BLEAK HOUSE


By Charles Dickens


Chapter 1

In Chancery

London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in 
Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the 
streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, 
and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or 
so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering 
down from chimneypots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in 
it as big as full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, 
for the death of the sun. Dogs, indistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely 
better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot-passengers, jostling one 
another's umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their 
foothold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot-
passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day 
ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking 
at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound 
interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and 
meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of 
shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on 
the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the 
cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the 
rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small 
boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, 
wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the 
afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog 
cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy 
on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a 
nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a 
balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the 
sun may, from the spongy fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and 
ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time - as the 
gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy 
streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate 
ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple Bar. 
And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the 
fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too 
deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High 
Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the 
sight of heaven and earth.
On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting 
here - as here he is - with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in 
with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great 
whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly 
directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see 
nothing but fog. On such an afternoon, some score of members of the High 
Court of Chancery Bar ought to be - as here they are - mistily engaged in 
one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up 
on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their 
goat-hair and horse-hair warded heads against walls of words, and making a 
pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an 
afternoon, the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom 
have inherited it from their fathers who made a fortune by it, ought to be -
 as are they not? - ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might 
look in vain for Truth at the bottom of it), between the registrar's red 
table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, 
injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters' reports, 
mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, 
with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as 
if it would never get out; well may the stained glass windows lose their 
colour, and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated 
from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be 
deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect, and by the drawl languidly 
echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor 
looks into the lantern that has no light in it, and where the attendant 
wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery; which has 
its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its 
worn-out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard; which 
has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, 
borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance; which 
gives to monied might, the means abundantly of wearying out the right; 
which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the 
brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honourable man among its 
practitioners who would not give - who does not often give - the warning, 
"Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!"
Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon 
besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three counsel 
who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? 
There is the registrar below the Judge, in wig and gown; and there are two 
or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in 
legal court suits. These are all yawning; for no crumb of amusement ever 
falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the cause in hand) which was squeezed dry 
years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, 
and the reporters of the newspapers, invariably decamp with the rest of the 
regulars when Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. 
Standing on a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the 
curtained sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet, who is 
always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some 
incomprehensible judgement to be given in her favour. Some say she really 
is, or was, a party to a suit; but no one knows for certain, because no one 
cares. She carries some small litter in her reticule which she calls her 
documents principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender. A 
sallow prisoner has come up, in custody, for the half-dozenth time, to make 
a personal application "to purge himself of his contempt;" which, being a 
solitary surviving executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration 
about accounts of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, 
he is not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life 
are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from Shropshire, 
and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at the close of the 
day's business, and who can by no means be made to understand that the 
Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence after making it desolate 
for a quarter of a century, plants himself in a good place and keeps an eye 
on the Judge, ready to call out "My Lord!" in a voice of sonorous 
complaint, on the instant of his rising. A few lawyers' clerks and others 
who know this suitor by sight, linger, on the chance of his furnishing some 
fun, and enlivening the dismal weather a little.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of 
time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The 
parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two 
Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a 
total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been 
born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; 
innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have 
deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without 
knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with 
the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-
horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed 
himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards 
of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of 
Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have 
been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three 
Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair 
blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and 
Jarndyce still drags its weary length before the Court, perennially 
hopeless.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that 
has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the 
profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out of it. Every 
master in Chancery has had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor was "in 
it," for somebody or other, when he was counsel at the bar. Good things 
have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers, in 
select port-wine committee after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been 
in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor 
handled it neatly when, correcting Mr Blowers the eminent silk gown who 
said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he 
observed "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr Blowers;" - a 
pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses.
How many people out of the suit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth 
its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt, would be a very wide question. 
From the master, upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes; down to the 
copying clerk in the Six Clerks' Office, who has copied his tens of 
thousands of Chancery-folio-pages under that eternal heading; no man's 
nature has been made better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, 
spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are 
influences that can never come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have 
kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr 
Chizzle, Mizzle, or otherwise, was particularly engaged and had 
appointments until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle 
into themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause has 
acquired a goodly sum of money by it, but has acquired too a distrust of 
his own mother, and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and 
otherwise, have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that 
they will look into that outstanding little matter, and see what can be 
done for Drizzle - who was not well used - when Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall 
be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking, in all their many 
varieties, have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those 
who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil, 
have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone 
to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go 
wrong, it was, in some offhand manner, never meant to go right.
Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord 
High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
"Mr Tangle," says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something restless 
under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.
"Mlud," says Mr Tangle. Mr Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and Jarndyce than 
anybody. He is famous for it - supposed never to have read anything else 
since he left school.
"Have you nearly concluded your argument?"
"Mlud, no - variety of points - feel it my duty submit - ludship," is the 
reply that slides out of Mr Tangle.
"Several members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?" says the 
Chancellor, with a slight smile.
Eighteen of Mr Tangle's learned friends, each armed with a little summary 
of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a pianoforte, 
make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places of obscurity.
"We will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight," says the 
Chancellor. For, the question at issue is only a question of costs, a mere 
bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come to a 
settlement one of these days.
The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward in a 
hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, "My lord!" Maces, bags, and purses, 
indignantly proclaim silence, and frown at the man from Shropshire.
"In reference," proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and Jarndyce, 
"to the young girl - "
"Begludship's pardon - boy," says Mr Tangle, prematurely.
"In reference," proceeds the Chancellor, with extra distinctness, "to the 
young girl and boy, the two young people."
(Mr Tangle crushed.)
"Whom I directed to be in attendance today, and who are now in my private 
room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of making the 
order for their residing with their uncle."
Mr Tangle on his legs again.
"Begludship's pardon - dead."
"With their," Chancellor looking through his double eyeglass at the papers 
on his desk, "grandfather."
"Begludship's pardon - victim of rash action - brains."
Suddenly a very little counsel, with a terrific bass voice, arises, fully 
inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, "Will your lordship 
allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several times removed. I am not 
at the moment prepared to inform the Court in what exact remove he is a 
cousin; but he is a cousin."
Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in the 
rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog knows him 
no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
"I will speak with both the young people," says the Chancellor anew, "and 
satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their cousin. I will 
mention the matter tomorrow morning when I take my seat."
The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is presented. 
Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner's conglomeration, but his being 
sent back to prison; which is soon done. The man from Shropshire ventures 
another remonstrative "My lord!" but the Chancellor, being aware of him, 
has dextrously vanished. Everybody else quickly vanishes too. A battery of 
blue bags is loaded with heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; 
the little mad old woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is 
locked up. If all the injustice it has committed, and all the misery it has 
caused, could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a 
great funeral pyre, - why so much the better for other parties than the 
parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!


Chapter 2

In Fashion

It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same miry 
afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery, but that we may pass 
from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the world of 
fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent and usage; 
oversleeping Rip Van Winkles, who have played at strange games through a 
deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties, whom the Knight will wake one 
day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen shall begin to turn 
prodigiously!
It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which has 
its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made the tour of 
it, and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a very little 
speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and true people in it; 
it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is, that it is a world 
wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the 
rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the 
sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want 
of air.
My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days previous 
to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks; 
after which her movements are uncertain. The fashionable intelligence says 
so, for the comfort of the Parisians, and it knows all fashionable things. 
To know things otherwise, were to be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has 
been down at what she calls, in familiar conversation, her "place" in 
Lincolnshire. The waters are out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in 
the park has been sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground, 
for half a mile in breadth, is a stagnant river, with melancholy trees for 
islands in it, and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling 
rain. My Lady Dedlock's "place" has been extremely dreary. The weather, for 
many a day and night, has been so wet that the trees seem wet through, and 
the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no crash or 
crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave quagmires, where they 
pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in the moist air, and its 
smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards the green rise, coppice-topped, 
that makes a background for the falling rain. The view from my Lady 
Dedlock's own windows is alternately a lead-coloured view, and a view in 
Indian ink. The vases on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain 
all day; and the heavy drops fall, drip, drip, drip, upon the broad flagged 
pavement, called, from old time, the Ghost's Walk, all night. On Sundays, 
the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks out into a 
cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste as of the ancient 
Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is childless), looking out 
in the early twilight from her boudoir at a keeper's lodge, and seeing the 
light of a fire upon the latticed panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, 
and a child, chased by a woman, running out into the rain to meet the 
shining figure of a wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put 
quite out of temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."
Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in Lincolnshire, and 
has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the rabbits, and the deer, and 
the partridges and pheasants. The pictures of the Dedlocks past and gone 
have seemed to vanish into the damp walls in mere lowness of spirits, as 
the housekeeper has passed along the old rooms, shutting up the shutters. 
And when they will next come forth again, the fashionable intelligence - 
which, like the fiend, is omniscient of the past and present, but not the 
future - cannot yet undertake to say.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier baronet 
than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more 
respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on without 
hills, but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on the whole admit 
Nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a 
park fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on your great county 
families. He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all 
littleness and meanness, and ready, on the shortest notice, to die any 
death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least 
impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, 
high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He will 
never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty-seven. He 
has a twist of the gout now and then, and walks a little stiffly. He is of 
a worthy presence, with his light grey hair and whiskers, his fine shirt-
frill, his pure white waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright buttons 
always buttoned. He is ceremonious, stately, most polite on every occasion 
to my Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the highest estimation. 
His gallantry to my Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is 
the one little touch of romantic fancy in him.
Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about, that she had 
not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he 
had enough, and could dispense with any more. But she had beauty, pride, 
ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of 
fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon floated her upward; 
and for years, now, my Lady Dedlock has been at the centre of the 
fashionable intelligence, and at the top of the fashionable tree.
How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody knows - 
or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having been rather 
frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered her world, fell, 
not into the melting, but rather into the freezing mood. An exhausted 
composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled 
by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory. She is 
perfectly well-bred. If she could be translated to heaven tomorrow, she 
might be expected to ascend without any rapture.
She has beauty still, and, if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet in its 
autumn. She has a fine face - originally of a character that would be 
rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into classicality by 
the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her figure is elegant, 
and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is so, but that "the most is 
made," as the Honourable Bob Stables has frequently asserted upon oath, "of 
all her points." The same authority observes, that she is perfectly got up; 
and remarks, in commendation of her hair especially, that she is the best-
groomed woman in the whole stud.
With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up from her 
place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable intelligence), to 
pass a few days at her house in town previous to her departure for Paris, 
where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks, after which her movements 
are uncertain. And at her house in town, upon this muddy, murky afternoon, 
presents himself an old-fashioned old gentleman, attorney-at-law, and eke 
solicitor of the High Court of Chancery, who has the honour of acting as 
legal adviser of the Dedlocks, and has as many cast-iron boxes in his 
office with that name outside, as if the present baronet were the coin of 
the conjuror's trick, and were constantly being juggled through the whole 
set. Across the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and 
through the rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal 
out of it - Fairyland to visit, but a desert to live in - the old gentleman 
is conducted, by a Mercury in powder, to my Lady's presence.
The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made good 
thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic wills, and 
to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of family 
confidences; of which he is known to be the silent depository. There are 
noble Mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of parks, among the 
growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than 
walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of Mr Tulkinghorn. He is of 
what is called the old school - a phrase generally meaning any school that 
seems never to have been young - and wears knee breeches tied with ribbons, 
and gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his black clothes, and of his 
black stockings, be they silk or worsted, is, that they never shine. Mute, 
close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He 
never converses, when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, 
speechless but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country 
houses, and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionable 
intelligence is eloquent; where everybody knows him, and where half the 
Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr Tulkinghorn?" he receives these 
salutations with gravity, and buries them along with the rest of his 
knowledge.
Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady, and is happy to see Mr Tulkinghorn. 
There is an air of prescription about him which is always agreeable to Sir 
Leicester; he receives it as a kind of tribute. He likes Mr Tulkinghorn's 
dress; there is a kind of tribute in that too. It is eminently respectable, 
and likewise, in a general way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, 
the steward of the legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the 
Deadlocks.
Has Mr Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may not; 
but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in everything 
associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class - as one of the leaders 
and representatives of her little world. She supposes herself to be an 
inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of ordinary mortals - 
seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks so. Yet, every dim 
little star revolving about her, from her maid to the manager of the 
Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, 
and caprices; and lives upon as accurate a calculation and as nice a 
measure of her moral nature, as her dressmaker takes of her physical 
proportions. Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a 
new form of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, 
to be set up? There are deferential people, in a dozen callings, whom my 
Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell 
you how to manage her as if she were a baby; who do nothing but nurse her 
all their lives; who, humbly affecting to follow with profound 
subservience, lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, 
hook all and bear them off, as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet 
of the majestic Lilliput. "If you want to address our people, sir," say 
Blaze and Sparkle the jewellers - meaning by our people Lady Dedlock and 
the rest - "you must remember that you are not dealing with the general 
public; you must hit our people in their weakest place, and their weakest 
place is such a place."
"To make this article go down, gentleman," say Sheen and Gloss the mercers, 
to their friends the manufacturers, "you must come to us, because we know 
where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it fashionable."
"If you want to get this print upon the tables of my high connection, sir," 
says Mr Sladdery the librarian, "or if you want to get this dwarf or giant 
into the houses of my connection, sir, or if you want to secure to this 
entertainment, the patronage of my high connection, sir, you must leave it, 
if you please, to me; for I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my 
high connection, sir; and I may tell you, without vanity, that I can turn 
them round my finger," - in which Mr Sladdery, who is an honest man, does 
not exaggerate at all.
Therefore, while Mr Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the Dedlock 
mind at present, it is very possible that he may.
"My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr 
Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
"Yes. It has been on again today," Mr Tulkinghorn replies; making one of 
his quiet bows to my Lady who is on a sofa near the fire, shading her face 
with a handscreen.
"It would be useless to ask," says my Lady, with the dreariness of the 
place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been done."
"Nothing that you would call anything has been done today," replies Mr 
Tulkinghorn.
"Nor ever will be," says my Lady.
Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It is a 
slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be sure, he has 
not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part in which was the 
only property my Lady brought him; and he has a shadowy impression that for 
his name - the name of Dedlock - to be in a cause, and not in the title of 
that cause, is a most ridiculous accident. But he regards the Court of 
Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice and a 
trifling amount of confusion, as a something, devised in conjunction with a 
variety of other somethings, by the perfection of human wisdom, for the 
eternal settlement (humanly speaking) of every thing. And he is upon the 
whole of a fixed opinion, that to give the sanction of his countenance to 
any complaints respecting it, would be to encourage some person in the 
lower classes to rise up somewhere - like Wat Tyler.
"As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr 
Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the troublesome 
principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any new proceedings 
in a cause;" cautious man Mr Tulkinghorn, taking no more responsibility 
than necessary; "and further, as I see you are going to Paris; I have 
brought them in my pocket."
(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by-the-bye, but the delight of the 
fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)
Mr Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them on a 
golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow, puts on his spectacles, and 
begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.
"'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce - '"
My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal horrors as 
he can.
Mr Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles, and begins again lower down. My 
Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir Leicester in a 
great chair looks at the fire, and appears to have a stately liking for the 
legal repetitions and prolixities, as ranging among the national bulwarks. 
It happens that the fire is hot, where my Lady sits; and that the hand-
screen is more beautiful than useful, being priceless but small. My Lady, 
changing her position, sees the papers on the table - looks at them nearer -
 looks at them nearer still - asks impulsively:
"Who copied that?"
Mr Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her 
unusual tone.
"Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at him in her 
careless way again, and toying with her screen.
"Not quite. Probably" - Mr Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks - "the 
legal character it has, was acquired after the original hand was formed. 
Why do you ask?"
"Anything to vary this detestable monotony. O, go on, do!"
Mr Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater, my Lady screens her face. 
Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries "Eh? what do you say?"
"I say I am afraid," says Mr Tulkinghorn, who has risen hastily, "that Lady 
Dedlock is ill."
"Faint," my Lady murmurs, with white lips, "only that; but it is like the 
faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take me to my room!"
Mr Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring; feet shuffle and 
patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr Tulkinghorn to return.
"Better now," quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down and 
read to him alone. "I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my Lady swoon 
before. But the weather is extremely trying - and she really has been bored 
to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."


