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

young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson.”

 

My Lady’s eyes look at him full. “I saw a young lady of that name

not long ago. This past autumn.”

 

“Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?” asks

Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and

scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.

 

My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.

 

“No.”

 

“Not like your ladyship’s family?”

 

“No.”

 

“I think your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “can hardly remember Miss

Summerson’s face?”

 

“I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with

me?”

 

“Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson’s image

imprinted on my ‘eart—which I mention in confidence—I found, when

I had the honour of going over your ladyship’s mansion of Chesney

Wold while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a

friend, such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your

ladyship’s own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much

so that I didn’t at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked

me over. And now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near

(I have often, since that, taken the liberty of looking at your

ladyship in your carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not

aware of me, but I never saw your ladyship so near), it’s really

more surprising than I thought it.”

 

Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies

lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,

when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute’s

purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at

this moment.

 

My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him

again what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with

her.

 

“Your ladyship,” replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper,

“I am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! ‘Mrs. Chadband.’

Yes.” Mr. Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself

again. My Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a

trifle less of graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters

in her steady gaze. “A—stop a minute, though!” Mr. Guppy refers

again. “E.S. twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.”

 

Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech

with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.

 

“Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson’s

birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because—which I

mention in confidence—I know it in the way of my profession at

Kenge and Carboy’s. Now, as I have already mentioned to your

ladyship, Miss Summerson’s image is imprinted on my ‘eart. If I

could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related,

or find that having the honour to be a remote branch of your

ladyship’s family she had a right to be made a party in Jarndyce

and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of a claim upon Miss

Summerson to look with an eye of more dedicated favour on my

proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In fact, as yet she

hasn’t favoured them at all.”

 

A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady’s face.

 

“Now, it’s a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,” says Mr.

Guppy, “though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way

of us professional men—which I may call myself, for though not

admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by

Kenge and Carboy, on my mother’s advancing from the principal of

her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy—that

I have encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady

who brought Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of

her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.”

 

Is the dead colour on my Lady’s face reflected from the screen

which has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised

hand as if she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that

has fallen on her?

 

“Did your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “ever happen to hear of Miss

Barbary?”

 

“I don’t know. I think so. Yes.”

 

“Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship’s family?”

 

My Lady’s lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.

 

“NOT connected?” says Mr. Guppy. “Oh! Not to your ladyship’s

knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.” After each of these

interrogatories, she has inclined her head. “Very good! Now, this

Miss Barbary was extremely close—seems to have been extraordinarily

close for a female, females being generally (in common life at

least) rather given to conversation—and my witness never had an

idea whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and

only one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a

single point, and she then told her that the little girl’s real

name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.”

 

“My God!”

 

Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him

through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same

attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little

apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He

sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame

like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose

them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the

knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so

quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have

passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies

sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like

lightning, vanish in a breath.

 

“Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?”

 

“I have heard it before.”

 

“Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship’s

family?”

 

“No.”

 

“Now, your ladyship,” says Mr. Guppy, “I come to the last point of

the case, so far as I have got it up. It’s going on, and I shall

gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must

know—if your ladyship don’t happen, by any chance, to know

already—that there was found dead at the house of a person named

Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great

distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which

law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown.

But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer’s name was Hawdon.”

 

“And what is THAT to me?”

 

“Aye, your ladyship, that’s the question! Now, your ladyship, a

queer thing happened after that man’s death. A lady started up, a

disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of

action and went to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it her. If your ladyship would wish to have

the boy produced in corroboration of this statement, I can lay my

hand upon him at any time.”

 

The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to

have him produced.

 

“Oh, I assure your ladyship it’s a very queer start indeed,” says

Mr. Guppy. “If you was to hear him tell about the rings that

sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, you’d think it

quite romantic.”

 

There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen.

My Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again

with that expression which in other times might have been so

dangerous to the young man of the name of Guppy.

 

“It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap

behind him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did.

He left a bundle of old letters.”

 

The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never

once release him.

 

“They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship,

they will come into my possession.”

 

“Still I ask you, what is this to me?”

 

“Your ladyship, I conclude with that.” Mr. Guppy rises. “If you

think there’s enough in this chain of circumstances put together—

in the undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your

ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been

brought up by Miss Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss

Summerson’s real name to be Hawdon; in your ladyship’s knowing both

these names VERY WELL; and in Hawdon’s dying as he did—to give

your ladyship a family interest in going further into the case, I

will bring these papers here. I don’t know what they are, except

that they are old letters: I have never had them in my possession

yet. I will bring those papers here as soon as I get them and go

over them for the first time with your ladyship. I have told your

ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I should be

placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint was made,

and all is in strict confidence.”

 

Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or

has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth,

depth, of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what

do they hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at

him, but he can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of

his from telling anything.

 

“You may bring the letters,” says my Lady, “if you choose.”

 

“Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,”

says Mr. Guppy, a little injured.

 

“You may bring the letters,” she repeats in the same tone, “if you

—please.”

 

“It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day.”

 

On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and

clasped like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes

it to her and unlocks it.

 

“Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of

that sort,” says Mr. Guppy, “and I couldn’t accept anything of the

kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you

all the same.”

 

So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the

supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave

his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.

 

As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper,

is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to

make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms,

the very portraits frown, the very armour stir?

 

No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and

shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered

trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint

vibration to Sir Leicester’s ears; and yet this cry is in the

house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.

 

“O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as

my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had

renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!”