Bleak House
written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his
face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind
protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places
were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the
feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he
past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I
was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing
all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature
deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage
and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance
the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he
was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew
since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only
served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world
would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood.
I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of
that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him
nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often
thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and
fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age)
would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up,
had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it.
If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to
be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become
the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter
chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind
myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even
then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in
the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his
old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his
bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the
same, he knew.
This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a
justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian
impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his
integrity he stated the full case.
But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had
had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it.
That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he
could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery
of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my
disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in
need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the
last.
But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of
the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but
one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him
poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means
of thanking him?
Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after
reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect—for
it was strange though I had expected the contents—but as if
something for which there was no name or distinct idea were
indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very
hopeful; but I cried very much.
By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I
said, “Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!” I am afraid the face in
the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my
finger at it, and it stopped.
“That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear,
when you showed me such a change!” said I, beginning to let down my
hair. “When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as
cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us
begin for once and for all.”
I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little
still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was
crying then.
“And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best
friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great
deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men.”
I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how
should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been
a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form
that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid
them down in their basket again.
Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how
often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my
illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I
should be busy, busy, busy—useful, amiable, serviceable, in all
honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit
down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at
first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I
was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem
strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not.
“Don’t you remember, my plain dear,” I asked myself, looking at the
glass, “what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about
your marrying—”
Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of
the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only
been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it
would be better not to keep them now.
They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room—our
sitting-room, dividing Ada’s chamber from mine. I took a candle and
went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand,
I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and
I stole in to kiss her.
It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but
I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker
than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment
to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed,
the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own
room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just
as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the
least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was
none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the
morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it
not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did
not say a word.
So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over
which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day,
that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never
did.
I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I
tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not
write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought
each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days,
and he never said a word.
At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon
going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down,
came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the
drawing-room window looking out.
He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, “Aye, it’s you, little
woman, is it?” and looked out again.
I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down
on purpose. “Guardian,” I said, rather hesitating and trembling,
“when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came
for?”
“When it’s ready, my dear,” he replied.
“I think it is ready,” said I.
“Is Charley to bring it?” he asked pleasantly.
“No. I have brought it myself, guardian,” I returned.
I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this
the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no
difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said
nothing to my precious pet about it.
CHAPTER XLV
In Trust
One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys,
as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened
to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in
which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that
morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the
Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to
damp my dear girl’s spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes’s
shadow.
Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping
along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora’s attendants
instead of my maid, saying, “Oh, if you please, miss, would you step
and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!”
It was one of Charley’s peculiarities that whenever she was charged
with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld,
at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw
Charley asking me in her usual form of words to “step and speak” to
Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she
had said it so often that she was out of breath.
I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we went
in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To which
Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit
to my educational powers, replied, “Yes, miss. Him as come down in
the country with Mr. Richard.”
A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose
there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a
table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and
upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what
he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it
in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I
never had seen two people so unmatched.
“You know Mr. Vholes, my dear,” said my guardian. Not with the
greatest urbanity, I must say.
Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself
again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not
having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.
“Mr. Vholes,” said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were
a bird of ill omen, “has brought an ugly report of our most
unfortunate Rick.” Laying a marked emphasis on “most unfortunate” as
if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr.
Vholes.
I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that
he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with
his black glove.
“And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to
know,” said my guardian, “what you think, my dear. Would you be so
good as to—as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?”
Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, “I have been saying
that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.’s professional
adviser, that Mr. C.’s circumstances are at the present moment in an
embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the
peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and
the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved
off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving
off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket
to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to
being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have
a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to