Chapter 3

A Progress

I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these 
pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can remember, when 
I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my doll, when we were 
alone together, "Now Dolly, I am not clever, you know very well, and you 
must be patient with me, like a dear!" And so she used to sit propped up in 
a great armchair, with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips, staring at 
me - or not so much at me, I think, as at nothing - while I busily stitched 
away, and told her every one of my secrets.
My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared to open 
my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else. It almost makes 
me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me, when I cam home from 
school of a day, to run upstairs to my room, and say, "O you dear faithful 
Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!" and then to sit down on the 
floor, leaning on the elbow of her great chair, and tell her all I had 
noticed since we parted. I had always rather a noticing way - not a quick 
way, O no! - a silent way of noticing what passed before me, and thinking I 
should like to understand it better. I have not by any means a quick 
understanding. When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to 
brighten. But even that may be my vanity.
I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance - like some of the 
princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming - by my godmother. 
At least I only knew her as such. She was a good, good woman! She went to 
church three times every Sunday, and to morning prayers on Wednesdays and 
Fridays, and to lectures whenever there were lectures; and never missed. 
She was handsome; and if she had ever smiled, would have been (I used to 
think) like an angel - but she never smiled. She was always grave and 
strict. She was so very good herself, I thought, that the badness of other 
people made her frown all her life. I felt so different from her, even 
making every allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I 
felt so poor, so trifling, and so far off; that I never could be 
unrestrained with her - no, could never even love her as I wished. It made 
me very sorry to consider how good she was, and how unworthy of her I was; 
and I used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I talked 
it over very often with the dear old doll; but I never loved my godmother 
as I ought to have loved her, and as I felt I must have loved her if I had 
been a better girl.
This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally was, and 
cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at ease. But 
something happened when I was still quite a little thing, that helped it 
very much.
I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa either, 
but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a black frock, 
that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama's grave. I had never 
been told where it was. Yet I had never been taught to pray for any 
relation but my godmother. I had more than once approached this subject of 
my thoughts with Mrs Rachael, our only servant, who took my light away when 
I was in bed (another very good woman, but austere to me), and she had only 
said, "Esther, good night!" and gone away and left me.
Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I was a 
day boarder, and although they called me little Esther Summerson, I knew 
none of them at home. All of them were older than I, to be sure (I was the 
youngest there by a good deal), but there seemed to be some other 
separation between us besides that, and besides their being far more clever 
than I was, and knowing much more than I did. One of them, in the first 
week of my going to the school (I remember it very well), invited me home 
to a little party, to my great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter, 
declining for me, and I never went. I never went out at all.
It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other birthdays - none 
on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other birthdays, as I knew from 
what I heard the girls relate to one another - there were none on mine. My 
birthday was the most melancholy day at home, in the whole year.
I have mentioned, that, unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know it 
may, for I may be very vain, without suspecting it - though indeed I 
don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My disposition 
is very affectionate; and perhaps I might still feel such a wound, if such 
a wound could be received more than once, with the quickness of that 
birthday.
Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table before 
the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another sound had been 
heard in the room, or in the house, for I don't know how long. I happened 
to look timidly up from my stitching, across the table, at my godmother, 
and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me, "It would have been far 
better, little Esther, that you had had no birthday; that you had never 
been born!"
I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, "O, dear godmother, tell me, 
pray do tell me, did mama die on my birthday?"
"No," she returned. "Ask me no more, child!"
"O, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear godmother, if 
you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her? Why am I so different 
from other children, and why is it my fault, dear godmother? No, no, no, 
don't go away. O, speak to me!"
I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief; and I caught hold of her dress, 
and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while, "Let me go!" 
But now she stood still.
Her darkened face had such power over me, that it stopped me in the midst 
of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp hers, or to beg 
her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew it as she looked at 
me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She raised me, sat in her chair, 
and standing me before her, said, slowly, in a cold, low voice - I see her 
knitted brow, and pointed finger:
"Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time will 
come - and soon enough - when you will understand this better, and will 
feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have forgiven her;" but her face 
did not relent; "the wrong she did to me, and I say no more of it, though 
it was greater than you will ever know - than any one will ever know, but 
I, the sufferer. For yourself, unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from 
the first of these evil anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others 
be not visited upon your head, according to what is written. Forget your 
mother, and leave all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy 
child that greatest kindness. Now, go!"
She checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her - so frozen as I 
was! - and added this:
"Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life 
begun with such a shadow on it. You are different from other children, 
Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and 
wrath. You are set apart."
I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek against 
mine wet with tears; and holding that solitary friend upon my bosom, cried 
myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my sorrow was, I knew 
that I had brought no joy, at any time, to anybody's heart, and that I was 
to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.
Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together afterwards, and 
how often I repeated to the doll the story of my birthday, and confided to 
her that I would try, as hard as ever I could, to repair the fault I had 
been born with (of which I confessedly felt guilty and yet innocent), and 
would strive as I grew up to be industrious, contented and kind-hearted, 
and to do some good to some one, and win some love to myself if I could. I 
hope it is not self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am 
very thankful, I am cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to my 
eyes.
There! I have wiped them away now, and can go on again properly.
I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more after the 
birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her house which ought 
to have been empty, that I found her more difficult of approach, though I 
was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than ever. I felt in the same 
way towards my school companions; I felt in the same way towards Mrs 
Rachael, who was a widow; and O, towards her daughter, of whom she was 
proud, who came to see her once a fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, 
and tried to be very diligent.
One sunny afternoon, when I had come home from school with my books and 
portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was gliding 
upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the parlour door, 
and called me back. Sitting with her, I found - which was very unusual 
indeed - a stranger. A portly important-looking gentleman, dressed all in 
black, with a white cravat, large gold watch seals, a pair of gold 
eyeglasses, and a large seal-ring upon his little finger.
"This," said my godmother in an under tone, "is the child." Then she said, 
in her naturally stern way of speaking, "This is Esther, sir."
The gentleman put up his eyeglasses to look at me, and said, "Come here, my 
dear!" He shook hands with me, and asked me to take off my bonnet - looking 
at me all the while. When I had complied, he said, "Ah!" and afterwards 
"Yes!" And then, taking off his eyeglasses, and folding them in a red case, 
and leaning back in his armchair, turning the case about in his two hands 
he gave my godmother a nod. Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go 
upstairs, Esther!" and I made him my curtsey and left him.
It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen, when one 
dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was reading aloud, 
and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock, as I always did, to 
read the Bible to her; and was reading, from St. John, how our Saviour 
stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they brought the 
sinful woman to him.
"'So, when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto 
them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at 
her!'"
I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head, and 
crying out, in an awful voice, from quite another part of the book:
"'Watch ye therefore! lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I 
say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'"
In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she fell 
down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had sounded through 
the house, and been heard in the street.
She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little 
altered outwardly; with her old handsome resolute frown that I so well 
knew, carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and in the 
night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be 
plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for 
her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that 
she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was immoveable. To the very 
last, and even afterwards, her frown remained unsoftened.
On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in black 
with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs Rachael, and 
found him in the same place, as if he had never gone away.
"My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge and 
Carboy, Lincoln's Inn."
I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.
"Pray be seated - here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no use. 
Mrs Rachael, I needn't inform you who were acquainted with the late Miss 
Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her; and that this young lady, 
now her aunt is dead - "
"My aunt, sir!"
"It really is of no use carrying on a deception, when no object is to be 
gained by it," said Mr Kenge, smoothly. "Aunt in fact, though not in law. 
Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs Rachael, our young 
friend has no doubt heard of - the - a - Jarndyce and Jarndyce."
"Never," said Mrs Rachael.
"Is it possible," pursued Mr Kenge, putting up his eyeglasses, "that our 
young friend - I beg you won't distress yourself! - never heard of Jarndyce 
and Jarndyce!"
I shook my head, wondering even what it was.
"Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!" said Mr Kenge, looking over his glasses, at 
me, and softly turning the case about and about, as if he were petting 
something. "Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits known? Not of 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce - the - a - in itself a monument of Chancery 
practice? In which (I would say) every difficulty, every contingency, every 
masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in that court, is 
represented over and over again? It is a cause that could not exist, out of 
this free and great country. I should say that the aggregate of costs in 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs Rachael;" I was afraid he addressed himself to 
her, because I appeared inattentive; "amounts at the present hour to from 
sixty to seventy thousand pounds!" said Mr Kenge, leaning back in his 
chair.
I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely unacquainted 
with the subject, that I understood nothing about it even then.
"And she really never heard of the cause!" said Mr Kenge. "Surprising!"
"Miss Barbary, sir," returned Mrs Rachael, "who is now among the seraphim - 
"
("I hope so, I am sure," said Mr Kenge politely.)
" - Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And she 
knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more."
"Well!" said Mr Kenge. "Upon the whole very proper. Now to the point," 
addressing me. "Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact, that is; for I 
am bound to observe that in law you had none), being deceased, and it 
naturally not being to be expected that Mrs Rachael - "
"Oh dear no!" said Mrs Rachael, quickly.
"Quite so," assented Mr Kenge; - "that Mrs Rachael should charge herself 
with your maintenance and support (I beg you won't distress yourself), you 
are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer which I was instructed 
to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago, and which, though rejected 
then, was understood to be renewable under the lamentable circumstances 
that have since occurred. Now, if I avow, that I represent, in Jarndyce and 
Jarndyce, and otherwise, a highly humane, but at the same time singular 
man, shall I compromise myself by any stretch of my professional caution?" 
said Mr Kenge, leaning back in his chair again, and looking calmly at us 
both.
He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I 
couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full, and gave great 
importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with obvious 
satisfaction, and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with his 
head, or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much impressed by him 
- even then, before I knew that he formed himself on the model of a great 
lord who was his client, and that he was generally called Conversation 
Kenge.
"Mr Jarndyce," he pursued, "being aware of the - I would say, desolate - 
position of our young friend, offers to place her at a first-rate 
establishment; where her education shall be completed, where her comfort 
shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be anticipated, where 
she shall be eminently qualified to discharge her duty in that station of 
life unto which it has pleased - shall I say Providence? - to call her."
My heart was filled so full, both by what he said, and by his affecting 
manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I tried.
"Mr Jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition, beyond expressing his 
expectation, that our young friend will not at any time remove herself from 
the establishment in question without his knowledge and concurrence. That 
she will faithfully apply herself to the acquisition of those 
accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she will be ultimately 
dependent. That she will tread in the paths of virtue and honour, and - the 
- a - so forth."
I was still less able to speak, than before.
"Now, what does our young friend say?" proceeded Mr Kenge. "Take time, take 
time! I pause for her reply. But take time."
What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not 
repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth the 
telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could never 
relate.
This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I 
knew), my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all 
necessaries, I left it, inside the stage-coach, for Reading.
Mrs Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was not so 
good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known her better 
after so many years, and ought to have made myself enough of a favourite 
with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one cold parting kiss 
upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch - it was a very 
frosty day - I felt so miserable and self-reproachful, that I clung to her 
and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so 
easily!
"No Esther!" she returned. "It is your misfortune!"
The coach was at the little lawn gate - we had not come out until we heard 
the wheels - and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She went in 
before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof, and shut the door. As long 
as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the window, through my 
tears. My godmother had left Mrs Rachael all the little property she 
possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old hearthrug with roses on 
it, which always seemed to me the first thing in the world I had ever seen, 
was hanging outside in the frost and snow. A day or two before, I had 
wrapped the dear old doll in her own shawl, and quietly laid her - I am 
half ashamed to tell it - in the garden-earth, under the tree that shaded 
my old window. I had no companion left but my bird, and him I carried with 
me in his cage.
When the house was out of sight, I sat with my bird-cage in the straw at my 
feet, forward on the low seat, to look out of the high window; watching the 
frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of spar; and the fields all 
smooth and white with last night's snow; and the sun, so red but yielding 
so little heat; and the ice, dark like metal, where the skaters and sliders 
had brushed the snow away. There was a gentleman in the coach who sat on 
the opposite seat, and looked very large in a quantity of wrappings; but he 
sat gazing out of the other window, and took no notice of me.
I thought of my dead godmother; of the night when I read to her; of her 
frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed; of the strange place I was 
going to; of the people I should find there, and what they would be like, 
and what they would say to me; when a voice in the coach gave me a terrible 
start.
It said, "What the devil are you crying for?"
I was so frightened that I lost my voice, and could only answer in a 
whisper. "Me, sir?" For of course I knew it must have been the gentleman in 
the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking out of his window.
"Yes you," he said, turning round.
"I didn't know I was crying, sir," I faltered.
"But you are!" said the gentleman. "Look here!" He came quite opposite to 
me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his large furry cuffs 
across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed me that it was wet.
"There!" Now you know you are," he said. "Don't you?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
"And what are you crying for?" said the gentleman. "Don't you want to go 
there?"
"Where, sir?"
"Where? Why, wherever you are going," said the gentleman.
"I am very glad to go there, sir," I answered.
"Well, then! Look glad!" said the gentleman.
I thought he was very strange; or at least that what I could see of him was 
very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face was almost 
hidden in a fur cap, with broad fur straps at the side of his head, 
fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not afraid of him. 
So I told him that I thought I must have been crying, because of my 
godmother's death, and because of Mrs Rachael's not being sorry to part 
with me.
"Confound Mrs Rachael!" said the gentleman. "Let her fly away in a high 
wind on a broomstick!"
I began to be really afraid of him now, and looked at him with the greatest 
astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes, although he kept on 
muttering to himself in an angry manner, and calling Mrs Rachael names.
After a little while, he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to me 
large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into a deep 
pocket in the side.
"Now look here!" he said. "In this paper," which was nicely folded, "is a 
piece of the best plum cake that can be got for money - sugar on the 
outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here's a little pie (a gem 
this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And what do you 
suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie! Now let's see you 
eat 'em."
"Thank you, sir," I replied, "thank you very much indeed, but I hope you 
won't be offended; they are too rich for me."
"Floored again!" said the gentleman, which I didn't at all understand; and 
threw them both out of the window.
He did not speak to me any more, until he got out of the coach a little way 
short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl, and to be studious; 
and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by his departure. We 
left him at a milestone. I often walked past it afterwards, and never, for 
a long time, without thinking of him, and half expecting to meet him. But I 
never did; and so, as time went on, he passed out of my mind.
When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window, and said:
"Miss Donny."
"No, ma'am, Esther Summerson."
"That is quite right," said the lady, "Miss Donny."
I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged Miss 
Donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her request. 
Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put outside a very small 
green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid, and I, got inside, and were 
driven away.
"Everything is ready for you, Esther," said Miss Donny; "and the scheme of 
your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with the wishes of your 
guardian, Mr Jarndyce."
"Of - did you say, ma'am?"
"Of your guardian, Mr Jarndyce," said Miss Donny.
I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too severe 
for me, and lent me her smelling-bottle.
"Do you know my - guardian, Mr Jarndyce, ma'am?" I asked after a good deal 
of hesitation.
"Not personally, Esther," said Miss Donny; "merely through his solicitors, 
Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior gentleman, Mr Kenge. 
Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods quite majestic!"
I felt this to be very true, but was too confused to attend to it. Our 
speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover myself, 
increased my confusion; and I never shall forget the uncertain and unreal 
air of every thing at Greenleaf (Miss Donny's house), that afternoon!
But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of Greenleaf 
before long, that I seemed to have been there a great while; and almost to 
have dreamed, rather than to have really lived, my old life at my 
godmother's. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly, than 
Grenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the clock, 
and everything was done at its appointed moment.
We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It was 
understood that I would have to depend, by-and-by, on my qualifications as 
a governess; and I was not only instructed in everything that was taught at 
Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in helping to instruct others. 
Although I was treated in every other respect like the rest of the school, 
this single difference was made in my case from the first. As I began to 
know more, I taught more, and so in course of time I had plenty to do, 
which I was very fond of doing, because it made the dear girls fond of me. 
At last, whenever a new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, 
she was so sure - indeed I don't know why - to make a friend of me, that 
all newcomers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle; but I am 
sure they were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my 
birthday, to try to be industrious, contented and true-hearted, and to do 
some good to some one, and win some love if I could; and indeed, indeed, I 
felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so much.
I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face 
there, thank Heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better if I 
had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so many tokens 
of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful with them from New 
Year's Day to Christmas.
In those six years I had never been away, except on visits at holiday time 
in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so, I had taken Miss 
Donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to Mr Kenge, to say 
that I was happy and grateful; and with her approval I had written such a 
letter. I had received a formal answer acknowledging its receipt, and 
saying, "We note the contents thereof, which shall be duly communicated to 
our client." After that, I sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister 
mention how regularly my accounts were paid; and about twice a year I 
ventured to write a similar letter. I always received by return of post 
exactly the same answer, in the same round hand; with the signature of 
Kenge and Carboy in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr Kenge's.
It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about myself! As 
if this narrative were the narrative of my life! But my little body will 
soon fall into the background now.
Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had passed at 
Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a looking-glass, 
every stage of my own growth and change there, when, one November morning, 
I received this letter. I omit the date.

Old Square, Lincoln's Inn.

Madam,

Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Our clt Mr Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house, under an Order of the 
Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this cause, for whom he wishes to secure an 
elgble compn, directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your serces 
in the afsd capacity.
We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr eight o'clock coach 
from Reading, on Monday morning next, to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, 
London, where one of our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe 
as above.

We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,

Kenge and Carboy.

Miss Esther Summerson.

O, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused in the 
house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me; it was so gracious 
in that Father who had not forgotten me, to have made my orphan way so 
smooth and easy, and to have inclined so many youthful natures towards me; 
that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would have had them less sorry - I 
am afraid not; but the pleasure of it and the pain of it, and the pride and 
joy of it, and the humble regret of it, were so blended that my heart 
seemed almost breaking while it was full of rapture.
The letter gave me only five days' notice of my removal. When every minute 
added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in those five 
days; and when at last the morning came, and when they took me through all 
the rooms that I might see them for the last time; and when some cried, 
"Esther, dear, say goodbye to me here, at my bedside, where you first spoke 
so kindly to me!" and when others asked me only to write their names, "With 
Esther's love;" and when they all surrounded me with their parting 
presents, and clung to me weeping, and cried, "What shall we do when dear, 
dear Esther's gone!" and when I tried to tell them how forbearing, and how 
good they had all been to me, and how I blessed, and thanked them every 
one; what a heart I had!
And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me, as the least 
among them; and when the maids said, "Bless you, miss, wherever you go!" 
and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had hardly noticed me in 
all those years, came panting after the coach to give me a little nosegay 
of geraniums, and told me I had been the light of his eyes - indeed the old 
man said so! - what a heart I had then!
And could I help it, if with all this, and the coming to the little school, 
and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving their hats and 
bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady, whose daughter I 
had helped to teach, and at whose house I had visited (who were said to be 
the proudest people in all that country), caring for nothing, but calling 
out, "Good-bye, Esther. May you be very happy!" could I help it if I was 
quite bowed down in the coach by myself, and said, "O, I am so thankful, I 
am so thankful!" many times over!
But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I was 
going, after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course, I made 
myself sob less, and persuaded myself to be quiet, by saying very often, 
"Esther, now you really must! This will not do!" I cheered myself up pretty 
well at last, though I am afraid I was longer about it than I ought to have 
been; and when I had cooled my eyes with lavender water, it was time to 
watch for London.
I was quite persuaded that we were there, when we were ten miles off; and 
when we really were there, that we should never get there. However, when we 
began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and particularly when every other 
conveyance seemed to be running into us and we seemed to be running into 
every other conveyance, I began to believe that we really were approaching 
the end of our journey. Very soon afterwards we stopped.
A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident, addressed me from the 
pavement, and said, "I am from Kenge and Carboy's, miss, of Lincoln's Inn."
"If you please, sir," said I.
He was very obliging; and as he handed me into a fly, after superintending 
the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was a great fire 
anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely 
anything was to be seen.
"O dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular."
I had never heard of such a thing.
"A fog, miss," said the young gentleman.
"O indeed!" said I.
We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever were 
seen in the world (I thought), and in such a distracting state of confusion 
that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we passed into 
sudden quietude under an old gateway, and drove on through a silent square 
until we came to an odd nook in the corner, where there was an entrance up 
a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance to a church. And there 
really was a churchyard, outside under some cloisters, for I saw the 
gravestones from the staircase window.
This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentleman showed me through an outer 
office into Mr Kenge's room - there was no one in it - and politely put an 
armchair for me by the fire. He then called my attention to a little 
looking-glass, hanging from a nail on one side of the chimney-piece.
"In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the journey, as 
you're going before the Chancellor. Not that it's requisite, I am sure," 
said the young gentleman civilly.
"Going before the Chancellor?" I said, startled for a moment.
"Only a matter of form, miss," returned the young gentleman. "Mr Kenge is 
in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake of some 
refreshment;" there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a small table; 
"and look over the paper;" which the young gentleman gave me as he spoke. 
He then stirred the fire and left me.
Everything was so strange - the stranger for its being night in the 
daytime, and the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and 
cold - that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what they 
meant, and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it was of no 
use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep at my bonnet in 
the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the room, which was not half 
lighted, and at the shabby dusty tables, and at the piles of writings, and 
at a bookcase full of the most inexpressive-looking books that ever had 
anything to say for themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, 
thinking; and the fire went on burning, burning, burning; and the candles 
went on flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers - until the 
young gentleman by-and-by brought a very dirty pair; for two hours.
At last Mr Kenge came. He was not altered; but he was surprised to see how 
altered I was, and appeared quite pleased. "As you are going to be the 
companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor's private room, 
Miss Summerson," he said, "we thought it well that you should be in 
attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord Chancellor, I dare 
say?"
"No, sir," I said, "I don't think I shall." Really not seeing, on 
consideration, why I should be.
So Mr Kenge gave me his arm, and we went round the corner, under a 
colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage, into a 
comfortable sort of room, where a young lady and a young gentleman were 
standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was interposed between 
them and it, and they were leaning on the screen, talking.
They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with the 
fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich golden hair, 
such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent, trusting face!
"Miss Ada," said Mr Kenge, "this is Miss Summerson."
She came to meet me with a smile of welcome, and her hand extended, but 
seemed to change her mind in a moment, and kissed me. In short, she had 
such a natural, captivating, winning manner, that in a few minutes we were 
sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the fire upon us, talking 
together, as free and happy as could be.
What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could 
confide in me, and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging to 
me!
The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name 
Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth, with an ingenuous face, and a 
most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we sat, he 
stood by us, in the light of the fire too, talking gaily, like a light-
hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if quite so 
much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were both orphans, and 
(what was very unexpected and curious to me) had never met before that day. 
Our all three coming together for the first time, in such an unusual place, 
was a thing to talk about; and we talked about it; and the fire, which had 
left off roaring, winked its red eyes at us - as Richard said - like a 
drowsy old Chancery lion.
We conversed in a low tone, because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag wig, 
frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a drawling 
sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel in our case 
addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr Kenge that the Chancellor would 
be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a bustle and a tread of feet, 
and Mr Kenge said that the court had risen, and his lordship was in the 
next room.
The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly, and requested 
Mr Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next room; Mr Kenge 
first, with my darling - it is so natural to me now, that I can't help 
writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black, and sitting in an armchair 
at a table near the fire, was his lordship, whose robe, trimmed with 
beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another chair. He gave us a searching 
look as we entered, but his manner was both courtly and kind.
The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship's 
table, and his lordship silently selected one, and turned over the leaves.
"Miss Clare," said the Lord Chancellor. "Miss Ada Clare?"
Mr Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near him. 
That he admired her, and was interested by her, even I could see in a 
moment. It touched me, that the home of such a beautiful young creature 
should be represented by that dry official place. The Lord High Chancellor, 
at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the love and pride of 
parents.
"The Jarndyce in question," said the Lord Chancellor, still turning over 
leaves, "is Jarndyce of Bleak House."
"Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," said Mr Kenge.
"A dreary name," said the Lord Chancellor.
"But not a dreary place, at present, my lord," said Mr Kenge.
"And Bleak House," said his lordship, "is in - "
"Hertfordshire, my lord."
"Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?" said his lordship.
"He is not, my lord," said Mr Kenge.
A pause.
"Young Mr Richard Carstone is present?" said the Lord Chancellor, glancing 
towards him.
Richard bowed and stepped forward.
"Hum!" said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.
"Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," Mr Kenge observed in a low voice, 
"if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable companion 
for - "
"For Mr Richard Carstone?" I thought (but I am not quite sure) I heard his 
lordship say, in an equally low voice, and with a smile.
"For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson."
His lordship gave me an indulgent look, and acknowledged my curtsey very 
graciously.
"Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?"
"No, my lord."
Mr Kenge leant over before it was quite said, and whispered. His lordship, 
with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or thrice, turned 
over more leaves, and did not look towards me again, until we were going 
away.
Mr Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the door, 
leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can't help it!) sitting 
near the Lord Chancellor; with whom his lordship spoke a little apart; 
asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had well reflected on 
the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she would be happy under the 
roof of Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why she thought so? Presently he 
rose courteously, and released her, and then he spoke for a minute or two 
with Richard Carstone; not seated, but standing, and altogether with more 
ease and less ceremony - as if he still knew, though he was Lord 
Chancellor, how to go straight to the candour of a boy.
"Very well!" said his lordship aloud. "I shall make the order. Mr Jarndyce 
of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge," and this was when he 
looked at me, "a very good companion for the young lady, and the 
arrangement altogether seems the best of which the circumstances admit."
He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to him 
for being so affable and polite; by which he had certainly lost no dignity, 
but seemed to us to have gained some.
When we got under the colonnade, Mr Kenge remembered that he must go back 
for a moment to ask a question; and left us in the fog, with the Lord 
Chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.
"Well!" said Richard Carstone, "that's over! And where do we go next, Miss 
Summerson?"
"Don't you know?" I said.
"Not in the least," said he.
"And don't you know, my love?" I asked Ada.
"No!" said she. "Don't you?"
"Not at all!" said I.
We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the children in 
the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed bonnet, and 
carrying a reticule, came curtseying and smiling up to us, with an air of 
great ceremony.
"O!" said she. "The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to have the 
honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty, when they find 
themselves in this place, and don't know what's to come of it."
"Mad!" whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.
"Right! Mad, young gentleman," she returned so quickly that he was quite 
abashed. "I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time," curtseying low, 
and smiling between every little sentence. "I had youth, and hope. I 
believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of the three served, 
or saved me. I have the honour to attend court regularly. With my 
documents. I expect a judgement. Shortly. On the Day of Judgement. I have 
discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in the Revelations is the Great 
Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray accept my blessing."
As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady, that 
we were much obliged to her.
"Ye-es!" she said mincingly. "I imagine so. And here is Conversation Kenge. 
With his documents! How does your honourable worship do?"
"Quite well, quite well! Now don't be troublesome, that's a good soul!" 
said Mr Kenge, leading the way back.
"By no means," said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me. 
"Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both, - which is not 
being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the Day of 
Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!"
She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but we 
looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still with a 
curtsey and a smile between every little sentence, "Youth. And hope. And 
beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray accept my blessing!"


