Bleak House
which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,
Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are
likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an
eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks
in gorgeous cases that never go and never went—Ha ha ha!—but he
will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of
his friend and neighbour Boythorn!”
“I shall not put him to the proof,” said my guardian. “He is as
indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the
honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view
of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for
me.”
“Well!” said Mr. Boythorn. “I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in
better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying
the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a
Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect
to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the
Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised
that I don’t. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the
shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!”
Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our
friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his
attention from its master.
It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among
the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of
the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over
which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings
were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth
green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were
so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how
beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower,
and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among
the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was
one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity
and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To
Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On
everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks,
fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the
prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom
upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.
When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the
sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.
Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a
bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside
him.
“That’s the housekeeper’s grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name,” said,
he, “and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady
Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her
about her own fair person—an honour which my young friend himself
does not at all appreciate. However, he can’t marry just yet, even if
his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In
the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time
to—fish. Ha ha ha ha!”
“Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?” asked Ada.
“Why, my dear Miss Clare,” he returned, “I think they may perhaps
understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I
must learn from you on such a point—not you from me.”
Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn
in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked
orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable
wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything
about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old
lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the
cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the
gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested
on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like
profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled
about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and
winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and
marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a
vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of
wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where
the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such
stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the
old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the
birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that
where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still
clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the
changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to
the common fate.
The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden,
was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored
kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was
the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Boythorn
maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was
supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large
bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog
established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal
destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.
Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to
which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn
warnings: “Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence
Boythorn.” “The blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn.”
“Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and
night. Lawrence Boythorn.” “Take notice. That any person or persons
audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished
with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with
the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn.” These he showed us
from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his
head, and he laughed, “Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!” to that extent as
he pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself.
“But this is taking a good deal of trouble,” said Mr. Skimpole in his
light way, “when you are not in earnest after all.”
“Not in earnest!” returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth. “Not
in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a
lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the
first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on
my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide
this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon
known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest.
Not more!”
We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all
set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the
park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful
trees until it brought us to the church-porch.
The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the
exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom
were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There
were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old
coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all
the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There
was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome
old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper
towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Boythorn had told us
was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her
by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was
of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off.
One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed
maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and
everything there. It was a Frenchwoman’s.
As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I
had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a
grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it
was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light
that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in
the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the
sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working
at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a
gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly
ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of being resolutely
unconscious of somebody’s existence forewarned me that the great
people were come and that the service was going to begin.
“‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy
sight—’”
Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the
look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which
those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and
to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down—released
again, if I may say so—on my book; but I knew the beautiful face
quite well in that short space of time.
And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
associated with the lonely days at my godmother’s; yes, away even to
the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen
this lady’s face before in all my life—I was quite sure of
it—absolutely certain.
It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired
gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her
face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in
which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so
fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her
eyes, I could not think.
I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it
by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to
hear them, not in the reader’s voice, but in the well-remembered
voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock’s face
accidentally resemble my godmother’s? It might be that it did, a
little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision
which had worn into my godmother’s face, like weather into rocks, was
so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that
resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and
haughtiness of Lady Dedlock’s face, at all, in any one. And yet I—I,
little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on
whose birthday there was no rejoicing—seemed to arise before my own
eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady,
whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I
perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.
It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation
that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of
the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here,