Bleak House
procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study,
ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high
intellect. For many years, the—a—I would say the flower of the bar,
and the—a—I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of
the woolsack—have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the
public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of
this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money’s worth,
sir.”
“Mr. Kenge,” said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment.
“Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate
is found to have been absorbed in costs?”
“Hem! I believe so,” returned Mr. Kenge. “Mr. Vholes, what do YOU
say?”
“I believe so,” said Mr. Vholes.
“And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?”
“Probably,” returned Mr. Kenge. “Mr. Vholes?”
“Probably,” said Mr. Vholes.
“My dearest life,” whispered Allan, “this will break Richard’s
heart!”
There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew
Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual
decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her
foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.
“In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir,” said Mr. Vholes, coming
after us, “you’ll find him in court. I left him there resting himself
a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson.” As he gave me
that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of
his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant
shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he
gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client,
and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low
door at the end of the Hall.
“My dear love,” said Allan, “leave to me, for a little while, the
charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada’s
by and by!”
I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to
Richard without a moment’s delay and leave me to do as he wished.
Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what
news I had returned. “Little woman,” said he, quite unmoved for
himself, “to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater
blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!”
We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was
possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to
Symond’s Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my
darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and
threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and
said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him
sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.
On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have
spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth
being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.
He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There
were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as
possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan
stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be
quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing
me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he
looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.
I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he
said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, “Dame Durden, kiss me,
my dear!”
It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low
state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our
intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had
been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and
wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if
my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband’s hand
and hold it to his breast.
We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times
that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his
feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. “Yes, surely,
dearest Richard!” But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so
serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so
near—I knew—I knew!
It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we
were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for
my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada
leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed
often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all,
“Where is Woodcourt?”
Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian
standing in the little hall. “Who is that, Dame Durden?” Richard
asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face
that some one was there.
I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded “Yes,” bent over
Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me
in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard’s. “Oh, sir,” said Richard,
“you are a good man, you are a good man!” and burst into tears for
the first time.
My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping
his hand on Richard’s.
“My dear Rick,” said he, “the clouds have cleared away, and it is
bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or
less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?”
“I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin
the world.”
“Aye, truly; well said!” cried my guardian.
“I will not begin it in the old way now,” said Richard with a sad
smile. “I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you
shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it.”
“Well, well,” said my guardian, comforting him; “well, well, well,
dear boy!”
“I was thinking, sir,” resumed Richard, “that there is nothing on
earth I should so much like to see as their house—Dame Durden’s and
Woodcourt’s house. If I could be removed there when I begin to
recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than
anywhere.”
“Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick,” said my guardian, “and our
little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very
day. I dare say her husband won’t object. What do you think?”
Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind
the head of the couch.
“I say nothing of Ada,” said Richard, “but I think of her, and have
thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending
over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself,
my dear love, my poor girl!”
He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually
released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and
moved her lips.
“When I get down to Bleak House,” said Richard, “I shall have much to
tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won’t
you?”
“Undoubtedly, dear Rick.”
“Thank you; like you, like you,” said Richard. “But it’s all like
you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you
remembered all Esther’s familiar tastes and ways. It will be like
coming to the old Bleak House again.”
“And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now,
you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come
to me, my love!” he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over
her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed
within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)
“It was a troubled dream?” said Richard, clasping both my guardian’s
hands eagerly.
“Nothing more, Rick; nothing more.”
“And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity
the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?”
“Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?”
“I will begin the world!” said Richard with a light in his eyes.
My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly
lift up his hand to warn my guardian.
“When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the
old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been
to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and
blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn
child?” said Richard. “When shall I go?”
“Dear Rick, when you are strong enough,” returned my guardian.
“Ada, my darling!”
He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she
could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.
“I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray
shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have
scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my
Ada, before I begin the world?”
A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid
his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck,
and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not
this! The world that sets this right.
When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came
weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.
CHAPTER LXVI
Down in Lincolnshire
There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is
upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir
Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;
but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any
brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for
certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the
park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at
night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be
laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all
mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the
peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once
occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large
fans—like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing
all their other beaux—did once occasionally say, when the world
assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks,
entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her
company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have
never been known to object.
Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road
among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of
horses’ hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester—invalided, bent, and
almost blind, but of worthy presence yet—riding with a stalwart man
beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain
spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester’s accustomed horse
stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is
still for a few moments before they ride away.
War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain
intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady
fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to
Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to
abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which
Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or
misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently
aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of
committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself.
Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the
disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth
vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home;