Chapter 4

Telescopic Philanthropy

We were to pass the night, Mr Kenge told us when we arrived in his room, at 
Mrs Jellyby's; and then he turned to me, and said he took it for granted I 
knew who Mrs Jellyby was?
"I really don't, sir," I returned. "Perhaps Mr Carstone - or Miss Clare - "
But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs Jellyby.
"In-deed! Mrs Jellyby," said Mr Kenge, standing with his back to the fire, 
and casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug, as if it were Mrs Jellyby's 
biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of character, who devotes 
herself entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive 
variety of public subjects, at various times, and is at present (until 
something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa; with a view 
to the general cultivation of the coffee berry - and the natives - and the 
happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant 
home population. Mr Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid in any work that is 
considered likely to be a good work, and who is much sought after by 
philanthropists, has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs Jellyby."
Mr Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.
"And Mr Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard.
"Ah! Mr Jellyby," said Mr Kenge, "is - a - I don't know that I can describe 
him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of Mrs Jellyby."
"A nonentity, sir?" said Richard, with a droll look.
"I don't say that," returned Mr Kenge, gravely. "I can't say, that, indeed, 
for I know nothing whatever of Mr Jellyby. I never, to my knowledge, had 
the pleasure of seeing Mr Jellyby. He may be a very superior man; but he 
is, so to speak merged - Merged - in the more shining qualities of his 
wife." Mr Kenge proceeded to tell us that as the road to Bleak House would 
have been very long, dark, and tedious, on such an evening, and as we had 
been travelling already. Mr Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. 
A carriage would be at Mrs Jellyby's to convey us out of town, early in the 
forenoon of tomorrow.
He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in. Addressing him 
by the name of Guppy, Mr Kenge inquired whether Miss Summerson's boxes and 
the rest of the baggage had been "sent round." Mr Guppy said yes, they had 
been sent round, and a coach was waiting to take us round too, as soon as 
we pleased.
"Then it only remains," said Mr Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for me to 
express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the arrangement 
this day concluded, and my (good bye to you, Miss Summerson!) lively hope 
that it will conduce to the happiness, the (glad to have had the honour of 
making your acquaintance, Mr Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all 
points of view, of all concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there."
"Where is 'there,' Mr Guppy?" said Richard, as we went downstairs.
"No distance," said Mr Guppy; "round in Thavies' Inn, you know."
"I can't say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester, and am strange 
in London."
"Only round the corner," said Mr Guppy. "We just twist up Chancery Lane, 
and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes' time, as near as a 
toucher. This is about a London particular now, ain't it, miss?" He seemed 
quite delighted with it on my account.
"The fog is very dense, indeed!" said I.
"Not that it affects you, though, I am sure," said Mr Guppy, putting up the 
steps. "On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss, judging from your 
appearance."
I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at myself 
for blushing at it, when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we 
all three laughed, and chatted about our inexperience, and the strangeness 
of London, until we turned up under an archway, to our destination: a 
narrow street of high houses, like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There 
was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about 
the house at which we stopped, which had a tarnished brass plate on the 
door, with the inscription, Jellyby.
"Don't be frightened!" said Mr Guppy, looking in at the coach-window. "One 
of the young Jellybys been and got his head through the area railings!"
"O poor child," said I, "let me out, if you please!"
"Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up to 
something," said Mr Guppy.
I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little 
unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened, and crying 
loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a milkman and a 
beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were endeavouring to drag him 
back by the legs, under a general impression that his skull was 
compressible by those means. As I found (after pacifying him), that he was 
a little boy, with a naturally large head, I thought that, perhaps, where 
his head could go, his body could follow, and mentioned that the best mode 
of extrication might be to push him forward. This was so favourably 
received by the milkman and beadle, that he would immediately have been 
pushed into the area, if I had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr 
Guppy ran down through the kitchen, to catch him when he should be 
released. At last he was happily got down without any accident, and then he 
began to beat Mr Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
Nobody had appeared belonging to the house, except a person in patterns, 
who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I don't know with 
what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore supposed that Mrs 
Jellyby was not at home; and was quite surprised when the person appeared 
in the passage without the pattens, and going up to the back room on the 
first floor, before Ada and me, announced us as "Them two young ladies, 
Missis Jellyby!" We passed several more children on the way up, whom it was 
difficult to avoid treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs 
Jellyby's presence, one of the poor little things fell downstairs - down a 
whole flight (as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
Mrs Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we could not 
help showing in our own faces, as the dear child's head recorded its 
passage with a bump on every stair - Richard afterwards said he counted 
seven, besides one for the landing - received us with perfect equanimity. 
She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman, of from forty to fifty, 
with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a 
long way off. As if - I am quoting Richard again - they could see nothing 
nearer than Africa.
"I am very glad, indeed," said Mrs Jellyby, in an agreeable voice, "to have 
the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr Jarndyce; and 
no one in whom he is interested can be an object of indifference to me."
We expressed our acknowledgments, and sat down behind the door where there 
was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs Jellyby had very good hair, but was too 
much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The shawl in which she 
had been loosely muffled, dropped on to her chair when she advanced to us; 
and as she turned to resume her seat, we could not help noticing that her 
dress didn't nearly meet up the back, and that the open space was railed 
across with a lattice-work of stay-lace - like a summer-house.

The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-
table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy, 
but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of 
sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child 
who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody 
seemed to stifle him.
But what principally struck us was a jaded, and unhealthy-looking, though 
by no means plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of 
her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was in such a state of 
ink. And, from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, which were disfigured 
with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really 
seemed to have no article of dress upon her, from a pin upwards, that was 
in its proper condition or its right place.
"You find me, my dears," said Mrs Jellyby, snuffing the two great office 
candles in tin candlesticks which made the room taste strongly of hot 
tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing in the grate but 
ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), "you find me, my dears, as usual, 
very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs 
my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies, and 
with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over 
the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next 
year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families 
cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the 
left bank of the Niger."
As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very gratifying.
"It is gratifying," said Mrs Jellyby. "It involves the devotion of all my 
energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it succeeds; and I 
am more confident of success every day. Do you know, Miss Summerson, I 
almost wonder that you never turned your thoughts to Africa?"
This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me, that I was 
quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate -
"The finest climate in the world!" said Mrs Jellyby.
"Indeed, ma'am?"
"Certainly. With precaution," said Mrs Jellyby.
"You may go into Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go 
into Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with Africa."
I said, "No doubt." - I meant as to Holborn.
"If you would like," said Mrs Jellyby, putting a number of papers towards 
us, "to look over some remarks on that head, and on the general subject 
(which have been extensively circulated), while I finish a letter I am now 
dictating - to my eldest daughter, who is my amanuensis - "
The girl at the table left off biting her pen, and made a return to our 
recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
" - I shall then have finished for the present," proceeded Mrs Jellyby, 
with a sweet smile; "though my work is never done. Where are you, Caddy?"
"'Presents her compliments to Mr Swallow, and begs - '" said Caddy.
"'And begs,'" said Mrs Jellyby, dictating, "'to inform him in reference to 
his letter of inquiry on the African project.' - No, Peepy! Not on any 
account!"
Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, 
who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself, with a strip 
of plaister on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and 
I did not know which to pity most - the bruises or the dirt. Mrs Jellyby 
merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, "Go 
along, you naughty Peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I interrupted 
nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor Peepy as he was going 
out, and to take him up to nurse. He looked very much astonished at it, and 
at Ada's kissing him; but soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at 
longer and longer intervals, until he was quiet. I was so occupied with 
Peepy that I lost the letter in detail, though I derived such a general 
impression from it of the momentous importance of Africa, and the utter 
insignificance of all other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to 
have thought so little about it.
"Six o'clock!" said Mrs Jellyby. "And our dinner hour is nominally (for we 
dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss Summerson their 
rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps? You will excuse me, I 
know, being so much occupied. O, that very bad child! Pray put him down, 
Miss Summerson!"
I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at all 
troublesome; and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada and I had 
two upper rooms, with a door of communication between. They were 
excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window was fastened 
up with a fork.
"You would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said Miss Jellyby, looking 
round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
"If it is not being troublesome," said we.
"O, it's not the trouble," returned Miss Jellyby; "the question is, if 
there is any."
The evening was so very cold, and the rooms had such a marshy smell, that I 
must confess it was a little miserable; and Ada was half crying. We soon 
laughed, however, and were busily unpacking, when Miss Jellyby came back to 
say, that she was sorry there was no hot water; but they couldn't find the 
kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
We begged her not to mention it, and made all the haste we could to get 
down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up to the 
landing outside, to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my bed; and 
our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of noses and 
fingers, in situations of danger between the hinges of the doors. It was 
impossible to shut the door of either room; for my lock, with no knob to 
it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and though the handle of Ada's 
went round and round with the greatest smoothness, it was attended with no 
effect whatever on the door. Therefore I proposed to the children that they 
should come in and be very good at my table, and I would tell them the 
story of little Red Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were 
as quiet as mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the 
appearance of the wolf.
When we went downstairs we found a mug, with "A Present from Tunbridge 
Wells," on it, lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick; and 
a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage, blowing 
the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door with Mrs 
Jellyby's room), and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that degree in short, 
that we all sat coughing and crying with the windows open for half an hour; 
during which Mrs Jellyby, with the same sweetness of temper, directed 
letters about Africa. Her being so employed was, I must say, a great relief 
to me; for Richard told us that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish, and 
that they had found the kettle on his dressing-table; and he made Ada laugh 
so, that they made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner: carefully, by Mrs 
Jellyby's advice; for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient in 
stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine cod-fish, 
a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent 
dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. The 
young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and dropped everything on the 
table wherever it happened to go, and never moved it again until she put it 
on the stairs. The person I had seen in pattens (who I suppose to have been 
the cook), frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there 
appeared to be ill-will between them.
All through dinner; which was long, in consequence of such accidents as the 
dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal scuttle, and the handle of the 
corkscrew coming off, and striking the young woman in the chin; Mrs Jellyby 
preserved the evenness of her disposition. She told us a great deal that 
was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives; and received so many 
letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at 
once. Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committees, or 
resolutions of ladies' meetings, which she read to us; others were 
applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of 
coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest 
daughter from the table three or four times to write. She was full of 
business, and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in spectacles was, 
who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom, in particular) 
after the fish was taken away, and seemed passively to submit himself to 
Borrioboola-Gha, but not to be actively interested in that settlement. As 
he never spoke a word, he might have been a native, but for his complexion. 
It was not until we left the table, and he remained alone with Richard, 
that the possibility of his being Mr Jellyby ever entered my head. But he 
was Mr Jellyby; and a loquacious young man called Mr Quale, with large 
shining knobs for temples, and his hair all brushed to the back of his 
head, who came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also 
informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs Jellyby with Mr 
Jellyby the union of mind and matter.
This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about 
Africa, and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to teach the 
natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export trade, delighted 
in drawing Mrs Jellyby out by saying, "I believe now, Mrs Jellyby, you have 
received as many as from one hundred and fifty to two hundred letters 
respecting Africa in a single day, have you not?" or, "If my memory does 
not deceive me, Mrs Jellyby, you once mentioned that you had sent off five 
thousand circulars from one post-office at one time?" - always repeating 
Mrs Jellyby's answer to us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, 
Mr Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against the wall, as if he were 
subject to low spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his 
mouth when alone with Richard, after dinner, as if he had something on his 
mind; but had always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without 
saying anything.
Mrs Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee all the 
evening, and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She also held a 
discussion with Mr Quale; of which the subject seemed to be - if I 
understood it - the Brotherhood of Humanity; and gave utterance to some 
beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an auditor as I might have 
wished to be, however, for Peepy and the other children came flocking about 
Ada and me in a corner of the drawing-room to ask for another story; so we 
sat down among them, and told them in whispers Puss in Boots and I don't 
know what else, until Mrs Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them 
to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, 
where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of 
the little family like a dragoon, and overturned them into cribs.
After that, I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy, and in 
coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted, to burn; which at last it 
did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that Mrs Jellyby 
looked down upon me rather, for being so frivolous; and I was sorry for it; 
though at the same time I knew that I had no higher pretensions.
It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to bed; and 
even then we left Mrs Jellyby among her papers drinking coffee, and Miss 
Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
"What a strange house!" said Ada, when we got upstairs. "How curious of my 
cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
"My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I want to understand it, and I 
can't understand it at all."
"What?" asked Ada, with her pretty smile.
"All this, my dear," said I. "It must be very good of Mrs Jellyby to take 
such pains about a scheme for the benefit of Natives - and yet - Peepy and 
the housekeeping!"
Ada laughed; and put her arm about my neck, as I stood looking at the fire; 
and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature, and had won her heart. "You 
are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so cheerful! and you do so 
much, so unpretendingly! You would make a home out of even this house."
My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised herself, 
and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she made so much of 
me!
"May I ask you a question?" said I, when we had sat before the fire a 
little while.
"Five hundred," said Ada.
"Your cousin, Mr Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind describing 
him to me?"
Shaking back her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such 
laughing wonder, that I was full of wonder too - partly at her beauty, 
partly at her surprise.
"Esther!" she cried.
"My dear!"
"You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?"
"My dear, I never saw him."
"And I never saw him!" returned Ada.
Well, to be sure!
No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she 
remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of him, 
and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said was to be 
trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her cousin Jarndyce 
had written to her a few months ago, - "a plain, honest letter," Ada said - 
proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on, and telling her that, 
"in time it might heal some of the wounds made by the miserable Chancery 
suit." She had replied, gratefully accepting his proposal. Richard had 
received a similar letter, and had made a similar response. He had seen Mr 
Jarndyce once, but only once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had 
told Ada, when they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I 
found them, that he recollected him as "a bluff, rosy fellow." This was the 
utmost description Ada could give me.
It set me thinking so, that when Ada was asleep, I still remained before 
the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and wondering and 
wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long ago. I don't know 
where my thoughts had wandered, when they were recalled by a tap at the 
door.
I opened it softly, and found Miss Jellyby shivering there, with a broken 
candle in a broken candlestick in one hand, and an eggcup in the other.
"Good night!" she said, very sulkily.
"Good night!" said I.
"May I come in?" she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same sulky 
way.
"Certainly," said I. "Don't wake Miss Clare."
She would not sit down, but stood by the fire, dipping her inky middle 
finger in the eggcup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over the ink 
stains on her face; frowning, the whole time, and looking very gloomy.
"I wish Africa was dead!" she said on a sudden.
I was going to remonstrate.
"I do!" she said. "Don't talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and detest 
it. It's a beast!"
I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her head, and 
touched her forehead, and said it was hot now, but would be cool tomorrow. 
She still stood, pouting and frowning at me; but presently put down her 
eggcup, and turned softly towards the bed where Ada lay.
"She is very pretty!" she said, with the same knitted brow, and in the same 
uncivil manner.
I assented with a smile.
"An orphan. Ain't she?"
"Yes."
But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and sing? She 
can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes, and needlework, 
and every thing?"
"No doubt," said I.
"I can't," she returned. "I can't do anything hardly, except write. I'm 
always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of yourselves to 
come in this afternoon, and see me able to do nothing else. It was like 
your ill-nature. Yet you think yourselves very fine, I dare say!"
I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my chair 
without speaking, and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt towards 
her.
"It's disgraceful," she said. "You know it is. The whole house is 
disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I'm disgraceful. Pa's miserable, 
and no wonder! Priscilla drinks - she's always drinking. It's a great shame 
and great story of you, if you say you didn't smell her today. It was as 
bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; you know it was!"
"My dear, I don't know it," said I.
"You do," she said, very shortly. "You shan't say you don't. You do!"
"O, my dear!" said I, "if you won't let me speak - "
"You're speaking now. You know you are. Don't tell stories, Miss 
Summerson."
"My dear," said I, "as long as you won't hear me out - "
"I don't want to hear you out."
"O yes, I think you do," said I, "because that would be so very 
unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me, because the servant did not 
come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt what you tell me, and I am sorry 
to hear it."
"You needn't make a merit of that," said she.
"No, my dear," said I. "That would be very foolish."
She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still with the 
same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came softly back, 
and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving in a distressful 
manner that I greatly pitied; but I thought it better not to speak.
"I wish I was dead!" she broke out. "I wish we were all dead. It would be a 
great deal better for us."
In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground, at my side, hid her face 
in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I comforted her, and 
would have raised her, but she cried, No, no; she wanted to stay there!
"You used to teach girls," she said. "If you could only have taught me, I 
could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like you so 
much!"
I could not persuade her to sit by me, or to do anything but move a ragged 
stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold my dress in 
the same manner. By degrees, the poor tired girl fell asleep; and then I 
contrived to raise her head, so that it should rest on my lap, and to cover 
us both with shawls. The fire went out, and all night long she slumbered 
thus, before the ashy grate. At first I was painfully awake, and vainly 
tried to lose myself, with my eyes closed, among the scenes of the day. At 
length, by slow degrees, they became indistinct and mingled. I began to 
lose the identity of the sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada: now, one of 
my old Reading friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently 
parted. Now, it was the little mad woman worn out with curtseying and 
smiling; now, some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, 
and I was no one.
The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog, when I opened my eyes 
to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me. Peepy had 
scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold 
that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them all.


