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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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>nothing better. While we were talking, and when I was glad to

believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock

he had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs

who was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure.

 

I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they

spoke of Richard’s career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all

was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as

if there were something in it that gave him pain, and more than

once he looked towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether

I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine

states and in good spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr.

Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.

 

Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr.

Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not

join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became

so much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace

to think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was

not relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and

Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about

him.

 

I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but

I referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and

to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr.

Woodcourt listened with interest and expressed his regret.

 

“I saw you observe him rather closely,” said I, “Do you think him

so changed?”

 

“He is changed,” he returned, shaking his head.

 

I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was

only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was

gone.

 

“It is not,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “his being so much younger or

older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being

upon his face such a singular expression. I never saw so

remarkable a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all

anxiety or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown

despair.”

 

“You do not think he is ill?” said I.

 

No. He looked robust in body.

 

“That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to

know,” I proceeded. “Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?”

 

“To-morrow or the next day.”

 

“There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always

liked you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him

sometimes with your companionship if you can. You do not know of

what service it might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr.

Jarndyce, and even I—how we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!”

 

“Miss Summerson,” he said, more moved than he had been from the

first, “before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will

accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!”

 

“God bless you!” said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought

they might, when it was not for myself. “Ada loves him—we all

love him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you

say. Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!”

 

Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and

gave me his arm to take me to the coach.

 

“Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let

us meet in London!”

 

“Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there now

but you. Where shall I find you?”

 

“Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering.

“Say at Vholes’s, Symond’s Inn.”

 

“Good! Without loss of time.”

 

They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and

Richard was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his

friendly hand on Richard’s shoulder and looked at me. I understood

him and waved mine in thanks.

 

And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry

for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead

may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be

tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite

forgotten.

CHAPTER XLVI

Stop Him!

 

Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone’s. Dilating and dilating since

the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it

fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon

lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone’s,

heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp,

too, winks in Tom-all-Alone’s—at many horrible things. But they

are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as

admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit

for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and

is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on

Tom-all-Alone’s, and Tom is fast asleep.

 

Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of

Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom

shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by

constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of

figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or

by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to

splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his

mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the

midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly

clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be

reclaimed according to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice.

And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in

his old determined spirit.

 

But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and

they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of

Tom’s corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion

somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream

(in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of

a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the

infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom’s slime, not a

cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one

obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a

wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its

retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of

the proud and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with

tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge.

 

It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone’s be uglier by day or by

night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the

more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the

imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day

carries it. The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be

better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes

set upon the British dominions than that it should ever rise upon

so vile a wonder as Tom.

 

A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for

sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a

restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted

by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the

miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright

dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and

there, he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied

it before.

 

On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street

of Tom-all-Alone’s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut

up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in

one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting

on a door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that

she has journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is

waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand.

Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is

dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes

toward her.

 

The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to

where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.

Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.

 

“What is the matter?”

 

“Nothing, sir.”

 

“Can’t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?”

 

“I’m waiting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house—

not here,” the woman patiently returns. “I’m waiting here because

there will be sun here presently to warm me.”

 

“I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the

street.”

 

“Thank you, sir. It don’t matter.”

 

A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or

condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many

people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little

spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.

 

“Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a

doctor. Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”

 

He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand

he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,

saying, “It’s nothing”; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the

wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.

 

“Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very

sore.”

 

“It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman with a started tear

upon her cheek.

 

“Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won’t

hurt you.”

 

“Oh, dear no, sir, I’m sure of that!”

 

He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully

examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes

a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While

he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a

surgery in the street, “And so your husband is a brickmaker?”

 

“How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished.

 

“Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on

your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework

in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel

to their wives too.”

 

The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her

injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her

forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops

them again.

 

“Where is he now?” asks the surgeon.

 

“He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the

lodging-house.”

 

“He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and

heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal

as he is, and I

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