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Read books online » Fiction » Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

Book online «Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖». Author Charles Dickens



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happily and justly become the

dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter

chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind

myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even

then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or

in the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in

his old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to

his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be

the same, he knew.

 

This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a

justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian

impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in

his integrity he stated the full case.

 

But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he

had had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from

it. That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no

attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days.

That the discovery of my birth gave him no shock. That his

generosity rose above my disfigurement and my inheritance of shame.

That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly I

might trust in him to the last.

 

But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of

the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had

but one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to

thank him poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but

some new means of thanking him?

 

Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after

reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect—

for it was strange though I had expected the contents—but as if

something for which there was no name or distinct idea were

indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very

hopeful; but I cried very much.

 

By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen,

and I said, “Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!” I am afraid the

face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I

held up my finger at it, and it stopped.

 

“That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my

dear, when you showed me such a change!” said I, beginning to let

down my hair. “When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be

as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so

let us begin for once and for all.”

 

I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little

still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was

crying then.

 

“And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your

best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a

great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of

men.”

 

I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else,

how should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would

have been a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and

blank form that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss

before I laid them down in their basket again.

 

Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how

often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my

illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why

I should be busy, busy, busy—useful, amiable, serviceable, in all

honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to

sit down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me

at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not)

that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it

seem strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had

not. “Don’t you remember, my plain dear,” I asked myself, looking

at the glass, “what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were

there about your marrying—”

 

Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains

of the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had

only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone,

but it would be better not to keep them now.

 

They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room—our

sitting-room, dividing Ada’s chamber from mine. I took a candle

and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in

my hand, I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying

asleep, and I stole in to kiss her.

 

It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying;

but I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another.

Weaker than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for

a moment to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard,

though, indeed, the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I

took them into my own room and burned them at the candle, and they

were dust in an instant.

 

On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian

just as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not

the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think

there was none) in mine. I was with him several times in the

course of the morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and

I thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the

letter, but he did not say a word.

 

So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week,

over which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every

day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he

never did.

 

I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I

tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not

write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought

each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more

days, and he never said a word.

 

At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon

going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going

down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at

the drawing-room window looking out.

 

He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, “Aye, it’s you, little

woman, is it?” and looked out again.

 

I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come

down on purpose. “Guardian,” I said, rather hesitating and

trembling, “when would you like to have the answer to the letter

Charley came for?”

 

“When it’s ready, my dear,” he replied.

 

“I think it is ready,” said I.

 

“Is Charley to bring it?” he asked pleasantly.

 

“No. I have brought it myself, guardian,” I returned.

 

I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was

this the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no

difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said

nothing to my precious pet about it.

CHAPTER XLV

In Trust

 

One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys,

as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I

happened to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin

shadow going in which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling

me only that morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his

ardour in the Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and

therefore, not to damp my dear girl’s spirits, I said nothing about

Mr. Vholes’s shadow.

 

Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and

tripping along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora’s

attendants instead of my maid, saying, “Oh, if you please, miss,

would you step and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!”

 

It was one of Charley’s peculiarities that whenever she was charged

with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she

beheld, at any distance, the person for whom it was intended.

Therefore I saw Charley asking me in her usual form of words to

“step and speak” to Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when

I did hear her, she had said it so often that she was out of

breath.

 

I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we

went in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To

which Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any

credit to my educational powers, replied, “Yes, miss. Him as come

down in the country with Mr. Richard.”

 

A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose

there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a

table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and

upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out

what he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other

keeping it in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner

that I thought I never had seen two people so unmatched.

 

“You know Mr. Vholes, my dear,” said my guardian. Not with the

greatest urbanity, I must say.

 

Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated

himself again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the

gig. Not having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.

 

“Mr. Vholes,” said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he

were a bird of ill omen, “has brought an ugly report of our most

unfortunate Rick.” Laying a marked emphasis on “most unfortunate”

as if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr.

Vholes.

 

I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that

he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face

with his black glove.

 

“And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to

know,” said my guardian, “what you think, my dear. Would you be so

good as to—as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?”

 

Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, “I have been saying

that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.‘s professional

adviser, that Mr. C.‘s circumstances are at the present moment in an

embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the

peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and

the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved

off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving

off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of

pocket to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look

to being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I

have a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to

realize some little independence for three dear girls

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