Chapter 5

A Morning Adventure

Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed heavy - I 
say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt, that they would 
have made Midsummer sunshine dim - I was sufficiently forewarned of the 
discomfort within doors at that early hour, and sufficiently curious about 
London, to think it a good idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she 
proposed that we should go out for a walk.
"Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a chance if 
breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so. As to Pa, he gets 
what he can, and goes to the office. He never has what you would call a 
regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the loaf and some milk, when 
there is any, over night. Sometimes there isn't any milk, and sometimes the 
cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you must be tired, Miss Summerson; and 
perhaps you would rather go to bed."
"I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to go 
out."
"If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my things on."
Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to Peepy, 
in default of being able to do anything better for him, that he should let 
me wash him, and afterwards lay him down on my bed again. To this he 
submitted with the best grace possible; staring at me during the whole 
operation, as if he never had been, and never could again be, so astonished 
in his life - looking very miserable also, certainly, but making no 
complaint, and going snugly to sleep as soon as it was over. At first I was 
in two minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody 
in the house was likely to notice it.
What with the bustle of despatching Peepy, and the bustle of getting myself 
ready, and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found Miss Jellyby 
trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room, which Priscilla was 
then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick - throwing the candle in to 
make it burn better. Everything was just as we had left it last night, and 
was evidently intended to remain so. Below stairs the dinner-cloth had not 
been taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and 
waste paper were all over the house. Some pewter-pots and a milk-can hung 
on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met the cook round the 
corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as 
she passed us, that she had been to see what o'clock it was.
But before we met the cook we met Richard, who was dancing up and down 
Thavies' Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see us 
stirring so soon, and said he would gladly share our walk. So he took care 
of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention that Miss Jellyby 
had relapsed into her sulky manner, and that I really should not have 
thought she liked me much, unless she had told me so.
"Where would you wish to go?" she asked.
"Anywhere, my dear," I replied.
"Anywhere's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
"Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.
She then walked me on very fast.
"I don't care!" she said. "Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I 
don't care - but if he was to come to our house with his great shining 
lumpy forehead, night after night, till he was as old as Methuselah, I 
wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such Asses as he and Ma make of 
themselves!"
"My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet, and the vigorous 
emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. "Your duty as a child - "
"O! don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty as a 
parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then let the 
public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their affair than 
mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I shocked too; so we 
are both shocked, and there's an end of it!"
She walked me on faster yet.
"But for all that, I say again he may come, and come, and come, and I won't 
have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any stuff in the 
world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma talk. I wonder the 
very paving stones opposite our house can have the patience to stay there, 
and be a witness of such inconsistencies and contradictions as all that 
sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!"
I could not but understand her to refer to Mr Quale, the young gentleman 
who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the disagreeable 
necessity of pursuing the subject, by Richard and Ada coming up at a round 
pace, laughing, and asking us if we meant to run a race? Thus interrupted, 
Miss Jellyby became silent, and walked moodily on at my side; while I 
admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of 
people already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and 
repassing, the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and 
the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags, 
secretly groping among the sweep-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
"So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada, behind me, "we are 
never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to our place of 
meeting yesterday, and - by the Great Seal, here's the old lady again!"
Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtseying, and smiling, 
and saying, with her yesterday's air of patronage:
"The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"
"You are out early, ma'am," said I, as she curtseyed to me.
"Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the Court sits. It's retired. I 
collect my thoughts here for the business of the day," said the old lady, 
mincingly. "The business of the day requires a great deal of thought. 
Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to follow."
"Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm 
tighter through her own.
The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for 
herself directly.
"A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend court 
regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing another of 
the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the old lady, recovering herself, 
with her head on one side, from a very low curtsey.
Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday, good-
naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the suit.
"Ha!" said the old lady. "She does not expect a judgment? She will still 
grow old. But not so old. O dear, no! This is the garden of Lincoln's Inn. 
I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the summer-time. Where the 
birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater part of the long vacation here. 
In contemplation. You find the long vacation exceedingly long, don't you?"
We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
"When the leaves are falling from the trees, and there are no more flowers 
in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's court," said 
the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled; and the sixth seal, mentioned in 
the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see my lodging. It will be a 
good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and beauty, are very seldom there. It is 
a long long time since I had a visit from either."
She had taken my hand, and, leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned 
Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself, and 
looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious, and all 
in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she continued to 
lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow; our strange conductress 
informing us all the time, with much smiling condescension, that she lived 
close by.
It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by, that we had 
not time to have done humouring her for a few moments, before she was at 
home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady stopped most 
unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and lanes 
immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, "This is my lodging. 
Pray walk up!"
She had stopped at a shop, over which was written, Krook, Rag and Bottle 
Warehouse. Also, in long thin letters, Krook, Dealer in Marine Stores. In 
one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill, at which a cart 
was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In another, was the 
inscription, Bones Bought. In another, Kitchen-Stuff Bought. In another, 
Old Iron Bought. In another, Waste Paper Bought. In another, Ladies' and 
Gentlemen's Wardrobes Bought. Everything seemed to be bought, and nothing 
to be sold there. In all parts of the window were quantities of dirty 
bottles: blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water 
bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles: I am reminded by 
mentioning the latter, that the shop had, in several little particulars, 
the air of being in a legal neighbourhood, and of being as it were a dirty 
hanger-on and disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink 
bottles. There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes, outside 
the door, labelled "Law Books, all at 9d." Some of the inscriptions I have 
enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen in Kenge 
and Carboy's office, and the letters I had so long received from the firm. 
Among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to do with the 
business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable man aged forty-five 
wanted engrossing or copying to execute with neatness and despatch: Address 
to Nemo, care of Mr Krook within. There were several second-hand bags, blue 
and red, hanging up. A little way within the shop door, lay heaps of old 
crackled parchment scrolls, and discoloured and dog's eared law-papers. I 
could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been 
hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors of rooms 
or strong chests in lawyers' offices. The litter of rags tumbled partly 
into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale, hanging without any 
counterpoise from a beam, might have been counsellors' bands and gowns torn 
up. One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all 
stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked 
very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides by the 
wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a couple of yards, we 
should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern that an old man in 
spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the shop. Turning towards 
the door, he now caught sight of us. He was short, cadaverous, and 
withered; with his head sunk sideways between his shoulders, and the breath 
issuing in visible smoke from his mouth, as if he were on fire within. His 
throat, chin, and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs, and so gnarled 
with veins and puckered skin, that he looked from his breast upward, like 
some old root in a fall of snow.
"Hi hi!" said the old man coming to the door. "Have you anything to sell?"
We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been trying 
to open the house door with a key she had taken from her pocket, and to 
whom Richard now said, that, as we had had the pleasure of seeing where she 
lived, we would leave her, being pressed for time. But she was not to be so 
easily left. She became so fantastically and pressingly earnest in her 
entreaties that we would walk up and see her apartment for an instant; and 
was so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good 
omen she desired; that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it 
but to comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; - at any rate, 
when the old man added his persuasions to hers, and said, "Ay, ay! Please 
her! It won't take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the shop, if 
t'other door's out of order!" We all went in, stimulated by Richard's 
laughing encouragement, and relying on his protection.
"My landlord, Krook," said the little old lady, condescending to him from 
her lofty station, as she presented him to us. "He is called among the 
neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of Chancery. 
He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh, I assure you he is very 
odd!"
She shook her head a great many times, and tapped her forehead with her 
finger, to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse him. "For 
he is a little - you know! - M -!" said the old lady, with great 
stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.
"It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern, "that they 
call me the Lord Chancellor, and call my shop Chancery. And why do you 
think they call me the Lord Chancellor, and my shop Chancery?"
"I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard, rather carelessly.
"You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they - Hi! Here's 
lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but none so 
beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!"
"That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving of his 
having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand. "You can admire 
as the rest of us do, without taking that liberty."
The old man darted at him a sudden look, which even called my attention 
from Ada, who startled and blushing, was so remarkably beautiful that she 
seemed to fix the wandering attention of the little old lady herself. But 
as Ada interposed, and laughingly said she could only feel proud of such 
genuine admiration, Mr Krook shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he 
had leaped out of it.
"You see I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the lantern, 
"of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but they know nothing), 
wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's why they have given me 
and my place a christening. And I have so many old parchmentses and papers 
in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs. And all's 
fish that comes to my net. And I can't abear to part with anything I once 
lay hold of (or so my neighbours think, but what do they know?) or to alter 
anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor 
repairing going on about me. That's the way I've got the ill name of 
Chancery. I don't mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty 
well every day, when he sits in the Inn. He don't notice me, but I notice 
him. There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi, 
Lady Jane!"
A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder, and 
startled us all.
"Hi! show 'em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!" said her master.
The cat leaped down, and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish 
claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.
"She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old man. "I 
deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was offered to me. 
It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn't have it stripped off! 
That warn't like Chancery practice though, says you!"
He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in the 
back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his hand upon 
the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him before passing 
out:
"That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are tiresome. My young friends are 
pressed for time. I have none to spare myself, having to attend court very 
soon. My young friends are the wards in Jarndyce."
"Jarndyce!" said the old man with a start.
"Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook," returned his lodger.
"Hi!" exclaimed the old man, in a tone of thoughtful amazement, and with a 
wider stare than before, "Think of it!"
He seemed so rapt all in a moment, and looked so curiously at us, that 
Richard said:
"Why you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about the causes before 
your noble and learned brother, the other Chancellor!"
"Yes," said the old man, abstractedly, "Sure! Your name now will be - "
"Richard Carstone."
"Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his forefinger; 
and each of the others he went on to mention, upon a separate finger. "Yes. 
There was the name of Barbary, and the name of Clare, and the name of 
Dedlock, too, I think."
"He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!" said 
Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
"Ay!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. "Yes! Tom 
Jarndyce - you'll excuse me, being related; but he was never known about 
court by any other name, and was as well known there, as - she is now;" 
nodding slightly at his lodger; "Tom Jarndyce was often in here. He got 
into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause was on, or 
expected, talking to the little shop-keepers, and telling 'em to keep out 
of Chancery, whatever they did. 'For,' says he, 'it's being ground to bits 
in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to 
death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by 
grains.' He was as near making away with himself, just where the young lady 
stands, as near could be."
We listened with horror.
"He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an imaginary 
track along the shop, "on the day he did it - the whole neighbourhood had 
said for months before, that he would do it, of a certainty sooner or later 
- he come in at the door that day, and walked along there, and sat himself 
on a bench that stood there, and asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal 
sight younger then) to fetch him a pint of wine. 'For,' says he, 'Krook, I 
am much depressed; my cause is on again, and I think I'm nearer judgment 
than I ever was.' I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him 
to go to the tavern over the way there, t'other side my lane (I mean 
Chancery Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him, 
comfortable as I thought, in the armchair by the fire, and company with 
him. I hadn't hardly got back here, when I heard a shot go echoing and 
rattling right away into the inn. I ran out - neighbours ran out - twenty 
of us cried at once, Tom Jarndyce!'"
The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern, blew 
the light out, and shut the lantern up.
"We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure, how the 
neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the cause was on! How 
my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of 'em, grubbed and muddled 
away as usual, and tried to look as if they hadn't heard a word of the last 
fact in the case; or as if they had - O dear me! nothing at all to do with 
it, if they had heard of it by any chance!"
Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less pale. Nor 
could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no party in the 
suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh, it was a shock to come into the 
inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the minds of many people 
with such dreadful recollections. I had another uneasiness, in the 
application of the painful story to the poor half-witted creature who had 
brought us there; but, to my surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of 
that, and only led the way upstairs again; informing us, with the 
toleration of a superior creature for the infirmities of a common mortal, 
that her landlord was "a little - M - , you know!"
She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which she 
had a glimpse of the roof of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This seemed to have been 
her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there. 
She could look at it, she said, in the night; especially in the moonshine. 
Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the scantiest 
necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from books, of 
Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and some half-dozen 
reticules and work-bags, "containing documents," as she informed us. There 
were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of 
clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a shelf in an open cupboard 
were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth; but all dry and empty. 
There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched appearance, I thought, as 
I looked round, than I had understood before.
"Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess, with the greatest 
suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very much indebted 
for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I am limited as to 
situation. In consequence of the necessity of attending on the Chancellor. 
I have lived here many years. I pass my days in court; my evenings and my 
nights here. I find the nights long, for I sleep but little, and think 
much. That is, of course, unavoidable; being in Chancery. I am sorry I 
cannot offer chocolate. I expect a judgment shortly, and shall then place 
my establishment on a superior footing. At present, I don't mind confessing 
to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence), that I sometimes find it 
difficult to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I 
have felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse 
the introduction of such mean topics."
She partly drew aside the curtain of the long low garret-window, and called 
our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there: some containing 
several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches - I should think 
at least twenty.
"I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object that the 
wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to 
liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, 
though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with 
Chancery proceedings, that, one by one, the whole collection has died over 
and over again. I doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though they are 
all young, will live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"
Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a 
reply; but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so, when no one 
but herself was present.
"Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure you, 
whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or Great Seal 
prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and senseless here, as I 
have found so many birds!"
Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took the 
opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the chimney-
piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine the birds.
"I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for (you'll 
think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that they are 
singing, while I am following the arguments in court. And my mind requires 
to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I'll tell you their names. Not 
at present. On a day of such good omen, they shall sing as much as they 
like. In honour of youth," a smile and curtsey; "hope," a smile and 
curtsey; and "beauty," a smile and curtsey. "There! We'll let in the full 
light."
The birds began to stir and chirp.
"I cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady; the room was 
close, and would have been the better for it; "because the cat you saw 
downstairs - called Lady Jane - is greedy for their lives. She crouches on 
the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have discovered," whispering 
mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is sharpened by a jealous fear of 
their regaining their liberty. In consequence of the judgement I expect 
being shortly given. She is sly, and full of malice. I half believe, 
sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old saying. It is so 
very difficult to keep her from the door."
Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was half-past 
nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an end, than we 
could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly took up her little bag 
of documents, which she had laid upon the table on coming in, and asked if 
we were also going into court? On our answering no, and that we would on no 
account detain her, she opened the door to attend us downstairs.
"With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I should be 
there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he might mention my 
case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he will mention it the 
first thing this morning."
She stopped to tell us, in a whisper, as we were going down, that the whole 
house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had bought 
piecemeal, and had no wish to sell - in consequence of being a little - M - 
. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous stoppage on the 
second floor, and had silently pointed at a dark door there.
"The only other lodger," she now whispered, in explanation; "a law-writer. 
The children in the lanes here, say he has sold himself to the devil. I 
don't know what he can have done with the money. Hush!"
She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her, even there; and 
repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe, as though even the sound of her 
footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.
Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it on our 
way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of waste paper, 
in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working hard, with the 
perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece of chalk by him; 
with which, as he put each separate package or bundle down, he made a 
crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.
Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady, had gone by 
him, and I was going, when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and chalked 
the letter J upon the wall - in a very curious manner, beginning with the 
end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was a capital letter, not a 
printed one, but just such a letter as any clerk in Messrs. Kenge and 
Carboy's office would have made.
"Can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance.
"Surely," said I. "It's very plain."
"What is it?"
"J."
With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out, and 
turned an a in its place (not a capital letter this time), and said, 
"What's that?"
I told him. He then rubbed that out, and turned the letter r, and asked me 
the same question. He went on quickly, until he had formed, in the same 
curious and bottoms of the letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving 
two letters on the wall together.
"What does that spell?" he asked me.
When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same 
rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters 
forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also read; 
and he laughed again.
"Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk, "I have a turn for copying 
from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor write."
He looked so disagreeable, and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if I 
were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite relieved by 
Richard's appearing at the door and saying:
"Miss Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair. 
Don't be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr Krook!"
I lost no time in wishing Mr Krook good morning, and joining my friends 
outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave us her blessing 
with great ceremony, and renewed her assurance of yesterday in reference to 
her intention of settling estates on Ada and me. Before we finally turned 
out of those lanes, we looked back, and saw Mr Krook standing at his shop 
door, in his spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, 
and her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap, like a tall feather.
"Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard, with a sigh. 
"Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery!"
"It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned Ada. "I am 
grieved that I should be the enemy - as I suppose I am - of a great number 
of relations and others; and that they should be my enemies - as I suppose 
they are; and that we should all be ruining one another, without knowing 
how or why, and be in constant doubt and discord all our lives. It seems 
very strange, as there must be right somewhere, that an honest judge in 
real earnest has not been able to find out through all these years where it 
is."
"Ah, cousin!" said Richard. "Strange indeed! all this wasteful wanton chess-
playing is very strange. To see that composed court yesterday jogging on so 
serenely, and to think of the wretchedness of the pieces on the board, gave 
me the headache and the heartache both together. My head ached with 
wondering how it happened, if men were neither fools nor rascals; and my 
heart ached to think they could possibly be either. But at all events, Ada -
 I may call you Ada?"
"Of course you may, cousin Richard."
"At all events, Ada, Chancery will work none of its bad influence on us. We 
have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman, and it 
can't divide us now!"
"Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada, gently.
Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze, and me a very significant look. I 
smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very pleasantly.
In half-an-hour after our arrival, Mrs Jellyby appeared; and in the course 
of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast straggled one by one 
into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs Jellyby had gone to bed, and 
got up in the usual manner, but she presented no appearance of having 
changed her dress. She was greatly occupied during breakfast; for the 
morning's post brought a heavy correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, 
which would occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day. The children 
tumbled about, and notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, 
which were perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an 
hour and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The 
equable manner in which Mrs Jellyby sustained both his absence, and his 
restoration to the family circle, surprised us all.
She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was fast 
relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At one o'clock 
an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our luggage. Mrs Jellyby 
charged us with many remembrances to her good friend, Mr Jarndyce; Caddy 
left her desk to see us depart, kissed me in the passage, and stood, biting 
her pen, and sobbing on the steps; Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep, 
and spared the pain of separation (I was not without misgivings that he had 
gone to Newgate market in search of me); and all the other children got up 
behind the barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, 
scattered over the surface of Thavies' Inn, as we rolled out of its 
precincts.


Chapter 6

Quite At Home.

The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went westward. 
We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air, wondering more and 
more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy of the shops, the great 
traffic, and the crowds of people whom the pleasanter weather seemed to 
have brought out like many-coloured flowers. By-and-by we began to leave 
the wonderful city, and to proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, 
would have made a pretty large town, in my eyes; and at last we got into a 
real country road again, with windmills, rickyards, milestones, farmers' 
waggons, scents of old hay, swinging signs and horse troughs: trees, 
fields, and hedgerows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before 
us, and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon, with a train of 
beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells, 
came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the 
bells, so cheerful were the influences around.
"The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington," said 
Richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! what's the 
matter?"
We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as the 
horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except when a 
horse tossed his head or shook himself, and sprinkled off a little shower 
of bell-ringing.
"Our postilion is looking after the waggoner," said Richard; "and the 
waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!" The waggoner was at 
our coachdoor. "Why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added Richard, looking 
closely at the man. "He's got your name, Ada, in his hat!"
He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band, were three small 
notes; one, addressed to Ada; one, to Richard; one, to me. These the 
waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name aloud 
first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he briefly 
answered, "Master, sir, if you please;" and, putting on his hat again 
(which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, reawakened his music, and 
went melodiously away.
"Is that Mr Jarndyce's waggon?" said Richard, calling to our postboy.
"Yes, sir," he replied. "Going to London."
We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other, and contained 
these words, in a solid, plain hand.

I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily, and without constraint on 
either side. I therefore have to propose that we meet as old friends, and 
take the past for granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me 
certainly, and so my love to you.
John Jarndyce.

