Bleak House
Woodcourt, never believe that I forget this night or that while my
heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been
beloved by you.”
He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt
still more encouraged.
“I am induced by what you said just now,” said I, “to hope that you
have succeeded in your endeavour.”
“I have,” he answered. “With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who
know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have
succeeded.”
“Heaven bless him for it,” said I, giving him my hand; “and heaven
bless you in all you do!”
“I shall do it better for the wish,” he answered; “it will make me
enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you.”
“Ah! Richard!” I exclaimed involuntarily, “What will he do when you
are gone!”
“I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss
Summerson, even if I were.”
One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I
knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I
reserved it.
“Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “you will be glad to know from my lips
before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright
before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or
desire.”
It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
“From my childhood I have been,” said I, “the object of the untiring
goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every
tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in
the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day.”
“I share those feelings,” he returned. “You speak of Mr. Jarndyce.”
“You know his virtues well,” said I, “but few can know the greatness
of his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities
have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping
out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage
and respect had not been his already—which I know they are—they
would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it
would have awakened in you towards him for my sake.”
He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave
him my hand again.
“Good night,” I said, “Good-bye.”
“The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this
theme between us for ever.”
“Yes.”
“Good night; good-bye.”
He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His
love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon
me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again
and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.
But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me
the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to
him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the
triumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died
away. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be
animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy
my path, how much easier than his!
CHAPTER LXII
Another Discovery
I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the
courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little
reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the
dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light
to read my guardian’s letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it
from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own
clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my
pillow.
I was up very early in the morning and called Charley to come for a
walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and
arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I
had a good time still for Charley’s lesson before breakfast; Charley
(who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of
grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether
very notable. When my guardian appeared he said, “Why, little woman,
you look fresher than your flowers!” And Mrs. Woodcourt repeated and
translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my
being like a mountain with the sun upon it.
This was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the
mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my
opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his
own room—the room of last night—by himself. Then I made an excuse
to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.
“Well, Dame Durden?” said my guardian; the post had brought him
several letters, and he was writing. “You want money?”
“No, indeed, I have plenty in hand.”
“There never was such a Dame Durden,” said my guardian, “for making
money last.”
He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me.
I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never
seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it
which made me think, “He has been doing some great kindness this
morning.”
“There never was,” said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me,
“such a Dame Durden for making money last.”
He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much
that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was
always put at his side—for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I
talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him—I hardly liked
to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not
disturb it at all.
“Dear guardian,” said I, “I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss
in anything?”
“Remiss in anything, my dear!”
“Have I not been what I have meant to be since—I brought the answer
to your letter, guardian?”
“You have been everything I could desire, my love.”
“I am very glad indeed to hear that,” I returned. “You know, you said
to me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes.”
“Yes,” said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about
me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my
face, smiling.
“Since then,” said I, “we have never spoken on the subject except
once.”
“And then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my
dear.”
“And I said,” I timidly reminded him, “but its mistress remained.”
He still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same
bright goodness in his face.
“Dear guardian,” said I, “I know how you have felt all that has
happened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has
passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again,
perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so.
I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please.”
“See,” he returned gaily, “what a sympathy there must be between us!
I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted—it’s a large
exception—in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall
we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?”
“When you please.”
“Next month?”
“Next month, dear guardian.”
“The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life—the
day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than
any other man in the world—the day on which I give Bleak House its
little mistress—shall be next month then,” said my guardian.
I put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the
day when I brought my answer.
A servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite
unnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant’s
shoulder. “Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,” said he, rather out of
breath, “with all apologies for intruding, WILL you allow me to order
up a person that’s on the stairs and that objects to being left there
in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank
you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will
you?” said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters.
This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,
unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and
deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid
of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.
“Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce,” he then began, putting down his hat and
opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger,
“you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise
knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line is his line
principally, and he’s what you may call a dealer in bills. That’s
about what YOU are, you know, ain’t you?” said Mr. Bucket, stopping a
little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly
suspicious of him.
He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was
seized with a violent fit of coughing.
“Now, moral, you know!” said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.
“Don’t you contradict when there ain’t no occasion, and you won’t be
took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I’ve
been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I’ve been in and out and
about his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly
occupied by Krook, marine store dealer—a relation of this
gentleman’s that you saw in his lifetime if I don’t mistake?”
My guardian replied, “Yes.”
“Well! You are to understand,” said Mr. Bucket, “that this gentleman
he come into Krook’s property, and a good deal of magpie property
there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you,
of no use to nobody!”
The cunning of Mr. Bucket’s eye and the masterly manner in which he
contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful
auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case
according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.
Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in
quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.
Smallweed’s being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face
with the closest attention.
“Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes
into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don’t you see?” said
Mr. Bucket.
“To which? Say that again,” cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp
voice.
“To rummage,” repeated Mr. Bucket. “Being a prudent man and
accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage
among the papers as you have come into; don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” cried Mr. Smallweed.
“Of course you do,” said Mr. Bucket conversationally, “and much to
blame you would be if you didn’t. And so you chance to find, you
know,” Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful
raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated, “and so you
chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to
it. Don’t you?”
Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded
assent.
“And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and
convenience—all in good time, for you’re not curious to read it, and
why should you be?—what do you find it to be but a will, you see.
That’s the drollery of it,” said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air
of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed, who still had
the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; “what do
you find it to be but a will?”
“I don’t know that it’s good as a will or as anything else,” snarled
Mr. Smallweed.
Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment—he had slipped and shrunk
down in his chair into a mere bundle—as if he were much disposed to
pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the