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

CHAPTER XXXVII

Jarndyce and Jarndyce

 

If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it

to Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and

I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian,

unless some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone;

still my present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the

attachment of my dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement

to do it. Though often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the

remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the night

sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me

what I used to be—except, of course, in that particular of which I

have said enough and which I have no intention of mentioning any

more just now, if I can help it.

 

The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first

evening when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the

house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for

Lady Dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before

yesterday, was great. Greater still when Ada asked me what she had

said, and when I replied that she had been kind and interested, and

when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon

her proud manner and her imperious chilling air. But Charley

helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock

had only stayed at the house two nights on her way from London to

visit at some other great house in the next county and that she had

left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we

called it. Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am

sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would

have come to my ears in a month.

 

We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn’s. My pet had scarcely

been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening

after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers,

and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a

very important air behind Ada’s chair, beckoned me mysteriously out

of the room.

 

“Oh! If you please, miss,” said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes

at their roundest and largest. “You’re wanted at the Dedlock

Arms.”

 

“Why, Charley,” said I, “who can possibly want me at the public-house?”

 

“I don’t know, miss,” returned Charley, putting her head forward

and folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron,

which she always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or

confidential, “but it’s a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and

will you please to come without saying anything about it.”

 

“Whose compliments, Charley?”

 

“His’n, miss,” returned Charley, whose grammatical education was

advancing, but not very rapidly.

 

“And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?”

 

“I am not the messenger, if you please, miss,” returned my little

maid. “It was W. Grubble, miss.”

 

“And who is W. Grubble, Charley?”

 

“Mister Grubble, miss,” returned Charley. “Don’t you know, miss?

The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble,” which Charley delivered as if she

were slowly spelling out the sign.

 

“Aye? The landlord, Charley?”

 

“Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman,

but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother’s

the sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he’ll

drink himself to death entirely on beer,” said Charley.

 

Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive

now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade

Charley be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having

put them on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as

much at home as in Mr. Boythorn’s garden.

 

Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his

very clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat

with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it

were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the

sanded passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more

plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen

Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and

dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious

pumpkin (but I don’t know which, and I doubt if many people did)

hanging from his ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight,

from his often standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish,

middle-aged man who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed

for his own fireside without his hat and top-boots, but who never

wore a coat except at church.

 

He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it

looked, backed out of the room—unexpectedly to me, for I was going

to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite

parlour being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears

I thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room

in which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard!

 

“My dear Esther!” he said. “My best friend!” And he really was so

warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of

his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him

that Ada was well.

 

“Answering my very thoughts—always the same dear girl!” said

Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.

 

I put my veil up, but not quite.

 

“Always the same dear girl!” said Richard just as heartily as

before.

 

I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard’s sleeve

and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his

kind welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so

because of the determination I had made in my illness, which I now

conveyed to him.

 

“My love,” said Richard, “there is no one with whom I have a

greater wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me.”

 

“And I want you, Richard,” said I, shaking my head, “to understand

some one else.”

 

“Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce,” said Richard,

“—I suppose you mean him?”

 

“Of course I do.”

 

“Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that

subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind—you, my

dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody.”

 

I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.

 

“Well, well, my dear,” said Richard, “we won’t go into that now. I

want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under

my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your

loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?”

 

“My dear Richard,” I returned, “you know you would be heartily

welcome at his house—your home, if you will but consider it so;

and you are as heartily welcome here!”

 

“Spoken like the best of little women!” cried Richard gaily.

 

I asked him how he liked his profession.

 

“Oh, I like it well enough!” said Richard. “It’s all right. It

does as well as anything else, for a time. I don’t know that I

shall care about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out

then and—however, never mind all that botheration at present.”

 

So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the

opposite of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking

look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her!

 

“I am in town on leave just now,” said Richard.

 

“Indeed?”

 

“Yes. I have run over to look after my—my Chancery interests

before the long vacation,” said Richard, forcing a careless laugh.

“We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I

promise you.”

 

No wonder that I shook my head!

 

“As you say, it’s not a pleasant subject.” Richard spoke with the

same shade crossing his face as before. “Let it go to the four

winds for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?”

 

“Was it Mr. Skimpole’s voice I heard?”

 

“That’s the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a

fascinating child it is!”

 

I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He

answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old

infant—so he called Mr. Skimpole—and the dear old infant had told

him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent

on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to

come too; and so he had brought him. “And he is worth—not to say

his sordid expenses—but thrice his weight in gold,” said Richard.

“He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and

green-hearted!”

 

I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole’s worldliness in

his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about

that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was

charmed to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy

and sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never

been so happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the

mixture of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated

health the more when somebody else was ill, didn’t know but what it

might be in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B

happier in looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to

make D better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk

stocking.

 

“My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard,” said Mr.

Skimpole, “full of the brightest visions of the future, which he

evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that’s delightful,

that’s inspiriting, that’s full of poetry! In old times the woods

and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary

piping