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

us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt,

who, having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and

having written to my guardian, “by her son Allan’s desire,” to

report that she had heard from him and that he was well “and sent

his kind remembrances to all of us,” had been invited by my

guardian to make a visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly

three weeks. She took very kindly to me and was extremely

confidential, so much so that sometimes she almost made me

uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew very well, to be

uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt it was

unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite help it.

 

She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands

folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to

me that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her

being so upright and trim, though I don’t think it was that,

because I thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the

general expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty

for an old lady. I don’t know what it was. Or at least if I do

now, I thought I did not then. Or at least—but it don’t matter.

 

Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me into

her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair; and, dear

me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from Crumlinwallinwer

and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right names, which I dare

say they are not), and would become quite fiery with the sentiments

they expressed. Though I never knew what they were (being in Welsh),

further than that they were highly eulogistic of the lineage of

Morgan ap-Kerrig.

 

“So, Miss Summerson,” she would say to me with stately triumph,

“this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my

son goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have

money, but he always has what is much better—family, my dear.”

 

I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig

in India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used

to say it was a great thing to be so highly connected.

 

“It IS, my dear, a great thing,” Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. “It

has its disadvantages; my son’s choice of a wife, for instance, is

limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is

limited in much the same manner.”

 

Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to

assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between

us notwithstanding.

 

“Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear,” she would say, and always with some

emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate

heart, “was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts

of MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the

Royal Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the

last representatives of two old families. With the blessing of

heaven he will set them up again and unite them with another old

family.”

 

It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to

try, only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because—but I need

not be so particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.

 

“My dear,” she said one night, “you have so much sense and you look

at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life

that it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family

matters of mine. You don’t know much of my son, my dear; but you

know enough of him, I dare say, to recollect him?”

 

“Yes, ma’am. I recollect him.”

 

“Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,

and I should like to have your opinion of him.”

 

“Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt,” said I, “that is so difficult!”

 

“Why is it so difficult, my dear?” she returned. “I don’t see it

myself.”

 

“To give an opinion—”

 

“On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT’S true.”

 

I didn’t mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a

good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my

guardian. I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in

his profession—we thought—and that his kindness and gentleness to

Miss Flite were above all praise.

 

“You do him justice!” said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. “You

define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession

faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must

confess he is not without faults, love.”

 

“None of us are,” said I.

 

“Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to

correct,” returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head.

“I am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear,

as a third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness

itself.”

 

I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have

been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the

pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.

 

“You are right again, my dear,” the old lady retorted, “but I don’t

refer to his profession, look you.”

 

“Oh!” said I.

 

“No,” said she. “I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is

always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has

been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never

really cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this

to do any harm or to express anything but politeness and good

nature. Still, it’s not right, you know; is it?”

 

“No,” said I, as she seemed to wait for me.

 

“And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear.”

 

I supposed it might.

 

“Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be

more careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others.

And he has always said, ‘Mother, I will be; but you know me better

than anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm—in short, mean

nothing.’ All of which is very true, my dear, but is no

justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an

indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and

introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my

dear,” said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles,

“regarding your dear self, my love?”

 

“Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?”

 

“Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek

his fortune and to find a wife—when do you mean to seek YOUR

fortune and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now

you blush!”

 

I don’t think I did blush—at all events, it was not important if I

did—and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had

no wish to change it.

 

“Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to

come for you, my love?” said Mrs. Woodcourt.

 

“If you believe you are a good prophet,” said I.

 

“Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very

worthy, much older—five and twenty years, perhaps—than yourself.

And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very

happy.”

 

“That is a good fortune,” said I. “But why is it to be mine?”

 

“My dear,” she returned, “there’s suitability in it—you are so

busy, and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that

there’s suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody,

my love, will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage

than I shall.”

 

It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think

it did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night

uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to

confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still.

I would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright

old lady’s confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It

gave me the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I

thought she was a story-teller, and at another time that she was

the pink of truth. Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next

moment I believed her honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent

and simple. And after all, what did it matter to me, and why did

it matter to me? Why could not I, going up to bed with my basket

of keys, stop to sit down by her fire and accommodate myself for a

little while to her, at least as well as to anybody else, and not

trouble myself about the harmless things she said to me? Impelled

towards her, as I certainly was, for I was very anxious that she

should like me and was very glad indeed that she did, why should I

harp afterwards, with actual distress and pain, on every word she

said and weigh it over and over again in twenty scales? Why was it

so worrying to me to have her in our house, and confidential to me

every night, when I yet felt that it was better and safer somehow

that she should be there than anywhere else? These were

perplexities and contradictions that I could not account for. At

least, if I could—but I shall come to all that by and by, and it

is mere idleness to go on about it now.

 

So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was

relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought

such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.

 

First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that

I was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was

no news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then

Caddy told us that she was going to be married in a month and that

if Ada and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in

the world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we

never should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to

Caddy, and Caddy had so much to say to us.

 

It seemed that Caddy’s unfortunate papa had got over his

bankruptcy—“gone through the Gazette,” was the expression Caddy

used, as if it were a tunnel—with the general clemency and

commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in

some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and

had given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I

should think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had

satisfied every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man.

So, he had been honourably dismissed to “the office” to begin the

world again. What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said

he was a “custom-house and general agent,” and the only thing I

ever understood about that business was that when he wanted money

more than usual he went to the docks to