s, my dear, whenever you like.”

Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I believe, as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman Street direct.

Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very hopeful pupil–a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama–whose case was certainly not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as a model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment–the only comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case, brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.

“Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby.”

“Charmed! Enchanted!” said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his high- shouldered bow. “Permit me!” Handing chairs. “Be seated!” Kissing the tips of his left fingers. “Overjoyed!” Shutting his eyes and rolling. “My little retreat is made a paradise.” Recomposing himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe.

“Again you find us, Miss Summerson,” said he, “using our little arts to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent–my patron, if I may presume to say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my dear madam.”

I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch of snuff.

“My dear son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “you have four schools this afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.”

“Thank you, father,” returned Prince, “I will be sure to be punctual. My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am going to say?”

“Good heaven!” exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. “What is this? Is this lunacy! Or what is this?”

“Father,” returned Prince with great submission, “I love this young lady, and we are engaged.”

“Engaged!” cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting out the sight with his hand. “An arrow launched at my brain by my own child!”

“We have been engaged for some time, father,” faltered Prince, “and Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, father.”

Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.

“No, pray don’t! Pray don’t, father,” urged his son. “Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to consider your comfort.”

Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.

“No, pray don’t, father!” cried his son.

“Boy,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “it is well that your sainted mother is spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir, strike home!”

“Pray don’t say so, father,” implored Prince, in tears. “It goes to my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our duty–what is my duty is Caroline’s, as we have often said together–and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote ourselves to making your life agreeable.”

“Strike home,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop. “Strike home!” But he seemed to listen, I thought, too.

“My dear father,” returned Prince, “we well know what little comforts you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our study and our pride to provide those before anything. If you will bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we ARE married, we shall always make you–of course– our first consideration. You must ever be the head and master here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please you.”

Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a perfect model of parental deportment.

“My son!” said Mr. Turveydrop. “My children! I cannot resist your prayer. Be happy!”

His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.

“My children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand gracefully on his hip. “My son and daughter, your happiness shall be my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with me”–meaning, of course, I will always live with you–“this house is henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long live to share it with me!”

The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent sacrifice in their favour.

“For myself, my children,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “I am falling into the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet, my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I charge myself with all the rest.”

They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.

“My son,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “for those little points in which you are deficient–points of deportment, which are born with a man, which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated– you may still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since the days of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not desert it now. No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father’s poor position with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing to tarnish it. For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as possible.”

“That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,” replied Prince.

“I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Turveydrop. “Your qualities are not shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care of my simple wants, and bless you both!”

Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and during our walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr. Turveydrop’s praises that I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any consideration.

The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows annoucing that it was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags, account- books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed to have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible.

Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby’s room (the children were all screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.

“Ah! Miss Summerson!” she said at last. “I was thinking of something so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?”

I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.

“Why, not quite, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner. “He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each, either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger.”

I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so placid.

“You have brought Caddy back, I see,” observed Mrs. Jellyby with a glance at her daughter. “It has become quite a novelty to see her here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges me to employ a boy.”

“I am sure, Ma–” began Caddy.

“Now you know, Caddy,” her mother mildly interposed, “that I DO employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your contradicting?”

“I was not going to contradict, Ma,” returned Caddy. “I was only going to say that surely you wouldn’t have me be a mere drudge all my life.”

“I believe, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters, casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she spoke, “that you have a business example before you in your mother. Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy.”

“Not if it’s Africa, Ma, I have not.”

“Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged, Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a moment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she had just opened, “this would distress and disappoint me. But I have so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you see.”

As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and to attract Mrs. Jellyby’s attention.

“Perhaps,” I began, “you will wonder what has brought me here to interrupt you.”

“I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson,” said Mrs. Jellyby, pursuing her employment with a placid smile. “Though I wish,” and she shook her head, “she was more interested in the Borrioboolan project.”

“I have come with Caddy,” said I, “because Caddy justly thinks she ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don’t know how) in imparting one.”

“Caddy,” said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, “you are going to tell me some nonsense.”

Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily, said, “Ma, I am engaged.”

“Oh, you ridiculous child!” observed Mrs. Jellyby with an abstracted air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; “what a goose you are!”

“I am engaged, Ma,” sobbed Caddy, “to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you’ll give us yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never could!” sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and of everything but her natural affection.

“You see again, Miss Summerson,” observed Mrs. Jellyby serenely, “what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy engaged to a dancing-master’s son–mixed up with people who have no more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be interested in her!”

“Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!” sobbed Caddy.

“Caddy, Caddy!” returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with the greatest complacency. “I have no doubt you did. How could you do otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me, if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great African continent? No. No,” repeated Mrs. Jellyby in a calm clear voice, and with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them. “No, indeed.”

I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception, though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say. Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of voice and with a smile of perfect composure, “No, indeed.”

