Bleak House
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 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. I 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 be 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