I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my companions, 
having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one who had been my 
benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many years. I had not 
considered how I could thank him, my gratitude lying too deep in my heart 
for that; but I now began to consider how I could meet him without thanking 
him, and felt it would be very difficult indeed.
The notes revived, in Richard and Ada, a general impression that they both 
had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their cousin Jarndyce 
could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness 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 
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 postboy, who had for a long time sympathised 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 open door, and the 
smoking and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickening 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 stage-coach, 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 
loveable, 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.
"O 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."
"Ay?" 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-Hindoo 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 by whom or when. From 
these, you came on Richard's room, which was part library, part sitting-
room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound of many rooms. 
Out of that, you went straight, with a little interval of passage, to the 
plain room where Mr Jarndyce slept, all the year round, with his window 
open, his bedstead without any furniture standing in the middle of the 
floor for more air, and his cold-bath gaping for him in a smaller room 
adjoining. Out of that, you came into another passage, where there were 
backstairs, and where you could hear the horses being rubbed down, outside 
the stable, and being told to Hold up, and Get over, as they slipped about 
very much on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another 
door (every room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall 
again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back 
there, or had ever got out of it.
The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as 
pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers - in chintz and 
paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff courtly 
chairs, which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool for greater 
state, on either side of the fireplace. Our sitting-room was green; and 
had, framed and glazed, upon the walls, numbers of surprising and surprised 
birds, staring out of pictures at a real trout in a case, as brown and 
shining as if it had been served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; 
and at the whole process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese 
artists. In my room there were oval engravings of the months - ladies hay-
making, in short waists, and large hats tied under the chin, for June - 
smooth-legged noblemen, pointing, with cocked hats, to village-steeples, 
for October. Half-length portraits, in crayons, abounded all through the 
house; but were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer 
of mine in the china-closet, and the grey old age of my pretty young bride, 
with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast room. As substitutes, I had 
four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a complacent gentleman to 
heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework, 
representing fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the moveables, from the 
wardrobes to the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the 
pincushions and scent-bottles on the dressing-tables, displayed the same 
quaint variety. They agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their 
display of the whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the 
existence of a drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities 
of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows, 
softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the 
starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its 
hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with the face 
of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and just wind enough 
without to sound a low accompaniment to everything we heard; were our first 
impressions of Bleak House.
"I am glad you like it," said Mr Jarndyce, when he had brought us round 
again to Ada's sitting-room. "It makes no pretensions; but it is a 
comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such bright 
young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner. There's no 
one here but the finest creature upon earth - a child."
"More children, Esther!" said Ada.
"I don't mean literally a child," pursued Mr Jarndyce; "not a child in 
years. He is grown up - he is at least as old as I am - but in simplicity, 
and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all 
worldly affairs, he is a perfect child."
We felt that he must be very interesting.
"He knows Mrs Jellyby," said Mr Jarndyce. "He is a musical man; an Amateur, 
but might have been a Professional. He is an Artist, too; an Amateur, but 
might have been a Professional. He is a man of attainments and of 
captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and 
unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his family; but he don't 
care - he's a child!"
"Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired Richard.
"Yes. Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Near a dozen, I should think. But he has 
never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look after 
him. He is a child, you know!" said Mr Jarndyce.
"And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired 
Richard.
"Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr Jarndyce: his countenance suddenly 
falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, 
but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have tumbled up somehow or 
other. - The wind's getting round again, I am afraid. I feel it rather!"
Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.
"It is exposed," said Mr Jarndyce. "No doubt that's the cause. Bleak House 
has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!"
Our luggage having arrived, and being all at hand, I was dressed in a few 
minutes, and engaged in putting my worldly goods away, when a maid (not the 
one in attendance upon Ada, but another whom I had not seen) brought a 
basket into my room, with two bunches of keys in it, all labelled.
"For you, miss, if you please," said she.
"For me?" said I.
"The housekeeping keys, miss."
I showed my surprise; for she added, with some little surprise on her own 
part: "I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss. Miss 
Summerson, if I don't deceive myself?"
"Yes," said I. "That is my name."
"The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the cellars, 
miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint tomorrow morning, I was to show 
you the presses and things they belong to."
I said I would be ready at half-past six: and, after she was gone, stood 
looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust. Ada found 
me thus; and had such a delightful confidence in me when I showed her the 
keys and told her about them, that it would have been insensibility and 
ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be sure, that it was the 
dear girl's kindness; but I liked to be so pleasantly cheated.
When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr Skimpole, who was standing 
before the fire, telling Richard how fond he used to be, in his school-
time, of football. He was a little bright creature, with a rather large 
head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm 
in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous, and was said 
with such a captivating gaiety, that it was fascinating to hear him talk. 
Being of a more slender figure than Mr Jarndyce, and having a richer 
complexion, with browner hair, he looked younger. Indeed, he had more the 
appearance, in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a well-preserved 
elderly one. There was an easy negligence in his manner, and even in his 
dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and 
flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own portraits), which I could 
not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some 
unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like the 
manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life, by the usual road 
of years, cares, and experiences.
I gathered from the conversation, that Mr Skimpole had been educated for 
the medical profession, and had once lived in his professional capacity, in 
the household of a German prince. He told us, however, that as he had 
always been a mere child in point of weights and measures, and had never 
known anything about them (except that they disgusted him), he had never 
been able to prescribe with the requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he 
said, he had no head for detail. And he told us, with great humour, that 
when he was wanted to bleed the prince, or physic any of his people, he was 
generally found lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers, or making 
fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. The prince, at last, objecting 
to this, "in which," said Mr Skimpole, in the frankest manner, "he was 
perfectly right," the engagement terminated, and Mr Skimpole having (as he 
added with delightful gaiety) "nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, 
and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks." His good friend 
Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker or 
slower succession, to several openings in life; but to no purpose, for he 
must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that 
he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In 
consequence of which, he never kept an appointment, never could transact 
any business, and never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on 
in life, and here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond 
of making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of 
art. All he asked of society was, to let him live. That wasn't much. His 
wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, 
landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little 
claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he 
didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, "Go your several ways in 
peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn-sleeves, put pens behind your ears, 
wear aprons; go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you 
prefer; only - let Harold Skimpole live!
All this, and a great deal more, he told us, not only with the utmost 
brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious candour - speaking 
of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if Skimpole were a 
third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singularities, but still 
had his claims too, which were the general business of the community, and 
must not be slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at 
that early time, in endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with 
anything I had thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which 
I am far from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he 
was free of them. That he was free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so 
very clear about it himself.
"I covet nothing," said Mr Skimpole, in the same light way. "Possession is 
nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent house. I feel obliged 
to him for possessing it. I can sketch it, and alter it. I can set it to 
music. When I am here, I have sufficient possession of it, and have neither 
trouble, cost, nor responsibility. My steward's name, in short, is 
Jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. We have been mentioning Mrs Jellyby. There 
is a bright-eyed woman, of a strong will and immense power of business-
detail, who throws herself into objects with surprising ardour! I don't 
regret that I have not a strong will and an immense power of business-
detail, to throw myself into objects with surprising ardour. I can admire 
her without envy. I can sympathise with the objects. I can dream of them. I 
can lie down on the grass - in fine weather - and float along an African 
river, embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence, 
and sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately, as if I 
were there. I don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but it's 
all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for Heaven's sake, having 
Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an 
agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to let him live and 
admire the human family, do it somehow or other, like good souls, and 
suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!"
It was plain enough that Mr Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the 
adjuration. Mr Skimpole's general position there would have rendered it so, 
without the addition of what he presently said.
"It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr Skimpole, 
addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I envy you your 
power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel in, myself. I don't 
feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to be 
grateful to me, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of 
generosity. I know you like it. For anything I can tell, I may have come 
into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of 
happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by sometimes 
giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities. Why 
should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it 
leads to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it therefore."
Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what they 
expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr Jarndyce than this. I 
had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether it was really 
singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was probably the most 
grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should so desire to escape the 
gratitude of others.
We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging 
qualities of Ada and Richard, that Mr Skimpole, seeing them for the first 
time, should be so unreserved, and should lay himself out to be exquisitely 
agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were naturally pleased for similar 
reasons, and considered it no common privilege to be so freely confided in 
by such an attractive man. The more we listened, the more gaily Mr Skimpole 
talked. And what with his fine hilarious manner, and his engaging candour, 
and his genial way of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he 
had said, "I am a child, you know! You are designing people compared with 
me;" (he really made me consider myself in that light); "but I'm gay and 
innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!" - the effect was 
absolutely dazzling.
He was so full of feeling too, and had such a delicate sentiment for what 
was beautiful or tender, that he could have won a heart by that alone. In 
the evening, when I was preparing to make tea, and Ada was touching the 
piano in the adjoining room, and softly humming a tune to her cousin 
Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat down on the 
sofa near me, and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved him.
"She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those blue 
eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheeks she is like the summer morning. 
The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely 
young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the 
child of the universe."
Mr Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us, with his hands behind him, and 
an attentive smile upon his face.
"The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I am 
afraid."
"O! I don't know!" cried Mr Skimpole, buoyantly.
"I think I do know!" said Mr Jarndyce.
"Well!" cried Mr Skimpole, "you know the world (which in your sense is the 
universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your way. But if I 
had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no brambles of sordid 
realities in such a path as that. It should be strewn with roses; it should 
lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but 
perpetual summer. Age or change should never wither it. The base word money 
should never be breathed near it!"
Mr Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been really a 
child; and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment, glanced at the 
young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a benignant expression in 
it which I often (how often!) saw again: which has been long engraven on my 
heart. The room in which they were, communicating with that in which he 
stood, was only lighted by the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood 
beside her, bending down. Upon the wall their shadows blended together, 
surrounded by strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the 
unsteady fire, though reflected from motionless objects. Ada touched the 
notes so softly, and sang so low, that the wind, sighing away to the 
distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future, and 
the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present, seemed 
expressed in the whole picture.
But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I recall 
the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast, in respect 
of meaning and intention, between the silent look directed that way, and 
the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though Mr Jarndyce's 
glance, as he withdrew it, rested for but a moment on me, I felt as if, in 
that moment, he confided to me - and knew that he confided to me, and that 
I received the confidence - his hope that Ada and Richard might one day 
enter on a dearer relationship.
Mr Skimpole could play on the piano, and the violoncello; and he was a 
composer - had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it - and 
played what he composed, with taste. After tea we had quite a little 
concert, in which Richard - who was enthralled by Ada's singing, and told 
me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were written - and Mr 
Jarndyce, and I, were the audience. After a little while I missed, first Mr 
Skimpole, and afterwards Richard; and while I was thinking how could 
Richard stay away so long, and lose so much, the maid who had given me the 
keys looked in at the door, saying, "If you please, miss, could you spare a 
minute?"
When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her hands, 
"Oh if you please, miss, Mr Carstone says would you come upstairs to Mr 
Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!"
"Took?" said I.
"Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.
I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind; but of 
course, I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one; and collected 
myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to consider what 
were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove to be a fit. She 
threw open a door, and I went into a chamber; where, to my unspeakable 
surprise, instead of finding Mr Skimpole stretched upon the bed, or 
prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before the fire, smiling at 
Richard, while Richard, with a face of great embarrassment, looked at a 
person on a sofa, in a white great coat, with smooth hair upon his head, 
and not much of it, which he was wiping smoother, and making less of, with 
a pocket-handkerchief.
"Miss Summerson," said Richard, hurriedly, "I am glad you are come. You 
will be able to advise us. Our friend, Mr Skimpole - don't be alarmed! - is 
arrested for debt."
"And, really, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mr Skimpole, with his agreeable 
candour, "I never was in a situation, in which that excellent sense, and 
quiet habit of method and usefulness, which anybody must observe in you who 
has the happiness of being a quarter of an hour in your society, was more 
needed."
The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave such 
a very loud snort, that he startled me.
"Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr Skimpole.
"My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I don't 
know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and half-pence, I think, were mentioned."
"It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," observed the 
stranger. "That's wot it is."
"And it sounds - somehow it sounds," said Mr Skimpole, "like a small sum."
The strange man said nothing, but made another snort. It was such a 
powerful one, that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.
"Mr Skimpole," said Richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my cousin 
Jarndyce, because he has lately - I think, sir, I understood you that you 
had lately - "
"Oh, yes!" returned Mr Skimpole, smiling. "Though I forgot how much it was, 
and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again; but I have the epicure-
like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help; that I would rather," 
and he looked at Richard and me, "develop generosity in a new soil, and in 
a new form of flower."
"What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson!" said Richard, aside.
I ventured to inquire generally, before replying, what would happen if the 
money were not produced.
"Jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into his hat, 
which was on the floor at his feet. "Or Coavinses."
"May I ask, sir, what is - "
"Coavinses?" said the strange man. "A 'ouse."
Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular thing 
that the arrest was our embarrassment, and not Mr Skimpole's. He observed 
us with a genial interest; but there seemed, if I may venture on such a 
contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had entirely washed his hands of 
the difficulty, and it had become ours.
"I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that being 
parties in a chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large amount of 
property, Mr Richard, or his beautiful cousin, or both, could sign 
something, or make over something, or give some sort of undertaking, or 
pledge, or bond? I don't know what the business name of it may be, but I 
suppose there is some instrument within their power that would settle 
this?"
"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
"Really?" returned Mr Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who is no 
judge of these things!"
"Odd or even," said the stranger, gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on it!"
"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr Skimpole gently 
reasoned with him, as he made a little drawing of his head on the flyleaf 
of a book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can separate you from 
your office; we can separate the individual from the pursuit. We are not so 
prejudiced as to suppose that in private life you are otherwise than a very 
estimable man, with a great deal of poetry in your nature, of which you may 
not be conscious."
The stranger only answered with another violent snort; whether in 
acceptance of the poetry-tribute, or in disdainful rejection of it, he did 
not express to me.
"Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr Richard," said Mr Skimpole, 
gaily, innocently, and confidingly, as he looked at his drawing with his 
head on one side; "here you see me utterly incapable of helping myself, and 
entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. 
Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the 
butterflies!"
"My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard, in a whisper, "I have ten pounds 
that I have received from Mr Kenge. I must try what that will do."
I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my 
quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that some 
accident might happen which would throw me, suddenly, without any relation 
or any property, on the world; and had always tried to keep some little 
money by me, that I might not be quite penniless. I told Richard of my 
having this little store, and having no present need of it; and I asked him 
delicately to inform Mr Skimpole, while I should be gone to fetch it, that 
we would have the pleasure of paying his debt.
When I came back, Mr Skimpole kissed my hand, and seemed quite touched. Not 
on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing and extraordinary 
contradiction), but on ours; as if personal considerations were impossible 
with him, and the contemplation of our happiness alone affected him. 
Richard, begging me, for the greater grace of the transaction, as he said, 
to settle with Coavinses (as Mr Skimpole now jocularly called him), I 
counted out the money and received the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, 
delighted Mr Skimpole.
His compliments were so delicately administered, that I blushed less than I 
might have done; and settled with the stranger in the white coat, without 
making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket, and shortly said, 
"Well, then, I'll wish you a good evening, miss."
"My friend," said Mr Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire, after 
giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like to ask you 
something, without offence."
I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"
"Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this errand?" 
said Mr Skimpole.
"Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea time." said Coavinses.
"It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"
"Not a bit," said Coavinses. "I know'd if you wos missed today, you 
wouldn't be missed tomorrow. A day makes no such odds."
"But when you came down here," proceeded Mr Skimpole, "it was a fine day. 
The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and shadows were 
passing across the fields, the birds were singing."
"Nobody said they warn't, in my hearing," returned Coavinses.
"No," observed Mr Skimpole. "But what did you think upon the road?"
"Wot do you mean?" growled Coavinses, with an appearance of strong 
resentment. "Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to get for it, 
without thinking. Thinking!" (with profound contempt).
"Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr Skimpole, "to this 
effect. 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine; loves to hear the wind 
blow; loves to watch the changing lights and shadows; loves to hear the 
birds, those choristers in Nature's great cathedral. And does it seem to me 
that I am about to deprive Harold Skimpole of his share in such 
possessions, which are his only birthright!' You thought nothing to that 
effect?"
"I - certainly - did - not," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly 
renouncing the idea was of that intense kind, that he could only give 
adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each word, and 
accompanying the last with a jerk that might have dislocated his neck.
"Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of business!" 
said Mr Skimpole, thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend, Good night."
As our absence had been long enough already to seem strange downstairs, I 
returned at once, and found Ada sitting at work by the fireside talking to 
her cousin John. Mr Skimpole presently appeared, and Richard shortly after 
him. I was sufficiently engaged, during the remainder of the evening, in 
taking my first lesson in backgammon from Mr Jarndyce, who was very fond of 
the game, and from whom I wished of course to learn it as quickly as I 
could, in order that I might be of the very small use of being able to play 
when he had no better adversary. But I thought, occasionally when Mr 
Skimpole played some fragments of his own compositions; or when, both at 
the piano and violoncello, and at our table, he preserved, with an absence 
of all effort, his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation; 
that Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having 
been arrested since dinner, and that it was very curious altogether.
It was late before we separated: for when Ada was going at eleven o'clock, 
Mr Skimpole went to the piano, and rattled, hilariously, that the best of 
all ways, to lengthen our days, was to steal a few hours from Night, my 
dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and his radiant face out 
of the room; and I think he might have kept us there, if he had seen fit, 
until daybreak. Ada and Richard were lingering for a few moments by the 
fire, wondering whether Mrs Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the 
day, when Mr Jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned.
"Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!" he said, rubbing his head and 
walking about with his good-humoured vexation. "What's this they tell me? 
Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why did you do it? 
How could you do it? How much apiece was it? - The wind's round again. I 
feel it all over me!"
We neither of us quite knew what to answer.
"Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are you out 
of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you? How could you? 
- O Lord, yes, it's due east - must be!"
"Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honourable in me to 
tell you. Mr Skimpole relied upon us - "
"Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!" said Mr Jarndyce, 
giving his head a great rub, and stopping short.
"Indeed, sir?"
"Everybody! And he'll be in the same scrape again, next week!" said Mr 
Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his hand that had 
gone out. "He's always in the same scrape. He was born in the same scrape. 
I verily believe that the announcement in the newspapers when his mother 
was confined, was 'On Tuesday last, at her residence in Botheration 
Buildings, Mrs Skimpole of a son in difficulties.'"
Richard laughed heartily, but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to shake his 
confidence, or to break his confidence; and if I submit to your better 
knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope you will consider 
before you press me any more. Of course, if you do press me, sir, I shall 
know I am wrong, and will tell you."
"Well!" cried Mr Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent 
endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. "I - here! Take it away, 
my dear. I don't know what I am about with it; it's all the wind - 
invariably has that effect - I won't press you, Rick; you may be right. 
But, really - to get hold of you and Esther - and to squeeze you like a 
couple of tender young Saint Michael's oranges! - It'll blow a gale in the 
course of the night!"
He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets, as if he were 
going to keep them there a long time; and taking them out again, and 
vehemently rubbing them all over his head.
I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr Skimpole, being in 
all such matters, quite a child -
"Eh, my dear?" said Mr Jarndyce, catching at the word.
" - Being quite a child, sir," said I, "and so different from other people -
 "
"You are right!" said Mr Jarndyce, brightening.
"Your woman's wit hits the mark. He is a child - an absolute child. I told 
you he was a child, you know, when I first mentioned him."
Certainly! certainly! we said.
"And he is a child. Now, isn't he?" asked Mr Jarndyce, brightening more and 
more.
He was indeed, we said.
"When you come to think of it, it's the height of childishness in you - I 
mean me - " said Mr Jarndyce, "to regard him for a moment as a man. You 
can't make him responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with designs or 
plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!"
It was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing, and 
to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible not to 
know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which was tortured 
by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any one, that I saw the 
tears in Ada's eyes, while she echoed his laugh, and felt them in my own.
"Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I am," said Mr Jarndyce, "to require 
reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from beginning to end. 
Nobody but a child would have thought of singling you two out for parties 
in the affair! Nobody but a child would have thought of your having the 
money! If it had been a thousand pounds, it would have been just the same!" 
said Mr Jarndyce, with his whole face in a glow.
We all confirmed it from our night's experience.
"To be sure, to be sure!" said Mr Jarndyce. "However, Rick, Esther, and you 
too, Ada, for I don't know that even your little purse is safe from his 
inexperience - I must have a promise all round, that nothing of this sort 
shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not even sixpences."
We all promised faithfully; Richard, with a merry glance at me, touching 
his pocket, as if to remind me that there was no danger of our 
transgressing.
"As to Skimpole," said Mr Jarndyce, "a habitable doll's house, with good 
board, and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow money of, 
would set the boy up in life. He is in a child's sleep by this time, I 
suppose; it's time I should take my craftier head to my more worldly 
pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!"
He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our candles, 
and said, "O! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I find it was a 
false alarm about the wind. It's in the south!" And went away singing to 
himself.
Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that 
this caprice about the wind was a fiction; and that he used the pretence to 
account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would 
blame the real cause of it, or disparage or depreciate any one. We thought 
this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness; and of the difference 
between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds 
(particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different 
purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening to my 
gratitude, that I hoped I already began to understand him through that 
mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr Skimpole, or in Mrs 
Jellyby, I could not expect to be able to reconcile; having so little 
experience or practical knowledge. Neither did I try; for my thoughts were 
busy when I was alone, with Ada and Richard, and with the confidence I had 
seemed to receive concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind 
perhaps, would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have 
persuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother's house, 
and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy speculations which 
had sometimes trembled there in the dark, as to what knowledge Mr Jarndyce 
had of my earliest history - even as to the possibility of his being my 
father - though that idle dream was quite gone now.
It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was not for 
me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit and a grateful 
heart. So I said to myself, "Esther, Esther, Esther! Duty, my dear!" and 
gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a shake, that they sounded 
like little bells, and rang me hopefully to bed.