“I hope, Ma,” sobbed poor Caddy at last, “you are not angry?”

“Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl,” returned Mrs. Jellyby, “to ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation of my mind.”

“And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?” said Caddy.

“You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,” said Mrs. Jellyby; “and a degenerate child, when you might have devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken, and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray, Caddy,” said Mrs. Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her, “don’t delay me in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before the afternoon post comes in!”

I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained for a moment by Caddy’s saying, “You won’t object to my bringing him to see you, Ma?”

“Oh, dear me, Caddy,” cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into that distant contemplation, “have you begun again? Bring whom?”

“Him, Ma.”

“Caddy, Caddy!” said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little matters. “Then you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty- eight new letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details of the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need not apologize for having very little leisure.”

I was not surprised by Caddy’s being in low spirits when we went downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she would far rather have been scolded than treated with such indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn’t know. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she would do for her unfortunate father and for Peepy when she had a home of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was caused by poor Mr. Jellyby’s breaking away from the dining-table and making rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his affairs.

As I rode quietly home at night after the day’s bustle, I thought a good deal of Caddy’s engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier and better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her and her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the stars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to be useful to some one in my small way.

They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were, that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome, and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the world.

We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, “Come in!” and there came in a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a curtsy.

“If you please, miss,” said the little girl in a soft voice, “I am Charley.”

“Why, so you are,” said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving her a kiss. “How glad am I to see you, Charley!”

“If you please, miss,” pursued Charley in the same soft voice, “I’m your maid.”

“Charley?”

“If you please, miss, I’m a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce’s love.”

I sat down with my hand on Charley’s neck and looked at Charley.

“And oh, miss,” says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears starting down her dimpled cheeks, “Tom’s at school, if you please, and learning so good! And little Emma, she’s with Mrs. Blinder, miss, a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at school–and Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder–and me, I should have been here–all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Jarndyce thought that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting first, we was so small. Don’t cry, if you please, miss!”

“I can’t help it, Charley.”

“No, miss, nor I can’t help it,” says Charley. “And if you please, miss, Mr. Jarndyce’s love, and he thinks you’ll like to teach me now and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other once a month. And I’m so happy and so thankful, miss,” cried Charley with a heaving heart, “and I’ll try to be such a good maid!”

“Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!”

“No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won’t. Nor yet Emma. It was all you, miss.”

“I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley.”

“Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to be sure to remember it.”

Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her matronly little way about and about the room and folding up everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came creeping back to my side and said, “Oh, don’t cry, if you please, miss.”

And I said again, “I can’t help it, Charley.”

And Charley said again, “No, miss, nor I can’t help it.” And so, after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.

CHAPTER XXIV

An Appeal Case

As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr. Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise when he received the representation, though it caused him much uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.

We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard’s behalf as an infant and a ward, and I don’t know what, and that there was a quantity of talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing his mind–“a pretty good joke, I think,” said Richard, “from that quarter!”–and at last it was settled that his application should be granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for an ensign’s commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an agent’s; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent course of military study and got up at five o’clock every morning to practise the broadsword exercise.

Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a professor’s house in London, was able to be with us less frequently than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so time passed until the commission was obtained and Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.

He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting and said, “Come in, my dears!” We went in and found Richard, whom we had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking mortified and angry.

“Rick and I, Ada,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “are not quite of one mind. Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!”

“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “The harder because you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have been set right without you, sir.”

“Well, well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “I want to set you more right yet. I want to set you more right with yourself.”

“I hope you will excuse my saying, sir,” returned Richard in a fiery way, but yet respectfully, “that I think I am the best judge about myself.”

“I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick,” observed Mr. Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, “that’s it’s quite natural in you to think so, but I don’t think so. I must do my duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope you will always care for me, cool and hot.”

Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading- chair and sat beside her.

“It’s nothing, my dear,” he said, “it’s nothing. Rick and I have only had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are the theme. Now you are afraid of what’s coming.”

“I am not indeed, cousin John,” replied Ada with a smile, “if it is to come from you.”

“Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute’s calm attention, without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear girl,” putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the easy-chair, “you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little woman told me of a little love affair?”

“It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your kindness that day, cousin John.”

“I can never forget it,” said Richard.

“And I can never forget it,” said Ada.

“So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us to agree,” returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the gentleness and honour of his heart. “Ada, my bird, you should know that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he has planted.”

“Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir,” said Richard, “is not all I have.”

“Rick, Rick!” cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner, and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have stopped his ears. “For the love of God, don’t found a hope or expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!”

We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew that I felt too, how much he needed it.

“Ada, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness, “these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start him in the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must go further. 1 will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship.”

“Better to say at once, sir,” returned Richard, “that you renounce all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same.”

“Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don’t mean it.”

