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

CHAPTER XXIX

The Young Man

 

Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in

corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown

holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock

ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around

the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come

circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let

the gardener sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the

leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain

beats, the windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in

the avenues, veil the points of view, and move in funeral-wise

across the rising grounds. On all the house there is a cold, blank

smell like the smell of a little church, though something dryer,

suggesting that the dead and buried Dedlocks walk there in the long

nights and leave the flavour of their graves behind them.

 

But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney

Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or

mourning when it mourns, expecting when a Dedlock dies—the house

in town shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state

may be, as delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no

trace of winter as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so

that the ticking of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires

alone disturb the stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those

chilled bones of Sir Leicester’s in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir

Leicester is glad to repose in dignified contentment before the

great fire in the library, condescendingly perusing the backs of

his books or honouring the fine arts with a glance of approbation.

For he has his pictures, ancient and modern. Some of the Fancy

Ball School in which art occasionally condescends to become a

master, which would be best catalogued like the miscellaneous

articles in a sale. As “Three high-backed chairs, a table and

cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one Spanish

female’s costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg the

model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote.” Or “One stone

terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian senator’s

dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with profile

portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly mounted in

gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very rare), and

Othello.”

 

Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate

business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady

pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as

indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet

it may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows

it. It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no

touch of compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty

and all the state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the

greater zest for what he is set upon and makes him the more

inflexible in it. Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable

in what he has made his duty, whether absorbed in love of power,

whether determined to have nothing hidden from him in ground where

he has burrowed among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart

despises the splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is

always treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his

gorgeous clients—whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may

be that my Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable

eyes upon her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this

rusty lawyer with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches

tied with ribbons at the knees.

 

Sir Leicester sits in my Lady’s room—that room in which Mr.

Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce—

particularly complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the

fire with her screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly

complacent because he has found in his newspaper some congenial

remarks bearing directly on the floodgates and the framework of

society. They apply so happily to the late case that Sir Leicester

has come from the library to my Lady’s room expressly to read them

aloud. “The man who wrote this article,” he observes by way of

preface, nodding at the fire as if he were nodding down at the man

from a mount, “has a well-balanced mind.”

 

The man’s mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady,

who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid

resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught

and falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire

at Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite

unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally

stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as “Very true

indeed,” “Very properly put,” “I have frequently made the same

remark myself,” invariably losing his place after each observation,

and going up and down the column to find it again.

 

Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the

door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange

announcement, “The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy.”

 

Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, “The

young man of the name of Guppy?”

 

Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much

discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of

introduction in his manner and appearance.

 

“Pray,” says Sir Leicester to Mercury, “what do you mean by

announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?”

 

“I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see

the young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were

here, Sir Leicester.”

 

With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at

the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, “What do you

come calling here for and getting ME into a row?”

 

“It’s quite right. I gave him those directions,” says my Lady.

“Let the young man wait.”

 

“By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will

not interrupt you.” Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather

declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and

majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive

appearance.

 

Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has

left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She

suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.

 

“That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a

little conversation,” returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.

 

“You are, of course, the person who has written me so many

letters?”

 

“Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended

to favour me with an answer.”

 

“And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation

unnecessary? Can you not still?”

 

Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent “No!” and shakes his head.

 

“You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after

all, that what you have to say does not concern me—and I don’t

know how it can, and don’t expect that it will—you will allow me

to cut you short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to

say, if you please.”

 

My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards

the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of

the name of Guppy.

 

“With your ladyship’s permission, then,” says the young man, “I

will now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship

in my first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt

the habit of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did

not mention to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am

connected and in which my standing—and I may add income—is

tolerably good. I may now state to your ladyship, in confidence,

that the name of that firm is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln’s Inn,

which may not be altogether unknown to your ladyship in connexion

with the case in Chancery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.”

 

My Lady’s figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She

has ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were

listening.

 

“Now, I may say to your ladyship at once,” says Mr. Guppy, a little

emboldened, “it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce

that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I

have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive—in fact,

almost blackguardly.”

 

After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the

contrary, and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, “If it had

been Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your

ladyship’s solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the

pleasure of being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn—at least we move

when we meet one another—and if it had been any business of that

sort, I should have gone to him.”

 

My Lady turns a little round and says, “You had better sit down.”

 

“Thank your ladyship.” Mr. Guppy does so. “Now, your ladyship”—

Mr. Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made

small notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him

in the densest obscurity whenever he looks at it—“I—Oh, yes!—I

place myself entirely in your ladyship’s hands. If your ladyship

was to make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn

of the present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable

situation. That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your

ladyship’s honour.”

 

My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the

screen, assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.

 

“Thank your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy; “quite satisfactory. Now—

I—dash it!—The fact is that I put down a head or two here of the

order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they’re written

short, and I can’t quite make out what they mean. If your ladyship

will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I—”

 

Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds,

to whom he says in his confusion, “I beg your pardon, I am sure.”

This does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He

murmurs, growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now

close to his eyes, now a long way off, “C.S. What’s C.S. for? Oh!

C.S.! Oh, I know! Yes, to be sure!” And comes back enlightened.

 

“I am not aware,” says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady

and his chair, “whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or

to see, a