Chapter 7

The Ghost's Walk

While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather down 
at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling, drip, drip, drip, 
by day and night, upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement, The Ghost's 
Walk. The weather is so very bad, down in Lincolnshire, that the liveliest 
imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being fine again. Not that 
there is any superabundant life of imagination on the spot, for Sir 
Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he were, would not do much for 
it in that particular), but is in Paris, with my Lady; and solitude, with 
dusky wings, sits brooding upon Chesney Wold.
There may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals of Chesney Wold. 
The horses in the stables - the long stables in a barren, red-brick 
courtyard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a clock with a 
large face, which the pigeons who live near it, and who love to perch upon 
its shoulders, seem to be always consulting - they may contemplate some 
mental pictures of fine weather on occasions, and may be better artists at 
them than the grooms. The old roan, so famous for cross-country work, 
turning his large eyeball to the grated window near his rack, may remember 
the fresh leaves that glisten there at other times, and the scents that 
stream in, and may have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, 
clearing out the next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-
broom. The grey, whose place is opposite the door, and who, with an 
impatient rattle of his halter, pricks his ears and turns his head so 
wistfully when it is opened, and to whom the opener says, "Woa grey, then, 
steady! Noabody wants you today!" may know it quite as well as the man. The 
whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen, stabled 
together, may pass the long wet hours, when the door is shut, in livelier 
communication than is held in the servant's hall, or at the Dedlock Arms; - 
or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps corrupting) the pony in 
the loose-box in the corner.
So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel, in the courtyard, with his large head 
on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine, when the shadows of the stable-
buildings tire his patience out by changing, and leave him, at one time of 
the day, no broader refuge than the shadow of his own house, where he sits 
on end, panting and growling short, and very much wanting something to 
worry, besides himself and his chain. So, now, half-waking and all-winking, 
he may recall the house full of company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, 
the stables full of horses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon 
horses, until he is undecided about the present, and comes forth to see how 
it is. Then with that impatient shape of himself, he may growl in the 
spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain - and no family here!" as he 
goes in again, and lies down with a gloomy yawn.
So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have their 
restless fits, and whose doleful voices, when the wind has been very 
obstinate, have even made it known in the house itself: upstairs, 
downstairs, and in my lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole countryside, 
while the raindrops are pattering round their inactivity. So the rabbits, 
with their self-betraying tails, frisking in and out of holes at roots of 
trees, may be lively with ideas of the breezy days when their ears are 
blown about, or of those seasons of interest when there are sweet young 
plants to gnaw. The turkey in the poultry-yard, always troubled with a 
class-grievance (probably Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer-
morning wrongfully taken from him, when he got into the lane among the 
felled trees, where there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose, 
who stoops to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, 
if we only know it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway 
casts its shadow on the ground.
Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at Chesney 
Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a little noise 
in that old echoing place, a long way, and usually leads off to ghosts and 
mystery.
It has rained so hard and rained so long, down in Lincolnshire, that Mrs 
Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several times taken 
off her spectacles and cleaned them, to make certain that the drops were 
not upon the glasses. Mrs Rouncewell might have been sufficiently assured 
by hearing the rain, but that she is rather deaf, which nothing will induce 
her to believe. She is a fine old lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully 
neat, and has such a back, and such a stomacher, that if her stays should 
turn out when she dies to have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-
grate, nobody who knows her would have cause to be surprised. Weather 
affects Mrs Rouncewell little. The house is there in all weathers, and the 
house, as she expresses it, "is what she looks at." She sits in her room 
(in a side-passage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a 
smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round trees and 
smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to play at bowls 
with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her mind. She can open it 
on occasion, and be busy and fluttered; but it is shut-up now, and lies on 
the breadth of Mrs Rouncewell's iron-bound bosom, in a majestic sleep.
It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney Wold 
without Mrs Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years. Ask her how 
long, this rainy day, and she shall answer "fifty year three months and a 
fortnight, by the blessing of Heaven, if I live till Tuesday." Mr 
Rouncewell died some time before the decease of the pretty fashion of pig-
tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took it with him) in a corner of the 
churchyard in the park, near the mouldy porch. He was born in the market-
town, and so was his young widow. Her progress in the family began in the 
time of the last Sir Leicester, and originated in the still-room.
The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He 
supposes all his dependants to be utterly bereft of individual characters, 
intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the 
necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the 
contrary, he would be simply stunned - would never recover himself, most 
likely, except to gasp and die. But he is an excellent master still, 
holding it a part of his state to be so. He has a great liking for Mrs 
Rouncewell; he says she is a most respectable, creditable woman. He always 
shakes hands with her, when he comes down to Chesney Wold, and when he goes 
away; and if he were very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or 
run over, or placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a 
disadvantage, he would say if he could speak, "Leave me and send Mrs 
Rouncewell here!" feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than 
with anybody else.
Mrs Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the younger 
ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even to this hour, 
Mrs Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when she speaks of him, 
and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover about her in an agitated 
manner, as she says, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay, good-
humoured, clever lad he was! Her second son would have been provided for at 
Chesney Wold, and would have been made steward in due season; but he took, 
when he was a schoolboy, to constructing steam-engines out of saucepans, 
and setting birds to draw their own water, with the least possible amount 
of labour; so assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure, 
that a thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to 
the wheel and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs Rouncewell great 
uneasiness. She felt it, with a mother's anguish, to be a move in the Wat 
Tyler direction: well knowing that Sir Leicester had that general 
impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tall chimney 
might be considered essential. But the doomed young rebel (otherwise a mild 
youth, and very persevering), showing no sign of grace as he got older; 
but, on the contrary, constructing a model of a power-loom, she was fain, 
with many tears, to mention his backslidings to the baronet. "Mrs 
Rouncewell," said Sir Leicester, "I can never consent to argue, as you 
know, with any one on any subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you 
had better get him into some Works. The iron country farther north is, I 
suppose, the congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies." Farther 
north he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Leicester Dedlock 
ever saw him, when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or ever 
thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded him as one 
of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and grim, who were in 
the habit of turning out by torchlight, two or three nights in the week, 
for unlawful purposes.
Nevertheless Mrs Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and art, 
grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto him Mrs 
Rouncewell's grandson; who, being out of his apprenticeship, and home from 
a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to enlarge his knowledge 
and complete his preparations for the venture of this life, stands leaning 
against the chimney-piece this very day, in Mrs Rouncewell's room at 
Chesney Wold.
"And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I am 
glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs Rouncewell. "You are a fine young fellow. 
You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!" Mrs Rouncewell's hands unquiet, 
as usual, on this reference.
"They say I am like my father, grandmother."
"Like him, also, my dear, - but most like your poor uncle George! And your 
dear father." Mrs Rouncewell folds her hands again. "He is well?"
"Thriving, grandmother, in every way."
"I am thankful!" Mrs Rouncewell is fond of her son, but has a plaintive 
feeling towards him - much as if he were a very honourable soldier, who had 
gone over to the enemy.
"He is quite happy?" says she.
"Quite."
"I am thankful! So, he has brought you up to follow in his ways, and has 
sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows best. There 
may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't understand. Though I am not 
young, either. And I have seen a quantity of good company too!"
"Grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what a very 
pretty girl that was, I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?"
"Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so hard 
to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She's an apt 
scholar, and will do well. She shows the house already, very pretty. She 
lives with me, at my table here."
"I hope I have not driven her away?"
"She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She is 
very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer," says Mrs 
Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits, "than it formerly 
was!"
The young man inclines his head, in acknowledgment of the precepts of 
experience. Mrs Rouncewell listens.
"Wheels!" says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears of her 
companion. "What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious sake?"
After a short interval a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-eyed, dark-
haired, shy village beauty comes in - so fresh in her rosy and yet delicate 
bloom, that the drops of rain, which have beaten on her hair, look like the 
dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
"What company is this, Rosa?" says Mrs Rouncewell.
"It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house - yes, and 
if you please, I told them so!" in quick reply to a gesture of dissent from 
the housekeeper. "I went to the hall door, and told them it was the wrong 
day, and the wrong hour; but the young man who was driving took off his hat 
in the wet, and begged me to bring this card to you."
"Read it, my dear Watt," says the housekeeper.
Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him, that they drop it between them, and 
almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is shyer 
than before.
"Mr Guppy" is all the information the card yields.
"Guppy!" repeats Mrs Rouncewell. "Mr Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard of 
him!"
"If you please, he told me that!" says Rosa. "But he said that he and the 
other young gentleman came from London only last night by the mail, on 
business at the magistrates' meeting ten miles off, this morning; and that 
as their business was soon over, and they had heard a great deal said of 
Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do with themselves, they had 
come through the wet to see it. They are lawyers. He says he is not in Mr 
Tulkinghorn's office, but is sure he may make use of Mr Tulkinghorn's name 
if necessary." Finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite 
a long speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.
Now, Mr Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place; and, 
besides, is supposed to have made Mrs Rouncewell's will. The old lady 
relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour, and 
dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden wish to 
see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The grandmother, who is 
pleased that he should have that interest, accompanies him - though to do 
him justice, he is exceedingly unwilling to trouble her.
"Much obliged to you, ma'am!" says Mr Guppy, divesting himself of his wet 
dreadnought in the hall. "Us London lawyers don't often get an out; and 
when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know."
The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves her hand 
towards the great staircase. Mr Guppy and his friend follow Rosa, Mrs 
Rouncewell and her grandson follow them, a young gardener goes before to 
open the shutters.
As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr Guppy and his 
friends are dead beat before they have well begun. They struggle about in 
wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape 
when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are 
clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter, Mrs 
Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a window 
seat, or other such nook, and listens with stately approval to Rosa's 
exposition. Her grandson is so attentive to it, that Rosa is shyer than 
ever - and prettier. Thus they pass on from room to room, raising the 
pictured Dedlocks for a few brief minutes as the young gardener admits the 
light, and reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It 
appears to the afflicted Mr Guppy and his inconsolable friend, that there 
is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to consist in their 
never having done anything to distinguish themselves, for seven hundred 
years.
Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr Guppy's 
spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold, and has hardly 
strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece, painted 
by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a charm. He 
recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon interest; he seems to 
be fixed and fascinated by it.
"Dear me!" says Mr Guppy. "Who's that?"
"The picture over the fireplace," says Rosa, "is the portrait of the 
present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the best 
work of the master."
"'Blest!" says Mr Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend, "if I 
can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been engraved, 
miss?"
"The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always refused 
permission."
"Well!" says Mr Guppy in a low voice, "I'll be shot if it ain't very 
curious how well I know that picture! So that's Lady Dedlock, is it!"
"The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The picture 
on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester."
Mr Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. "It's unaccountable to 
me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how well I know that picture! 
I'm dashed!" adds Mr Guppy looking round, "If I don't think I must have had 
a dream of that picture, you know!"
As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr Guppy's dreams, the 
probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by the 
portrait, that he stands immoveable before it until the young gardener has 
closed the shutters; when he comes out of the room in a dazed state, that 
is an odd though a sufficient substitute for interest, and follows into the 
succeeding rooms with a confused stare, as if he were looking everywhere 
for Lady Dedlock again.
He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown, as 
being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she looked 
out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death. All things 
have an end - even houses that people take infinite pains to see, and are 
tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to the end of the 
sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her description; which is 
always this:
"The terrace below is much admired. It is called, from an old story in the 
family, The Ghost's Walk?"
"No?" says Mr Guppy, greedily curious; "what's the story, miss? Is it 
anything about a picture?"
"Pray tell us the story," says Watt, in a half whisper.
"I don't know it, sir." Rosa is shyer than ever.
"It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten," says the 
housekeeper, advancing. "It has never been more than a family anecdote."
"You'll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a picture, 
ma'am," observes Mr Guppy, "because I do assure you that the more I think 
of that picture the better I know it, without knowing how I know it!"
The story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can guarantee 
that. Mr Guppy is obliged to her for the information; and is moreover 
generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided down another 
staircase by the young gardener; and presently is heard to drive away. It 
is now dusk. Mrs Rouncewell can trust to the discretion of her two young 
hearers, and may tell them how the terrace came to have that ghostly name. 
She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window, and tells 
them:
"In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the First - I mean, of 
course, in the wicked days of the rebels who leagued themselves against 
that excellent King - Sir Morbury Dedlock was the owner of Chesney Wold. 
Whether there was any account of a ghost in the family before those days, I 
can't say. I should think it very likely indeed."
Mrs Rouncewell holds this opinion, because she considers that a family of 
such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She regards a ghost 
as one of the privileges of the upper classes; a genteel distinction to 
which the common people have no claim.
"Sir Morbury Dedlock," says Mrs Rouncewell, "was, I have no occasion to 
say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But is supposed that his lady, who 
had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the bad cause. It is 
said that she had relations among King Charles's enemies; that she was in 
correspondence with them; and that she gave them information. When any of 
the country gentlemen who followed His Majesty's cause met here, it is said 
that my Lady was always nearer to the door of their council-room than they 
supposed. Do you hear a sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, 
Watt?"
Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
"I hear the rain-drip on the stones," replies the young man, "and I hear a 
curious echo - I suppose an echo - which is very like a halting step."
The housekeeper gravely nods and continues:
"Partly on account of this division between them, and partly on other 
accounts, Sir Morbury and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a 
haughty temper. They were not well suited to each other in age or 
character, and they had no children to moderate between them. After her 
favourite brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir 
Morbury's near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated the race 
into which she had married. When the Dedlocks were about to ride out from 
Chesney Wold in the King's cause, she is supposed to have more than once 
stolen down into the stables in the dead of night, and lamed their horses; 
and the story is, that once, at such an hour, her husband saw her gliding 
down the stairs, and followed her into the stall where his own favourite 
horse stood. There he seized her by the wrist: and in a struggle or in a 
fall, or through the horse being frightened and lashing out, she was lamed 
in the hip, and from that hour began to pine away."
The housekeeper has dropped her voice to little more than a whisper.
"She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She never 
complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being crippled, or 
of being in pain; but, day by day, she tried to walk upon the terrace; and 
with the help of a stick, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went 
up and down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater 
difficulty every day. At last, one afternoon, her husband (to whom she had 
never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night), standing at 
the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement. He hastened down to 
raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over her, and looking at him 
fixedly and coldly, said 'I will die here where I have walked. And I will 
walk here, though I am in my grave. I will walk here, until the pride of 
this house is humbled. And when calamity, or when disgrace is coming to it, 
let the Dedlocks listen for my step!'"
Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the ground, 
half frightened and half shy.
"There and then she died. And from those days," says Mrs Rouncewell, "the 
name has come down - The Ghost's Walk. If the tread is an echo, it is an 
echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for a long while 
together. But it comes back from time to time; and so sure as there is 
sickness or death in the family, it will be heard then."
" - And disgrace, grandmother - " says Watt.
"Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold," returns the housekeeper.
Her grandson apologises, with "True. True."
"That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound," said 
Mrs Rouncewell, getting up from her chair, "and what is to be noticed in 
it, is, that it must be heard. My lady, who is afraid of nothing, admits 
that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot shut it out. Watt, 
there is a tall French clock behind you (placed there, 'a purpose) that has 
a loud beat when it is in motion, and can play music. You understand how 
those things are managed?"
"Pretty well, grandmother, I think."
"Set it a going."
Watt sets it a going - music and all.
"Now, come hither," says the housekeeper. "Hither, child, towards my lady's 
pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen! Can you hear 
the sound upon the terrace through the music, and the beat, and 
everything?"
"I certainly can!"
"So my lady says."


Chapter 8

Covering A Multitude of Sins

It was interesting when I dressed before daylight, to peep out of the 
window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two 
beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the indistinctness of 
last night, to watch how it turned out when the day came on. As the 
prospect gradually revealed itself, and disclosed the scene over which the 
wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a 
pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my 
sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them 
the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began 
to enlarge and fill up so fast, that, at every new peep, I could have found 
enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly, my candles became the only 
incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted 
away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in 
which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of 
shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. But so 
from rough outsides (I hope I have learnt), serene and gentle influences 
often proceed.
Every part of the house was in such order and every one was so attentive to 
me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys: though what with 
trying to remember the contents of each little storeroom drawer, and 
cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate about jams, and pickles, 
and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and china, and a great many other 
things; and what with being generally a methodical, old-maidenish sort of 
foolish little person; I was so busy that I could not believe it was 
breakfast-time when I heard the bell ring. Away I ran, however, and made 
tea, as I had already been installed into the responsibility of the teapot; 
and then, as they were all rather late, and nobody was down yet, I thought 
I would take a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I 
found it quite a delightful place; in front, the pretty avenue and drive by 
which we had approached (and where, by-the-bye, we had cut up the gravel so 
terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at the 
back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing 
it open to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that 
distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then a 
paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little farmyard. 
As to the House itself, with its three peaks in the roof; its various-
shaped windows, some so large, some so small, and all so pretty; its 
trellis-work against the south-front for roses and honey-suckle, and its 
homely, comfortable, welcoming look; it was, as Ada said, when she came out 
to meet me with her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin 
John - a bold thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.
Mr Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast, as he had been overnight. There 
was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about Bees. He had 
no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he had not, for he 
seemed to like it), but he protested against the overweening assumptions of 
Bees. He didn't at all see why the busy Bee should be proposed as a model 
to him; he supposed the Bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it - 
nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the Bee to make such a merit of 
his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the world, banging 
against everything that came in his way, and egotistically calling upon 
everybody to take notice that he was going to his work and must not be 
interrupted, the world would be quite an insupportable place. Then, after 
all, it was a ridiculous position, to be smoked out of your fortune with 
brimstone, as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion 
of a Manchester man, if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he 
thought a Drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The Drone 
said, unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot attend to the 
shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to see, and so 
short a time to see it in, that I must take the liberty of looking about 
me, and begging to be provided for by somebody who doesn't want to look 
about him." This appeared to Mr Skimpole to be the Drone philosophy, and he 
thought it a very good philosophy - always supposing the Drone to be 
willing to be on good terms with the Bee: which, so far as he knew, the 
easy fellow always was, if the consequential creature would only let him, 
and not be so conceited about his honey!
He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground, and 
made us all merry; though again he seemed to have as serious a meaning in 
what he said as he was capable of having. I left them still listening to 
him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties. They had occupied me for 
some time, and I was passing through the passages on my return with my 
basket of keys on my arm, when Mr Jarndyce called me into a small room next 
his bedchamber, which I found to be in part a little library of books and 
papers, and in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes, and hat-
boxes.
"Sit down, my dear," said Mr Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the 
Growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here."
"You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.
"O, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or disappointed in 
- the wind, and it's Easterly, I take refuge here. The Growlery is the best-
used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humours yet. My dear, 
how you are trembling!"

