Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

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haunt it when I became aware of a figure approaching through the

wood. The perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and

the shadows of the branches on the ground made it so much more

intricate to the eye, that at first I could not discern what figure

it was. By little and little it revealed itself to be a woman’s—a

lady’s—Lady Dedlock’s. She was alone and coming to where I sat

with a much quicker step, I observed to my surprise, than was usual

with her.

 

I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost

within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to

continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless.

Not so much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her

quick advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great

change in her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint,

as by a something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of

when I was a little child, something I had never seen in any face,

something I had never seen in hers before.

 

A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady

Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I

had known her.

 

“Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you,” she said, now

advancing slowly. “You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been

very ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it.”

 

I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I

could have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her

hand, and its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced

composure of her features, deepened the fascination that

overpowered me. I cannot say what was in my whirling thoughts.

 

“You are recovering again?” she asked kindly.

 

“I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock.”

 

“Is this your young attendant?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?”

 

“Charley,” said I, “take your flowers home, and I will follow you

directly.”

 

Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and

went her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat

beside me.

 

I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw

in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.

 

I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I

could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent

and wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when

she caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated

me, and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees

and cried to me, “Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and

unhappy mother! Oh, try to forgive me!”—when I saw her at my feet

on the bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my

tumult of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God

that I was so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any

trace of likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look

at her and remotely think of any near tie between us.

 

I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop

before me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken,

incoherent words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened

me to see her at MY feet. I told her—or I tried to tell her—that

if it were for me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon

me to forgive her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I

told her that my heart overflowed with love for her, that it was

natural love which nothing in the past had changed or could change.

That it was not for me, then resting for the first time on my

mother’s bosom, to take her to account for having given me life,

but that my duty was to bless her and receive her, though the whole

world turned from her, and that I only asked her leave to do it. I

held my mother in my embrace, and she held me in hers, and among

the still woods in the silence of the summer day there seemed to be

nothing but our two troubled minds that was not at peace.

 

“To bless and receive me,” groaned my mother, “it is far too late.

I must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it

will. From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see

the way before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I

have brought upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it.”

 

Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of

proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it

off again.

 

“I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not

wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring

creature that I am!”

 

These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more

terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her

hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that

I should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any

endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no,

no, no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and

disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there,

in the only natural moments of her life.

 

My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly

frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She

could not have suspected me to be that child before. She had

followed me down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We

never could associate, never could communicate, never probably from

that time forth could interchange another word on earth. She put

into my hands a letter she had written for my reading only and said

when I had read it and destroyed it—but not so much for her sake,

since she asked nothing, as for her husband’s and my own—I must

evermore consider her as dead. If I could believe that she loved

me, in this agony in which I saw her, with a mother’s love, she

asked me to do that, for then I might think of her with a greater

pity, imagining what she suffered. She had put herself beyond all

hope and beyond all help. Whether she preserved her secret until

death or it came to be discovered and she brought dishonour and

disgrace upon the name she had taken, it was her solitary struggle

always; and no affection could come near her, and no human creature

could render her any aid.

 

“But is the secret safe so far?” I asked. “Is it safe now, dearest

mother?”

 

“No,” replied my mother. “It has been very near discovery. It was

saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident—to-morrow, any day.”

 

“Do you dread a particular person?”

 

“Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of

these tears,” said my mother, kissing my hands. “I dread one

person very much.”

 

“An enemy?”

 

“Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir

Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer, mechanically faithful without

attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and

reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses.”

 

“Has he any suspicions?”

 

“Many.”

 

“Not of you?” I said alarmed.

 

“Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at

a standstill, but I can never shake him off.”

 

“Has he so little pity or compunction?”

 

“He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but

his calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the

holding possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer

or opponent in it.”

 

“Could you trust in him?”

 

“I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years

will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the

end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,

nothing turns me.”

 

“Dear mother, are you so resolved?”

 

“I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with

pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have

outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger,

and outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully

as if these woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but

my course through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but

one.”

 

“Mr. Jarndyce—” I was beginning when my mother hurriedly

inquired, “Does HE suspect?”

 

“No,” said I. “No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!” And I

told her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story.

“But he is so good and sensible,” said I, “that perhaps if he knew—”

 

My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,

raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.

 

“Confide fully in him,” she said after a little while. “You have

my free consent—a small gift from such a mother to her injured

child!—but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even

yet.”

 

I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now—for my

agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely

understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the

mother’s voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my

childhood I had never learned to love and recognize, had never been

sung to sleep with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had

a hope inspired by, made an enduring impression on my memory—I say

I explained, or tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr.

Jarndyce, who had been the best of fathers to me, might be able to

afford some counsel and support to her. But my mother answered no,

it was impossible; no one could help her. Through the desert that

lay before her, she must go alone.

 

“My child, my child!” she said. “For the last time! These kisses

for the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We

shall meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be

what I have been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear

of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of

your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask!

Think that the reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse,

in her murdering within her breast the only love and truth of which

it is capable! And then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven

to forgive her, which it never can!”

 

We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm

that she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast,

and with a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and

went