“You think I have begun ill, sir,” retorted Richard. “I HAVE, I know.”

“How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke of these things last,” said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging manner. “You have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young, my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may come must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner.”

“You are very hard with me, sir,” said Richard. “Harder than I could have supposed you would be.”

“My dear boy,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am harder with myself when I do anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands. Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves.”

“Why is it best, sir?” returned Richard hastily. “It was not when we opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then.”

“I have had experience since. I don’t blame you, Rick, but I have had experience since.”

“You mean of me, sir.”

“Well! Yes, of both of you,” said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. “The time is not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right, and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to write your lives in.”

Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.

“I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “until now, in order that we might be open as the day, and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you together.”

A long silence succeeded.

“Cousin Richard,” said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to his face, “after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is left us. Your mind may he quite at ease about me, for you will leave me here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to wish for–quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I–I don’t doubt, cousin Richard,” said Ada, a little confused, “that you are very fond of me, and I–I don’t think you will fall in love with anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know it’s for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately, and often talk of you with Esther, and–and perhaps you will sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now,” said Ada, going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, “we are only cousins again, Richard–for the time perhaps– and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!”

It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had been before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them.

In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself, and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at such times would confide to me the heaviest self- reproaches. But in a few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible.

It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that I could never have been tired if I had tried.

There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing, with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast when he came.

“Good morning, Mr. George,” said my guardian, who happened to be alone with me. “Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down.”

He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across his upper lip.

“You are as punctual as the sun,” said Mr. Jarndyce.

“Military time, sir,” he replied. “Force of habit. A mere habit in me, sir. I am not at all business-like.”

“Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

“Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a one.”

“And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of Mr. Carstone?” said my guardian.

“Pretty good, sir,” he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest and looking very large. “If Mr. Carstone was to give his full mind to it, he would come out very good.”

“But he don’t, I suppose?” said my guardian.

“He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps he has something else upon it–some young lady, perhaps.” His bright dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.

“He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George,” said I, laughing, “though you seem to suspect me.”

He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper’s bow. “No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs.”

“Not at all,” said I. “I take it as a compliment.”

If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or four quick successive glances. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said to my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, “but you did me the honour to mention the young lady’s name–”

“Miss Summerson.”

“Miss Summerson,” he repeated, and looked at me again.

“Do you know the name?” I asked.

“No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you somewhere.”

“I think not,” I returned, raising my head from my work to look at him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that I was glad of the opportunity. “I remember faces very well.”

“So do I, miss!” he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of his dark eyes and broad forehead. “Humph! What set me off, now, upon that!”

His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his relief.

“Have you many pupils, Mr. George?”

“They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they’re but a small lot to live by.”

“And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?”

“All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to ‘prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open.”

“People don’t come with grudges and schemes of finishing their practice with live targets, I hope?” said my guardian, smiling.

“Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come for skill–or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I beg your pardon,” said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and squaring an elbow on each knee, “but I believe you’re a Chancery suitor, if I have heard correct?”

“I am sorry to say I am.”

“I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir.”

“A Chancery suitor?” returned my guardian. “How was that?”

“Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post,” said Mr. George, “that he got out of sorts. I don’t believe he had any idea of taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, ‘If this practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don’t altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of mind; I’d rather you took to something else.’ I was on my guard for a blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of friendship.”

“What was that man?” asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.

“Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a baited bull of him,” said Mr. George.

“Was his name Gridley?”

“It was, sir.”

Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name. He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he called my condescension.

“I don’t know,” he said as he looked at me, “what it is that sets me off again–but–bosh! What’s my head running against!” He passed one of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at the ground.

“I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley into new troubles and that he is in hiding,” said my guardian.

“So I am told, sir,” returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on the ground. “So I am told.”

“You don’t know where?”

“No, sir,” returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out of his reverie. “I can’t say anything about him. He will be worn out soon, I expect. You may file a strong man’s heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.”

Richard’s entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and strode heavily out of the room.

This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard’s departure. We had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where we were going and therefore was not with us.

When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor–the same whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln’s Inn–sitting in great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and gowns–some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed; some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups: all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.

To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness of the suitors’ lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one–this was so curious and self- contradictory to me, who had no experience of it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me; but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at it.

Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it was imposing, it was imposing.

When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress–if I may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion–seemed to die out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to come, to any resuIt. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said, “Jarndyce and Jarndyce.” Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.

I think it came on “for further directions”–about some bill of costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough. But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were “in it,” and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I. They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way, and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut short, it was “referred back for the present,” as Mr. Kenge said, and the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished bringing them in.

I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. “It can’t last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!” was all he said.

I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr. Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone,” said he in a whisper, “and Miss Summerson’s also, but there’s a lady here, a friend of mine, who knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands.” As he