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

and my

guardian read aloud in a surprised voice, “Sir Leicester Dedlock!”

 

The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me

and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have

hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my

giddiness, to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or

to know where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian

was presenting me before I could move to a chair.

 

“Pray be seated, Sir Leicester.”

 

“Mr. Jarndyce,” said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated

himself, “I do myself the honour of calling here—”

 

“You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester.”

 

“Thank you—of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express

my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may

have against a gentleman who—who is known to you and has been your

host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference,

should have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and

charge, from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a

polite and refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold.”

 

“You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of

those ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very

much.”

 

“It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the

reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion—

it is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me

the honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to

believe that you would not have been received by my local

establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,

which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and

gentlemen who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to

observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse.”

 

My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any

verbal answer.

 

“It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce,” Sir Leicester weightily

proceeded. “I assure you, sir, it has given—me—pain—to learn

from the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in

your company in that part of the county, and who would appear to

possess a cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred

by some such cause from examining the family pictures with that

leisure, that attention, that care, which he might have desired to

bestow upon them and which some of them might possibly have

repaid.” Here he produced a card and read, with much gravity and a

little trouble, through his eye-glass, “Mr. Hirrold—Herald—

Harold—Skampling—Skumpling—I beg your pardon—Skimpole.”

 

“This is Mr. Harold Skimpole,” said my guardian, evidently

surprised.

 

“Oh!” exclaimed Sir Leicester, “I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and

to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope,

sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county,

you will be under no similar sense of restraint.”

 

“You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I

shall certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another

visit to your beautiful house. The owners of such places as

Chesney Wold,” said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air,

“are public benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number

of delightful objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor

men; and not to reap all the admiration and pleasure that they

yield is to be ungrateful to our benefactors.”

 

Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. “An

artist, sir?”

 

“No,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “A perfectly idle man. A mere

amateur.”

 

Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he

might have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole

next came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself

much flattered and honoured.

 

“Mr. Skimpole mentioned,” pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself

again to my guardian, “mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he

may have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family—”

 

(“That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the

occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,”

Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.)

 

“—That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was

Mr. Jarndyce.” Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name.

“And hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have

professed my regret. That this should have occurred to any

gentleman, Mr. Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known

to Lady Dedlock, and indeed claiming some distant connexion with

her, and for whom (as I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains

a high respect, does, I assure you, give—me—pain.”

 

“Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester,” returned my guardian.

“I am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration.

Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it.”

 

I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not

even appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me

to find that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression

on me as it passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so

confused and my instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his

presence so distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing,

through the rushing in my head and the beating of my heart.

 

“I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock,” said Sir Leicester,

rising, “and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of

exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the

occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the

vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to

these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr.

Skimpole. Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it

would afford me any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had

favoured my house with his presence, but those circumstances are

confined to that gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him.”

 

“You know my old opinion of him,” said Mr. Skimpole, lightly

appealing to us. “An amiable bull who is determined to make every

colour scarlet!”

 

Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear

another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave

with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all

possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to

find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for

having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.

 

By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I

must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being

brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her

house, even of Mr. Skimpole’s, however distantly associated with

me, receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so

painful that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his

assistance.

 

When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual

talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my

guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and

as I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from

his reading-lamp.

 

“May I come in, guardian?”

 

“Surely, little woman. What’s the matter?”

 

“Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet

time of saying a word to you about myself.”

 

He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his

kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it

wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before—on

that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could

readily understand.

 

“What concerns you, my dear Esther,” said he, “concerns us all.

You cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear.”

 

“I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and

support. Oh! You don’t know how much need I have to-night.”

 

He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little

alarmed.

 

“Or how anxious I have been to speak to you,” said I, “ever since

the visitor was here to-day.”

 

“The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the

profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did

not know how to prepare him.

 

“Why, Esther,” said he, breaking into a smile, “our visitor and you

are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of

connecting together!”

 

“Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago.”

 

The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before.

He crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to

that) and resumed his seat before me.

 

“Guardian,” said I, “do you remensher, when we were overtaken by

the thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock’s speaking to you of her sister?”

 

“Of course. Of course I do.”

 

“And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone

their several ways?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Why did they separate, guardian?”

 

His face quite altered as he looked at me. “My child, what

questions are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did

know, I believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two

handsome and proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you

had ever seen her sister, you would know her to have been as

resolute and haughty as she.”

 

“Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!”

 

“Seen her?”

 

He paused a little, biting his lip. “Then, Esther, when you spoke

to me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but

married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and

that that time had had its influence on his later life—did you

know it all, and know who the lady was?”

 

“No, guardian,” I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke

upon me. “Nor do I know yet.”

 

“Lady Dedlock’s sister.”

 

“And why,” I could scarcely ask him, “why, guardian, pray tell me

why were THEY parted?”

 

“It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart.

He afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some

injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of

quarrel with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she

wrote him that from the date of that letter she died to him—as in

literal truth she did—and that the resolution was exacted from her

by her knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of

honour, which were both her nature too. In consideration for those

master points in him, and even in consideration for them in

herself, she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and

die in it. She did both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never

heard of her from that hour. Nor did any one.”

 

“Oh, guardian, what have I done!” I cried, giving way to my grief;

“what sorrow have I innocently caused!”

 

“You caused, Esther?”

 

“Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister

is my first