Bleak House Charles Dickens (classic books to read .TXT) đ
- Author: Charles Dickens
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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.
âYour ladyship,â replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, âI am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! âMrs. Chadband.â Yes.â 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. âAâ âstop a minute, though!â Mr. Guppy refers again. âE.S. twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.â
Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
âYour ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summersonâs birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact becauseâ âwhich I mention in confidenceâ âI know it in the way of my profession at Kenge and Carboyâs. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss Summersonâs image is imprinted on my âeart. 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 ladyshipâs 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 hasnât favoured them at all.â
A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Ladyâs face.
âNow, itâs a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,â says Mr. Guppy, âthough one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of us professional menâ âwhich 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 motherâs advancing from the principal of her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavyâ âthat 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.â
Is the dead colour on my Ladyâs 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?
âDid your ladyship,â says Mr. Guppy, âever happen to hear of Miss Barbary?â
âI donât know. I think so. Yes.â
âWas Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyshipâs family?â
My Ladyâs lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.
âNot connected?â says Mr. Guppy. âOh! Not to your ladyshipâs knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.â After each of these interrogatories, she has inclined her head. âVery good! Now, this Miss Barbary was extremely closeâ âseems to have been extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least) rather given to conversationâ âand 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 girlâs real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon.â
âMy God!â
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.
âYour ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?â
âI have heard it before.â
âName of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyshipâs family?â
âNo.â
âNow, your ladyship,â says Mr. Guppy, âI come to the last point of the case, so far as I have got it up. Itâs going on, and I shall gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must knowâ âif your ladyship donât happen, by any chance, to know alreadyâ âthat 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-writerâs name was Hawdon.â
âAnd what is that to me?â
âAye, your ladyship, thatâs the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer thing happened after that manâs 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.â
The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does not wish to have him produced.
âOh, I assure your ladyship itâs a very queer start indeed,â says Mr. Guppy. âIf you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, youâd think it quite romantic.â
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.
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