Bleak House
repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library,
condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine
arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient
and modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally
condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like
the miscellaneous articles in a sale. As “Three high-backed chairs, a
table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one
Spanish female’s costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg
the model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote.” Or “One
stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian
senator’s dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with
profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly
mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very
rare), and Othello.”
Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate
business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady
pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as
indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it
may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it.
It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of
compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the
state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest
for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it.
Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made
his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined
to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed
among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the
splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always
treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous
clients—whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my
Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon
her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer
with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with
ribbons at the knees.
Sir Leicester sits in my Lady’s room—that room in which Mr.
Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce—particularly
complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her
screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because
he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly
on the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily
to the late case that Sir Leicester has come from the library to my
Lady’s room expressly to read them aloud. “The man who wrote this
article,” he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he
were nodding down at the man from a mount, “has a well-balanced
mind.”
The man’s mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady,
who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid
resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and
falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at
Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite
unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally
stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as “Very true
indeed,” “Very properly put,” “I have frequently made the same remark
myself,” invariably losing his place after each observation, and
going up and down the column to find it again.
Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the
door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange
announcement, “The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy.”
Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, “The young
man of the name of Guppy?”
Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much
discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of
introduction in his manner and appearance.
“Pray,” says Sir Leicester to Mercury, “what do you mean by
announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?”
“I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see the
young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir
Leicester.”
With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at
the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, “What do you
come calling here for and getting ME into a row?”
“It’s quite right. I gave him those directions,” says my Lady. “Let
the young man wait.”
“By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will not
interrupt you.” Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather
declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and
majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive
appearance.
Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has
left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She
suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.
“That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a
little conversation,” returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.
“You are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?”
“Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to
favour me with an answer.”
“And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation
unnecessary? Can you not still?”
Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent “No!” and shakes his head.
“You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all,
that what you have to say does not concern me—and I don’t know how
it can, and don’t expect that it will—you will allow me to cut you
short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you
please.”
My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards
the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the
name of Guppy.
“With your ladyship’s permission, then,” says the young man, “I will
now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my
first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit
of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention
to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and
in which my standing—and I may add income—is tolerably good. I may
now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm
is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln’s Inn, which may not be altogether
unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of
Jarndyce and Jarndyce.”
My Lady’s figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has
ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening.
“Now, I may say to your ladyship at once,” says Mr. Guppy, a little
emboldened, “it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce
that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I
have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive—in fact, almost
blackguardly.”
After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary,
and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, “If it had been Jarndyce
and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your ladyship’s
solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of
being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn—at least we move when we meet
one another—and if it had been any business of that sort, I should
have gone to him.”
My Lady turns a little round and says, “You had better sit down.”
“Thank your ladyship.” Mr. Guppy does so. “Now, your ladyship”—Mr.
Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small
notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the
densest obscurity whenever he looks at it—“I—Oh, yes!—I place
myself entirely in your ladyship’s hands. If your ladyship was to
make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the
present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation.
That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship’s
honour.”
My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen,
assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.
“Thank your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy; “quite satisfactory.
Now—I—dash it!—The fact is that I put down a head or two here of
the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they’re
written short, and I can’t quite make out what they mean. If your
ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I—”
Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to
whom he says in his confusion, “I beg your pardon, I am sure.” This
does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs,
growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his
eyes, now a long way off, “C.S. What’s C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I
know! Yes, to be sure!” And comes back enlightened.
“I am not aware,” says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady and
his chair, “whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to
see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson.”
My Lady’s eyes look at him full. “I saw a young lady of that name not
long ago. This past autumn.”
“Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?” asks
Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and
scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.
My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.
“No.”
“Not like your ladyship’s family?”
“No.”
“I think your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “can hardly remember Miss
Summerson’s face?”
“I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?”
“Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson’s image
imprinted on my ’eart—which I mention in confidence—I found, when I
had the honour of going over your ladyship’s mansion of Chesney Wold
while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend,
such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship’s
own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I
didn’t at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And
now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often,
since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your
carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I
never saw your ladyship so near), it’s really more surprising than I
thought it.”
Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies
lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,
when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute’s
purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at
this moment.
My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again
what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her.
“Your ladyship,” replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, “I
am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! ‘Mrs. Chadband.’ Yes.” Mr.
Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My
Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of
graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady
gaze. “A—stop a minute, though!” Mr. Guppy refers again. “E.S.
twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.”
Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech
with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
“Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson’s
birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because—which I
mention in confidence—I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge
and Carboy’s. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss
Summerson’s image is imprinted on my ’eart. If I could clear this
mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having
the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship’s family she had a