I could not help it: I tried very hard: but being alone with that 
benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy, and 
so honoured there, and my heart so full -
I kissed his hand. I don't know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was 
disconcerted, and walked to the window: I almost believed with an intention 
of jumping out, until he turned, and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes 
what he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat 
down.
"There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish."
"It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it is 
difficult" -
"Nonsense!" he said, "it's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good little 
orphan girl without a protector, and I take it in my head to be that 
protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good opinion, and I 
remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in all this? So, so! Now, 
we have cleared off old scores, and I have before me thy pleasant, 
trusting, trusty face again."
I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is not 
what I expected of you!" and it had such a good effect, that I folded my 
hands upon my basket, and quite recovered myself. Mr Jarndyce, expressing 
his approval in his face, began to talk to me as confidentially as if I had 
been in the habit of conversing with him every morning, for I don't know 
how long. I almost felt as if I had.
"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery 
business?"
And of course I shook my head.
"I don't know who does," he returned. "The Lawyers have twisted it into 
such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long 
disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a Will, and the trusts 
under a Will - or it was, once. It's about nothing but Costs, now. We are 
always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and 
filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and 
referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all 
his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about 
Costs. That's the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary 
means, has melted away."
"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his head, 
"about a Will?"
"Why, yes, it was about a Will when it was about anything," he returned. "A 
certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and made a great 
Will. In the question how the trusts under that Will are to be 
administered, the fortune left by the Will is squandered away; the legatees 
under the Will are reduced to such a miserable condition that they would be 
sufficiently punished, if they had committed an enormous crime in having 
money left them; and the Will itself is made a dead letter. All through the 
deplorable cause, everything that everybody in it, except one man, knows 
already, is referred to that only one man who don't know it, to find out - 
all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and over 
again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of cartloads 
of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which is the usual 
course, for nobody wants them); and must go down the middle and up again, 
through such an infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and 
corruption, as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a Witch's 
Sabbath. Equity sends questions to Law, Law sends questions back to Equity; 
Law finds it can't do this, Equity finds it can't do that; neither can so 
much as say it can't do anything, without this solicitor instructing and 
this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that 
counsel appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the 
history of the Apple Pie. And thus, through years and years, and lives and 
lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, and 
nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit on any terms, for we 
are made parties to it, and must be parties to it, whether we like it or 
not. But it won't do to think of it! When my great Uncle, poor Tom 
Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning of the end!"
"The Mr Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"
He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther. When I 
came here, it was bleak, indeed. He had left the signs of his misery upon 
it."
"How changed it must be now!" I said.
"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its present 
name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of 
papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its 
mistification and bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became 
dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell 
through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. 
When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to 
have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined.
He walked a little to and fro, after saying this to himself with a shudder, 
and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down again with his 
hands in his pockets.
"I told you this was the Growlery, my dear. Where was I?"
I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
"Bleak House: true. There is in that city of London there, some property of 
ours, which is much at this day what Bleak House was then, - I say property 
of ours, meaning of the Suit's, but I ought to call it the property of 
Costs; for Costs is the only power on earth that will ever get anything out 
of it now, or will ever know it for anything but an eyesore and a 
heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned 
out; without a pane of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the 
bare blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder; the 
iron rails peeling away in flakes of rust; the chimneys sinking in; the 
stone steps to every door (and every door might be Death's Door) turning 
stagnant green; the very crutches on which the ruins are propped, decaying. 
Although Bleak House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was 
stamped with the same seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my 
dear, all over England - the children know them!"
"How changed it is!" I said again.
"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom in you 
to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (The idea of my wisdom!) 
"These are things I never talk about, or even think about, excepting in the 
Growlery, here. If you consider it right to mention them to Rick and Ada," 
looking seriously at me, "you can. I leave it to your discretion, Esther."
"I hope, sir," - said I.
"I think you had better call me Guardian, my dear."
I felt that I was choking again - I taxed myself with it, "Esther, now, you 
know you are!" - when he feigned to say this slightly, as if it were a 
whim, instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the housekeeping keys 
the least shake in the world as a reminder to myself, and folding my hands 
in a still more determined manner on the basket, looked at him quietly.
"I hope, Guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my 
discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a 
disappointment to you to know that I am not clever - but it really is the 
truth; and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to confess 
it."
He did not seem at all disappointed: quite the contrary. He told me, with a 
smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed, and that I was 
quite clever enough for him.
"I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it, Guardian."
"You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here, my 
dear," he returned, playfully; "the little old woman of the Child's (I 
don't mean Skimpole's) Rhyme:

"'Little old woman, and whither so high?' -
'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'

You will sweep them so neatly out of our sky, in the course of your 
housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days, we shall have to abandon the 
Growlery and nail up the door."
This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old Woman, 
and Cobweb, and Mrs Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame Durden, and so 
many names of that sort, that my own name soon became quite lost among 
them.
"However," said Mr Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick, a fine 
young fellow full of promise. What's to be done with him?"
O my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!
"Here he is, Esther," said Mr Jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands in 
his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a profession; he 
must make some choice for himself. There will be a world more Wiglomeration 
about it, I suppose, but it must be done."
"More what, Guardian?" said I.
"More Wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the thing. He 
is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have something to say 
about it; Master Somebody - a sort of ridiculous Sexton, digging graves for 
the merits of causes in a back room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery 
Lane - will have something to say about it; Counsel will have something to 
say about it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the 
Satellites will have something to say about it; they will have to be 
handsomely fee'd, all round, about it; the whole thing will be vastly 
ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in 
general, Wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with 
Wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a pit of 
it, I don't know; so it is."
He began to rub his head again, and to hint that he felt the wind. But it 
was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me, that whether he 
rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure to recover 
its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was sure to turn 
comfortable again, and put his hands in his pockets and stretch out his 
legs.
"Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr Richard what 
he inclines to himself."
"Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, just accustom 
yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet way, with him 
and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure to come at the heart 
of the matter by your means, little woman."
I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was attaining, 
and the number of things that were being confided to me. I had not meant 
this at all; I had meant that he should speak to Richard. But of course I 
said nothing in reply, except that I would do my best, though I feared (I 
really felt it necessary to repeat this) that he thought me much more 
sagacious than I was. At which my guardian only laughed the pleasantest 
laugh I ever heard.
"Come," he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think we may have 
done with the Growlery for one day! Only a concluding word. Esther, my 
dear, do you wish to ask me anything?"
He looked so attentively at me, that I looked attentively at him, and felt 
sure I understood him.
"About myself, sir?" said I.
"Yes."
"Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly colder 
than I could have wished, in his, "nothing! I am quite sure that if there 
were anything I ought to know, or had any need to know, I should not have 
to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance and confidence were not 
placed in you, I must have a hard heart indeed. I have nothing to ask you; 
nothing in the world."
He drew my hand through his arm, and we went away to look for Ada. From 
that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite content to 
know no more, quite happy.
We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House; for we had to become 
acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood who knew Mr 
Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew him, who wanted to do 
anything with anybody else's money. It amazed us when we began to sort his 
letters, and to answer some of them for him in the Growlery of a morning, 
to find how the great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondents 
appeared to be to form themselves into committees for getting in and laying 
out money. The ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think 
they were even more so. They threw themselves into committees in the most 
impassioned manner, and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite 
extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their whole 
lives in dealing out subscription cards to the whole Post-office Directory -
 shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They 
wanted everything. They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, 
they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted 
interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever 
Mr Jarndyce had - or had not. Their objects were as various as their 
demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to pay off 
debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a picturesque 
building (engraving of proposed West Elevation attached) the Sisterhood of 
Mediaeval Marys; they were going to give a testimonial to Mrs Jellyby; they 
were going to have their Secretary's portrait painted, and presented to his 
mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him was well known; they were going 
to get up everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts 
to an annuity, and from a marble monument to a silver teapot. They took a 
multitude of titles. They were the Women of England, the Daughters of 
Britain, the Sisters of all the Cardinal Virtues separately, the Females of 
America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They appeared to be always 
excited about canvassing and electing. They seemed to our poor wits, and 
according to their own accounts, to be constantly polling people by tens of 
thousands, yet never bringing their candidates in for anything. It made our 
heads ache to think, on the whole, what feverish lives they must lead.
Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious benevolence 
(if I may use the expression), was a Mrs Pardiggle, who seemed, as I judged 
from the number of her letters to Mr Jarndyce, to be almost as powerful a 
correspondent as Mrs Jellyby herself. We observed that the wind always 
changed, when Mrs Pardiggle became the subject of conversation: and that it 
invariably interrupted Mr Jarndyce, and prevented his going any farther, 
when he had remarked that there were two classes of charitable people; one, 
the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the 
people who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore 
curious to see Mrs Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the former 
class; and were glad when she called one day with her five young sons.
She was a formidable style of lady, with spectacles, a prominent nose, and 
a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room. And she 
really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her skirts that were 
quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at home, we received her 
timidly; for she seemed to come in like cold weather, and to make the 
little Pardiggles blue as they followed.
"These, young ladies," said Mrs Pardiggle, with great volubility, after the 
first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seen their names in a 
printed subscription list (perhaps more than one), in the possession of our 
esteemed friend Mr Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest (twelve), is the boy who 
sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of five-and-three-pence, to the 
Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald my second (ten-and-a-half), is the child who 
contributed two-and-nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. 
Francis, my third (nine), one-and-sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth 
(seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest 
(five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is 
pledged never, through life, to use tobacco in any form."
We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that they 
were weazened and shrivelled - though they were certainly that too - but 
they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the mention of the 
Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed Egbert to be one of the 
most baleful members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. The 
face of each child, as the amount of his contribution was mentioned, 
darkened in a peculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I 
must except, however, the little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who 
was stolidly and evenly miserable.
"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs Pardiggle, "at Mrs 
Jellyby's?"
We said yes, we had passed one night there.
"Mrs Jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same demonstrative, 
loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy as if it had a sort 
of spectacles on too - and I may take the opportunity of remarking that her 
spectacles were made the less engaging by her eyes being what Ada called 
"choking eyes," meaning very prominent: "Mrs Jellyby is a benefactor to 
society, and deserves a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the 
African project - Egbert one-and-six, being the entire allowance of nine 
weeks; Oswald, one-and-a-penny-halfpenny, being the same; the rest, 
according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs Jellyby 
in all things. I do not go with Mrs Jellyby in her treatment of her young 
family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that her young family are 
excluded from participation in the objects to which she is devoted. She may 
be right, she may be wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not my course with 
my young family. I take them everywhere."
I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the ill-conditioned 
eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He turned it off into a 
yawn, but it began as a yell.
"They attend Matins with me (very prettily done), at half-past six o'clock 
in the morning all the year round, including of course the depth of 
winter," said Mrs Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me during the 
revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a Visiting lady, I am 
a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on the Local Linen Box 
Committee, and many general Committees; and my canvassing alone is very 
extensive - perhaps no one's more so. But they are my companions 
everywhere; and by these means they acquire that knowledge of the poor, and 
that capacity of doing charitable business in general - in short, that 
taste for the sort of thing - which will render them in after life a 
service to their neighbours, and a satisfaction to themselves. My young 
family are not frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance, 
in subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many public 
meetings, and listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions, as 
generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred (five), who, as I 
mentioned, has of his own election joined the Infant Bonds of Joy, was one 
of the very few children who manifested consciousness on that occasion, 
after a fervid address of two hours from the chairman of the evening."
Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the injury of 
that night.
"You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs Pardiggle, "in some of 
the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our esteemed 
friend Mr Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are concluded with 
the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. That is their father. We 
usually observe the same routine. I put down my mite first; then my young 
family enroll their contributions, according to their ages and their little 
means; and then Mr Pardiggle brings up the rear. Mr Pardiggle is happy to 
throw in his limited donation, under my direction; and thus things are 
made, not only pleasant to ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others."
Suppose Mr Pardiggle were to dine with Mr Jellyby, and suppose Mr Jellyby 
were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr Pardiggle, would Mr Pardiggle, 
in return, make any confidential communication to Mr Jellyby? I was quite 
confused to find myself thinking this, but it came into my head.
"You are very pleasantly situated here!" said Mrs Pardiggle.
We were glad to change the subject; and, going to the window, pointed out 
the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to me to 
rest with curious indifference.
"You know Mr Gusher?" said our visitor.
We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr Gusher's 
acquaintance.
"The loss is yours, I assure you," said Mrs Pardiggle, with her commanding 
deportment. "He is a very fervid impassioned speaker - full of fire! 
Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now, which, from the shape of the land, 
is naturally adapted to a public meeting, he would improve almost any 
occasion you could mention for hours and hours! By this time, young 
ladies," said Mrs Pardiggle, moving back to her chair, and overturning, as 
if by invisible agency, a little round table at a considerable distance 
with my work-basket on it, "by this time you have found me out, I dare 
say?"
"This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in perfect 
dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness, after what I had 
been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour of my cheeks.
"Found out, I mean," said Mrs Pardiggle, "the prominent point in my 
character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable 
immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely admit, 
I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The 
excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard work that I 
don't know what fatigue is."
We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying; or something 
to that effect. I don't think we knew why it was either, but this was what 
our politeness expressed.
"I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if you 
try!" said Mrs Pardiggle. "The quantity of exertion (which is no exertion 
to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing), that I go 
through, sometimes astonishes myself. I have seen my young family, and Mr 
Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I may truly say I have 
been as fresh as a lark!"
If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had 
already looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he 
doubled his right fist, and delivered a secret blow into the crown of his 
cap, which was under his left arm.
"This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds," said Mrs 
Pardiggle. "If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to say, I tell 
that person directly, 'I am incapable of fatigue, my good friend, I am 
never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.' It answers admirably! 
Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have your assistance in my visiting rounds 
immediately, and Miss Clare's very soon?"
At first I tried to excuse myself, for the present, on the general ground 
of having occupations to attend to, which I must not neglect. But as this 
was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more particularly, that I was not 
sure of my qualifications. That I was inexperienced in the art of adapting 
my mind to minds very differently situated, and addressing them from 
suitable points of view. That I had not that delicate knowledge of the 
heart which must be essential to such a work. That I had much to learn, 
myself, before I could teach others, and that I could not confide in my 
good intentions alone. For these reasons, I thought it best to be as useful 
as I could, and to render what kind services I could, to those immediately 
about me; and to try to let that circle of duty gradually and naturally 
expand itself. All this I said, with anything but confidence; because Mrs 
Pardiggle was much older than I, and had great experience, and was so very 
military in her manners.
"You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said she: "but perhaps you are not equal 
to hard work, or the excitement of it; and that makes a vast difference. If 
you would like to see how I go through my work, I am now about - with my 
young family - to visit a brickmaker in the neighbourhood (a very bad 
character), and shall be glad to take you with me. Miss Clare also, if she 
will do me the favour."
Ada and I interchanged looks, and, as we were going out in any case, 
accepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our bonnets, 
we found the young family languishing in a corner, and Mrs Pardiggle 
sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light objects it 
contained. Mrs Pardiggle took possession of Ada, and I followed with the 
family.
Ada told me afterwards that Mrs Pardiggle talked in the same loud tone 
(that indeed I overheard), all the way to the brickmaker's, about an 
exciting contest which she had for two or three years, waged against 
another lady, relative to the bringing in of their rival candidates for a 
pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of printing, and promising, 
and proxying, and polling; and it appeared to have imparted great 
liveliness to all concerned, except the pensioners - who were not elected 
yet.
I am very fond of being confided in by children, and am happy in being 
usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me great 
uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the manner of a 
little footpad, demanded a shilling of me, on the ground that his pocket-
money was "boned" from him. On my pointing out the great impropriety of the 
word, especially in connection with his parent (for he added sulkily "by 
her!"), he pinched me and said "O then! Now! Who are you! You wouldn't like 
it, I think? What does she make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, 
and take it away again? Why do you call it my allowance, and never let me 
spend it?" These exasperating questions so inflamed his mind, and the minds 
of Oswald and Francis, that they all pinched me at once, and in a 
dreadfully expert way: screwing up such little pieces of my arms that I 
could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamped upon my 
toes. And the Bond of Joy, who, on account of always having the whole of 
his little income anticipated, stood in fact pledged to abstain from cakes 
as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage when we passed a pastry-
cook's shop, that he terrified me by becoming purple. I never underwent so 
much, both in body and mind, in the course of a walk with young people, as 
from these unnaturally constrained children, when they paid me the 
compliment of being natural.
I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house; though it was one of a 
cluster of wretched hovels in a brickfield, with pigsties close to the 
broken windows, and miserable little gardens before the doors, growing 
nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there, an old tub was put to catch the 
droppings of rainwater from a roof, or they were banked up with mud into a 
little pond like a large dirt-pie. At the doors and windows, some men and 
women lounged or prowled about, and took little notice of us, except to 
laugh to one another, or to say something as we passed, about gentle folks 
minding their own business, and not troubling their heads and muddying 
their shoes with coming to look after other people's.
Mrs Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral determination, 
and talking with much volubility about the untidy habits of the people 
(though I doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in such a place), 
conducted us into a cottage at the farthest corner, the ground-floor room 
of which we nearly filled. Besides ourselves, there were in this damp 
offensive room - a woman with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping 
baby by the fire; a man, all stained with clay and mud, and looking very 
dissipated, lying at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful 
young man, fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl, doing some kind of 
washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in, and 
the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire, as if to hide her 
bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome,
"Well, my friends," said Mrs Pardiggle; but her voice had not a friendly 
sound, I thought; it was much too business-like and systematic. "How do you 
do, all of you? I am here again. I told you, you couldn't tire me, you 
know. I am fond of hard work, and am true to my word."
"There an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his hand 
as he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is there?"
"No, my friend," said Mrs Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool, and 
knocking down another. "We are all here."
"Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the man, with 
his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.
The young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young man whom 
we had attracted to the doorway, and who stood there with their hands in 
their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.
"You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs Pardiggle to these latter. "I 
enjoy hard work; and the harder you make mine, the better I like it."
"Then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. "I wants it 
done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my place. I 
wants an end of being drawed like a badger. Now you're a going to poll-pry 
and question according to custom - I know what you're a going to be up to. 
Well! You haven't got no occasion, to be up to it. I'll save you the 
trouble. Is my daughter a washing? Yes, she is a washing. Look at the 
water. Smell it! That's what we drinks. How do you like it, and what do you 
think of gin, instead! An't my place dirty? Yes, it is dirty - it's 
nat'rally dirty and it's nat'rally unwholesome; and we've had five dirty, 
and unwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better 
for them, and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, 
I an't read the little book wot you left. There an't anybody here as knows 
how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me. It's a 
book fit for a babby, and I'm not a babby. If you was to leave me a doll, I 
shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conducting of myself? Why, I've been 
drunk for three days; and I'd a been drunk four, if I'd a had the money. 
Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I don't never mean for to go to 
church. I shouldn't be expected there, if I did; the beadle's too gen-teel 
for me. And how did my wife get that black eye? Why, I giv' it her; and if 
she says I didn't, she's a Lie!"
He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now turned 
over on his other side, and smoked again. Mrs Pardiggle, who had been 
regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, 
I could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good 
book, as it were a constable's staff, and took the whole family into 
custody. I mean into religious custody, of course; but she really did it, 
as if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying them all off to a 
station-house.
Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of place; 
and we both thought that Mrs Pardiggle would have got on infinitely better, 
if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking possession of people. 
The children sulked and stared; the family took no notice of us whatever, 
except when the young man made the dog bark: which he usually did when Mrs 
Pardiggle was most emphatic. We both felt painfully sensible that between 
us and these people there was an iron barrier, which could not be removed 
by our new friend. By whom, or how, it could be removed, we did not know; 
but we knew that. Even what she read and said, seemed to us to be ill 
chosen for such auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with 
ever so much tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had 
referred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards; and Mr Jarndyce said he 
doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had had no other 
on his desolate island.
We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs Pardiggle left 
off. The man on the floor then turning his head round again, said morosely,
"Well! You've done, have you?"
"For today, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come to you 
again, in your regular order," returned Mrs Pardiggle with demonstrative 
cheerfulness.
"So long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting his eyes 
with an oath, "you may do wot you like!"
Mrs Pardiggle accordingly rose, and made a little vortex in the confined 
room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped. Taking one of her 
young family in each hand, and telling the others to follow closely, and 
expressing her hope that the brickmaker and all his house would be improved 
when she saw them next, she then proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is 
not unkind in me to say that she certainly did make, in this, as in 
everything else, a show that was not conciliatory, of doing charity by 
wholesale, and of dealing in it to a large extent.
She supposed that we were following her; but as soon as the space was left 
clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire, to ask if the baby were 
ill.
She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before, that 
when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her hand, as 
though she wished to separate any association with noise and violence and 
ill-treatment, from the poor little child.
Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to touch its 
little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew her back. The 
child died.
"O Esther!" cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. "Look here! O 
Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty little 
thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I never saw a 
sight so pitiful as this before! O baby, baby!"
Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down weeping, 
and put her hand upon the mother's, might have softened any mother's heart 
that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in astonishment, and then 
burst into tears.
Presently I took the light burden from her lap; did what I could to make 
the baby's rest the prettier and gentler; laid it on a shelf, and covered 
it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the mother, and we 
whispered to her what our Saviour said of children. She answered nothing, 
but sat weeping - weeping very much.
When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog, and was 
standing at the door looking in upon us; with dry eyes, but quiet. The girl 
was quiet too, and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The man had 
risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but he was silent.
An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing at 
them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, "Jenny! Jenny!" The 
mother rose on being so addressed, and fell upon the woman's neck.
She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill-usage. She had no kind 
of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she condoled with 
the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no beauty. I say condoled, 
but her only words were, "Jenny! Jenny!" All the rest was in the tone in 
which she said them.
I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and 
beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how 
they felt for one another; how the heart of each to each was softened by 
the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is 
almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, 
excepting to themselves and God.
We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole out 
quietly, and without notice from any one except the man. He was leaning 
against the wall near the door; and finding that there was scarcely room 
for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want to hide that he did 
this on our account, but we perceived that he did, and thanked him. He made 
no answer.
Ada was so full of grief of all the way home, and Richard, whom we found at 
home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me when she 
was not present, how beautiful it was too!) that we arranged to return at 
night with some little comforts, and repeat our visit at the brickmaker's 
house. We said as little as we could to Mr Jarndyce, but the wind changed 
directly.
Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning expedition. On 
our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house, where a number of men 
were flocking about the door. Among them, and prominent in some dispute, 
was the father of the little child. At a short distance, we passed the 
young man and the dog, in congenial company. The sister was standing 
laughing and talking with some other young women, at the corner of the row 
of cottages; but she seemed ashamed, and turned away as we went by.

