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

>he performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to

the most singular expedients and evasions or would even run away.

Ada dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a

very little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon

generosity and that on her going to his house to thank him, he

happened to see her through a window coming to the door, and

immediately escaped by the back gate, and was not heard of for

three months. This discourse led to a great deal more on the same

theme, and indeed it lasted us all day, and we talked of scarcely

anything else. If we did by any chance diverge into another

subject, we soon returned to this, and wondered what the house

would be like, and when we should get there, and whether we should

see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after a delay, and what

he would say to us, and what we should say to him. All of which we

wondered about, over and over again.

 

The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was

generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and

liked it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground

when we got to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting

for us, but as they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them

too, and got a long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the carriage came up. These delays so protracted the

journey that the short day was spent and the long night had closed

in before we came to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House

was, we knew.

 

By that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Richard

confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to

feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and

me, whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp

and frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of

the town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy,

who had for a long time sympathized with our heightened

expectation, was looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the

carriage (Richard holding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and

gazed round upon the open country and the starlight night for our

destination. There was a light sparkling on the top of a hill

before us, and the driver, pointing to it with his whip and crying,

“That’s Bleak House!” put his horses into a canter and took us

forward at such a rate, uphill though it was, that the wheels sent

the road drift flying about our heads like spray from a water-mill.

Presently we lost the light, presently saw it, presently lost it,

presently saw it, and turned into an avenue of trees and cantered

up towards where it was beaming brightly. It was in a window of

what seemed to be an old-fashioned house with three peaks in the

roof in front and a circular sweep leading to the porch. A bell

was rung as we drew up, and amidst the sound of its deep voice in

the still air, and the distant barking of some dogs, and a gush of

light from the opened door, and the smoking and steaming of the

heated horses, and the quickened beating of our own hearts, we

alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.

 

“Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see

you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it

you!”

 

The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable

voice had one of his arms round Ada’s waist and the other round

mine, and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the

hall into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire.

Here he kissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down

side by side on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt

that if we had been at all demonstrative, he would have run away in

a moment.

 

“Now, Rick!” said he. “I have a hand at liberty. A word in

earnest is as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you.

You are at home. Warm yourself!”

 

Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of

respect and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness

that rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce’s suddenly

disappearing), “You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged

to you!” laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire.

 

“And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby,

my dear?” said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.

 

While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say

with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively,

quick face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered

iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was

upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking

to us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind

that I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden

in his manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the

gentleman in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of

my journey to Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so

frightened in my life as when I made the discovery, for he caught

my glance, and appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at

the door that I thought we had lost him.

 

However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me

what I thought of Mrs. Jellyby.

 

“She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir,” I said.

 

“Nobly!” returned Mr. Jarndyce. “But you answer like Ada.” Whom I

had not heard. “You all think something else, I see.”

 

“We rather thought,” said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who

entreated me with their eyes to speak, “that perhaps she was a

little unmindful of her home.”

 

“Floored!” cried Mr. Jarndyce.

 

I was rather alarmed again.

 

“Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have

sent you there on purpose.”

 

“We thought that, perhaps,” said I, hesitating, “it is right to

begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while

those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be

substituted for them.”

 

“The little Jellybys,” said Richard, coming to my relief, “are

really—I can’t help expressing myself strongly, sir—in a devil of

a state.”

 

“She means well,” said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. “The wind’s in the

east.”

 

“It was in the north, sir, as we came down,” observed Richard.

 

“My dear Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, “I’ll take an

oath it’s either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious

of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing

in the east.”

 

“Rheumatism, sir?” said Richard.

 

“I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell

—I had my doubts about ‘em—are in a—oh, Lord, yes, it’s

easterly!” said Mr. Jarndyce.

 

He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while

uttering these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand

and rubbing his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation

at once so whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more

delighted with him than we could possibly have expressed in any

words. He gave an arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard

bring a candle, was leading the way out when he suddenly turned us

all back again.

 

“Those little Jellybys. Couldn’t you—didn’t you—now, if it had

rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything

of that sort!” said Mr. Jarndyce.

 

“Oh, cousin—” Ada hastily began.

 

“Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is

better.”

 

“Then, cousin John—” Ada laughingly began again.

 

“Ha, ha! Very good indeed!” said Mr. Jarndyce with great

enjoyment. “Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?”

 

“It did better than that. It rained Esther.”

 

“Aye?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “What did Esther do?”

 

“Why, cousin John,” said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and

shaking her head at me across him—for I wanted her to be quiet—

“Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed them

to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them

quiet, bought them keepsakes”—My dear girl! I had only gone out

with Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!—

“and, cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so

much and was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won’t

be contradicted, Esther dear! You know, you know, it’s true!”

 

The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John and kissed

me, and then looking up in his face, boldly said, “At all events,

cousin John, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me.”

I felt as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn’t.

 

“Where did you say the wind was, Rick?” asked Mr. Jarndyce.

 

“In the north as we came down, sir.”

 

“You are right. There’s no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come,

girls, come and see your home!”

 

It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up

and down steps out of one room into another, and where you come

upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and

where there is a bountiful provision of little halls and passages,

and where you find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places

with lattice windows and green growth pressing through them. Mine,

which we entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof

that had more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a

chimney (there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with

pure white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the

fire was blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a

charming little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden,

which room was henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you

went up three steps into Ada’s bedroom, which had a fine broad

window commanding a beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of

darkness lying underneath the stars), to which there was a hollow

window-seat, in which, with a spring-lock, three dear Adas might

have been lost at once. Out of this room you passed into a little

gallery, with which the other best rooms (only two) communicated,

and so, by a little staircase of shallow steps with a number of

corner stairs in it, considering its length, down into the hall.

But if instead of going out at Ada’s door you came back into my

room, and went out at the door by which you had entered it, and

turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an unexpected

manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages, with mangles

in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu chair, which

was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in every form

something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had

been brought from India nobody knew