We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling, and proceeded 
by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman who had brought 
such consolation with her, standing there, looking anxiously out.
"It's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. "I'm a watching for 
my master. My heart's in my mouth. If he was to catch me away from home, 
he'd pretty near murder me."
"Do you mean your husband?" said I.
"Yes, miss, my master. Jenny's asleep, quite worn out. She's scarcely had 
the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights, except when 
I've been able to take it for a minute or two."
As she gave way for us, she went softly in, and put what we had brought, 
near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort had been made 
to clean the room - it seemed in its nature almost hopeless of being clean: 
but the small waxen form, from which so much solemnity diffused itself, had 
been composed afresh, and washed, and neatly dressed in some fragments of 
white linen; and on my handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a 
little bunch of sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough scarred hands, 
so lightly, so tenderly!
"May heaven reward you!" we said to her. "You are a good woman."
"Me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. "Hush! Jenny, Jenny!"
The mother had moaned in her sleep, and moved. The sound of the familiar 
voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.
How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the tiny 
sleeper underneath, and seemed to see a halo shine around the child through 
Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head - how little I thought in 
whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come to lie, after covering the 
motionless and peaceful breast! I only thought that perhaps the Angel of 
the child might not be all unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so 
compassionate a hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had 
taken leave, and left her at the door by turns looking, and listening in 
terror for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, "Jenny, Jenny!"


Chapter 9

Signs And Tokens.

I don't how it is, I seem to be always writing about myself. I mean all the 
time to write about other people, and I try to think about myself as little 
as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself coming into the story again, 
I am really vexed and say, "Dear, dear, you tiresome little creature, I 
wish you wouldn't!" but it is all of no use. I hope any one who may read 
what I write, will understand that if these pages contain a great deal 
about me, I can only suppose it must be because I have really something to 
do with them, and can't be kept out.
My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised; and found so 
much employment for our time, that the winter days flew by us like bright-
winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the evenings, 
Richard gave us his company. Although he was one of the most restless 
creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of our society.
He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say it at 
once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before, but I found 
them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or show that I knew 
anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure, and used to seem so 
unconscious, that sometimes I considered within myself while I was sitting 
at work, whether I was not growing quite deceitful.
But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I was as 
quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice, too, so far as any words were 
concerned; but the innocent manner in which they relied more and more upon 
me, as they took more and more to one another, was so charming, that I had 
great difficulty in not showing how it interested me.
"Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman," Richard would say, 
coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his pleasant laugh and 
perhaps the least tinge of a blush, "that I can't get on without her. 
Before I begin my harum-scarum day - grinding away at those books and 
instruments, and then galloping up hill and down dale, all the country 
round, like a highwayman - it does me so much good to come and have a 
steady walk with our comfortable friend, that here I am again."
"You know, Dame Durden, dear," Ada would say at night, with her head upon 
my shoulder, and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, "I don't 
wont to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to sit a little while, 
thinking, with your dear face for company; and to hear the wind, and 
remember the poor sailors at sea - "
Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over very 
often, now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination of his 
childhood for the sea. Mr Jarndyce had written to a relation of the family, 
a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in Richard's favour, 
generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a gracious manner, "that he 
would be happy to advance the prospects of the young gentleman if it should 
ever prove to be within his power, which was not at all probable - and that 
my Lady sent her compliments to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly 
remembered that she was allied by remote consanguinity), and trusted that 
he would ever do his duty in any honourable profession to which he might 
devote himself."
"So I apprehend it's pretty clear," said Richard to me, "that I shall have 
to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do that before 
now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a clipping 
privateer, to begin with, and could carry off the Chancellor and keep him 
on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause. He'd find himself 
growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!"
With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever flagged, 
Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite perplexed me - 
principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd way, for prudence. It 
entered into all his calculations about money, in a singular manner, which 
I don't think I can better explain than by reverting for a moment to our 
loan to Mr Skimpole.
Mr Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr Skimpole himself or 
from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with instructions to 
me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to Richard. The number of 
little acts of thoughtless expenditure which Richard justified by the 
recovery of his ten pounds, and the number of times he talked to me as if 
he had saved or realised that amount, would form a sum in simple addition.
"My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?" he said to me, when he wanted, 
without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the brickmaker. 
"I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses' business."
"How was that?" said I.
"Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of, and 
never expected to see any more. You don't deny that?"
"No," said I.
"Very well, then I came into possession of ten pounds - "
"The same ten pounds," I hinted.
"That has nothing to do with it!" returned Richard. "I have got ten pounds 
more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to spend it 
without being particular."
In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice of 
these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he carried 
that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
"Let me see!" he would say. "I saved five pounds out of the brickmaker's 
affair; so, if I have a good rattle to London and back in a post-chaise, 
and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved one. And it's a very 
good thing to save one, let me tell you; a penny saved, is a penny got!"
I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there possibly 
can be. He was ardent and brave, and, in the midst of all his wild 
restlessness, was so gentle, that I knew him like a brother in a few weeks. 
His gentleness was natural to him, and would have shown itself abundantly, 
even without Ada's influence; but, with it, he became one of the most 
winning of companions, always so ready to be interested, and always so 
happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am sure that I, sitting with them, 
and walking with them, and talking with them, and noticing from day to day 
how they went on, falling deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing 
about it, and each shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of 
secrets, perhaps not yet suspected even by the other - I am sure that I was 
scarcely less enchanted than they were, and scarcely less pleased with the 
pretty dream.
We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr Jarndyce 
received a letter, and looking at the superscription said, "From Boythorn? 
Aye, aye!" and opened and read it with evident pleasure, announcing to us, 
in a parenthesis, when he was about halfway through, that Boythorn was 
"coming down" on a visit. Now, who was Boythorn? we all thought. And I dare 
say we all thought, too - I am sure I did, for one - would Boythorn at all 
interfere with what was going forward?
"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn," said Mr Jarndyce, 
tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, "more than five-and-forty 
years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the world, and he is now 
the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest boy in the world, and he is 
now the loudest man. He was then the heartiest and sturdiest boy in the 
world, and he is now the heartiest and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous 
fellow."
"In stature, sir?" asked Richard.
"Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr Jarndyce; "being some ten 
years older than I, and a couple of inches taller, with his head thrown 
back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his hands like a 
clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! - there's no simile for his lungs. 
Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the house shake."
As Mr Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we observed 
the favourable omen that there was not the least indication of any change 
in the wind.
"But it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the passion of 
the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick - and Ada, and little Cobweb too, 
for you are all interested in a visitor! - that I speak of," he pursued. 
"His language is as sounding as his voice. He is always in extremes; 
perpetually in the superlative degree. In his condemnation he is all 
ferocity, You might suppose him to be an Ogre, from what he says; and I 
believe he has the reputation of one with some people. There! I tell you no 
more of him beforehand. You must not be surprised to see him take me under 
his protection; for he has never forgotten that I was a low boy at school, 
and that our friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth 
out (he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man," to me, "will be 
here this afternoon, my dear."
I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr Boythorn's 
reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some curiosity. The 
afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear. The dinner-hour 
arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was put back an hour, and 
we were sitting round the fire with no light but the blaze, when the hall-
door suddenly burst open, and the hall resounded with these words, uttered 
with the greatest vehemence and in a stentorian tone:
"We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who told 
us to take the turning to the right instead of to the left. He is the most 
intolerable scoundrel on the face of the earth. His father must have been a 
most consummate villain, ever to have had such a son. I would have that 
fellow shot without the least remorse!"
"Did he do it on purpose?" Mr Jarndyce inquired.
"I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his whole 
existence in misdirecting travellers!" returned the other. "By my soul, I 
thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld, when he was telling me 
to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood before that fellow face 
to face, and didn't knock his brains out!"
"Teeth you mean?" said Mr Jarndyce.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole house 
vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! - And that was 
another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the countenance of that 
fellow, when he was a boy, was the blackest image of perfidy, cowardice, 
and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were 
to meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets tomorrow, I would fell 
him like a rotten tree!"
"I have no doubt of it," said Mr Jarndyce. "Now, will you come upstairs?"
"By my soul, Jarndyce," returned his guest, who seemed to refer to his 
watch, "if you had been married, I would have turned back at the garden 
gate, and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya Mountains, 
sooner than I would have presented myself at this unseasonable hour."
"Not quite so far, I hope?" said Mr Jarndyce.
"By my life and honour, yes!" cried the visitor. "I wouldn't be guilty of 
the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house waiting all this 
time, for any earthly consideration. I would infinitely rather destroy 
myself - infinitely rather!"
Talking thus, they went upstairs; and presently we heard him in his bedroom 
thundering "Ha, ha, ha!" and again, "Ha, ha, ha!" until the flattest echo 
in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion, and to laugh as 
enjoyingly as he did, or as we did when we heard him laugh.
We all conceived a prepossession in his favour; for there was a sterling 
quality in his laugh, and in his vigorous healthy voice, and in the 
roundness and fulness with which he uttered every word he spoke, and in the 
very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank cannons 
and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared to have it so confirmed by 
his appearance, when Mr Jarndyce presented him. He was not only a very 
handsome old gentleman - upright and stalwart as he had been described to 
us - with a massive grey head, a fine composure of face when silent, a 
figure that might have become corpulent but for his being so continually in 
earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a 
double chin but for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly 
required to assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so 
chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much sweetness 
and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing to hide, but 
showed himself exactly as he was - incapable (as Richard said) of anything 
on a limited scale, and firing away with those blank great guns, because he 
carried no small arms whatever - that really I could not help looking at 
him with equal pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed 
with Ada and me, or was led by Mr Jarndyce into some great volley of 
superlatives, or threw up his head like a bloodhound, and gave out that 
tremendous Ha, ha, ha!
"You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?" said Mr Jarndyce.
"By Heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the other. 
"He is the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten thousand guineas 
for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support, in case he 
should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. And his 
father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived!"
The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame 
that he was brought down by Mr Boythorn's man, on his forefinger, and, 
after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master's head. 
To hear Mr Boythorn presently expressing the most implacable and passionate 
sentiments with this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his 
forehead, was to have a good illustration of his character, I thought.
"By my soul, Jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread to 
the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place, I would seize every Master 
in Chancery by the throat tomorrow morning, and shake him until his money 
rolled out of his pockets, and his bones rattled in his skin. I would have 
a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. If you would 
empower me to do it, I would do it for you with the greatest satisfaction!" 
(All this time the very small canary was eating out of his hand.)
"I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at present," 
returned Mr Jarndyce, laughing, "that it would be greatly advanced, even by 
the legal process of shaking the Bench and the whole Bar."
"There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery, on the face of 
the earth!" said Mr Boythorn. "Nothing but a mine below it on a busy day in 
term time, with all its records, rules, and precedents collected in it, and 
every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, 
from its son the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole 
blown to atoms with ten thousand hundred-weight of gunpowder, would reform 
it in the least!"
It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he 
recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw up his 
head, and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country seemed to echo 
to his ha, ha, ha! It had not the least effect in disturbing the bird, 
whose sense of security was complete; and who hopped about the table with 
its quick head now on this side and now on that, turning its bright sudden 
eye on its master, as if he were no more than another bird.
"But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of way?" 
said Mr Jarndyce. "You are not free from the toils of the law yourself?"
"The fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and I have brought 
actions against him for trespass," returned Mr Boythorn. "By Heaven, he is 
the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible that his name can 
be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer."
"Complimentary to our distant relation!" said my Guardian laughingly, to 
Ada and Richard.
"I would beg Miss Clare's pardon and Mr Carstone's pardon," resumed our 
visitor, "if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of the lady, 
and the smile of the gentleman, that it is quite unnecessary, and that they 
keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance."
"Or he keeps us," suggested Richard.
"By my soul!" exclaimed Mr Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that 
fellow is and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-
necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig-headed, numbskull, ever, by some 
inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-
stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and 
consummate blockheads! - But it's no matter; he should not shut up my path 
if he were fifty baronets melted into one, and living in a hundred Chesney 
Wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carving. The 
fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me 'Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments to Mr Lawrence 
Boythorn, and has to call his attention to the fact that the green pathway 
by the old parsonage-house, now the property of Mr Lawrence Boythorn, is 
Sir Leicester's right of way. Being in fact a portion of the park of 
Chesney Wold; and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up the 
same.' I write to the fellow, 'Mr Lawrence Boythorn presents his 
compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call his 
attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir Leicester 
Dedlock's positions on every possible subject, and has to add, in reference 
to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to see the man who may 
undertake to do it.' The fellow sends a most abandoned villain with one 
eye, to construct a gateway. I play upon that execrable scoundrel with a 
fire-engine, until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. The fellow 
erects a gate in the night. I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He 
sends his myrmidons to come over the fence, and pass and repass. I catch 
them in humane mantraps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with 
the engine - resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the 
existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; I 
bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and battery; I 
defend them, and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha, ha!"
To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have thought 
him the angriest of mankind. To see him, at the very same time, looking at 
the bird now perched upon his thumb, and softly smoothing its feathers with 
his forefinger, one might have thought him the gentlest. To hear him laugh, 
and see the broad good nature of his face then, one might have supposed 
that he had not a care in the world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that 
his whole existence was a summer joke.
"No, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock! Though I 
willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that Lady Dedlock is the 
most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would do any homage that a 
plain gentleman, and no baronet, with a head seven hundred years thick, 
may. A man who joined his regiment at twenty, and within a week, challenged 
the most imperious and presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that 
ever drew the breath of life through a tight waist - and got broke for it - 
is not the man to be walked over, by all the Sir Lucifers dead or alive, 
locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!"
"Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over, either?" said my 
Guardian.
"Most assuredly not!" said Mr Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder with 
an air of protection, that had something serious in it, though he laughed. 
"He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may rely upon him! 
But, speaking of this trespass - with apologies to Miss Clare and Miss 
Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so dry a subject - is 
there nothing for me from your men, Kenge and Carboy?"
"I think not, Esther?" said Mr Jarndyce.
"Nothing, Guardian."
"Much obliged!" said Mr Boythorn. "Had no need to ask, after even my slight 
experience of Miss Summerson's forethought for every one about her." (They 
all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) "I inquired because, 
coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet been in town, and I 
thought some letters might have been sent down here. I dare say they will 
report progress tomorrow morning."
I saw him so often, in the course of the evening, which passed very 
pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a satisfaction 
that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat at a little distance 
from the piano listening to the music - and he had small occasion to tell 
us that he was passionately fond of music, for his face showed it - that I 
asked my Guardian, as we sat at the backgammon board, whether Mr Boythorn 
had ever been married.
"No," said he. "No."
"But he meant to be!" said I.
"How did you find out that?" he returned with a smile.
"Why, Guardian," I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding 
what was in my thoughts, "there is something so tender in his manner, after 
all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and - "
Mr Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting, as I have just 
described him.
I said no more.
"You are right, little woman," he answered. "He was all but married, once. 
Long ago. And once."
"Did the lady die?"
"No - but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his later 
life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of romance 
yet?"
"I think, Guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say that, 
when you have told me so."
"He has never since been what he might have been," said Mr Jarndyce, "and 
now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant, and his 
little yellow friend. - It's your throw, my dear!"
I felt, from my Guardian's manner, that beyond this point I could not 
pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forebore to ask 
any further questions. I was interested but not curious. I thought a little 
while about this old love story in the night, when I was awakened by Mr 
Boythorn's lusty snoring; and I tried to do that very difficult thing - 
imagine old people young again, and invested with the graces of youth. But 
I fell asleep before I had succeeded, and dreamed of the days when I lived 
in my godmother's house. I am not sufficiently acquainted with such 
subjects to know whether it is at all remarkable, that I almost always 
dreamed of that period of my life.
With the morning, there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to Mr 
Boythorn, informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon him at 
noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills, and added up 
my books, and made all the household affairs as compact as possible, I 
remained at home while Mr Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard, took advantage of a 
very fine day to make a little excursion. Mr Boythorn was to wait for Kenge 
and Carboy's clerk, and then was to go on foot to meet them on their 
return.
Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen's books, adding up 
columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I daresay making a great bustle 
about it, when Mr Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had some idea 
that the clerk who was to be sent down, might be the young gentleman who 
had met me at the coach-office; and I was glad to see him, because he was 
associated with my present happiness.
I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an entirely 
new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilackid gloves, a 
neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house flower in his button-
hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger. Besides which, he quite 
scented the dining-room with bear's grease and other perfumery. He looked 
at me with an attention that quite confused me, when I begged him to take a 
seat until the servant should return; and as he sat there, crossing and 
uncrossing his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant 
ride, and hoped that Mr Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found 
him looking at me, in the same scrutinising and curious way.
When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr 
Boythorn's room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for him when 
he came down, of which Mr Jarndyce hoped he would partake. He said with 
some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door, "Shall I have the 
honour of finding you here, miss?" I replied yes, I should be there; and he 
went out with a bow and another look.
I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much embarrassed; 
and I fancied that the best thing I could do, would be to wait until I saw 
that he had everything he wanted, and then to leave him to himself. The 
lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some time on the table. The 
interview with Mr Boythorn was a long one - and a stormy one too, I should 
think; for although his room was at some distance, I heard his loud voice 
rising every now and then like a high wind, and evidently blowing perfect 
broadsides of denunciation.
At last Mr Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the conference. 
"My eye, miss," he said in a low voice, "he's a Tartar!"
"Pray take some refreshment, sir," said I.
Mr Guppy sat down at the table, and began nervously sharpening the carving-
knife on the carving-fork; still looking at me (as I felt quite sure 
without looking at him), in the same unusual manner. The sharpening lasted 
so long, that at last I felt a kind of obligation on me to raise my eyes, 
in order that I might break the spell under which he seemed to labour, of 
not being able to leave off.
He immediately looked at the dish, and began to carve.
"What will you take yourself, miss? You'll take a morsel of something?"
"No, thank you," said I.
"Shan't I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?" said Mr Guppy, 
hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.
"Nothing, thank you," said I. "I have only waited to see that you have 
everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?"
"No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I'm sure. I've every thing I can 
require to make me comfortable - at least I - not comfortable - I'm never 
that:" he drank off two more glasses of wine, one after another.
I thought I had better go.
"I beg your pardon, miss!" said Mr Guppy, rising, when he saw me rise. "But 
would you allow me the favour of a minute's private conversation?"
Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.
"What follows is without prejudice, miss?" said Mr Guppy, anxiously 
bringing a chair towards my table.
"I don't understand what you mean," said I, wondering.
"It's one of our law terms, miss. You won't make any use of it to my 
detriment, at Kenge and Carboy's, or elsewhere. If our conversation 
shouldn't lead to anything, I am to be as I was, and am not to be 
prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it's in total 
confidence."
"I am at a loss, sir," said I, "to imagine what you can have to communicate 
in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but once; but I should 
be very sorry to do you any injury."
"Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it - that's quite sufficient." All this time 
Mr Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief, or tightly 
rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his right. "If you would 
excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I think it might assist me in 
getting on, without a continual choke that cannot fail to be mutually 
unpleasant."
He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well 
behind my table.
"You wouldn't allow me to offer you one, would you, miss?" said Mr Guppy, 
apparently refreshed.
"Not any," said I.
"Not half a glass?" said Mr Guppy; "quarter? No! Then to proceed. My 
present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy's, is two pound a-week. 
When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it was one-fifteen, and 
had stood at that figure for a lengthened period. A rise of five has since 
taken place, and a further rise of five is guaranteed at the expiration of 
a term not exceeding twelve months from the present date. My mother has a 
little property, which takes the form of a small life annuity; upon which 
she lives in an independent though unassuming manner, in the Old Street 
Road. She is eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never 
interferes, is all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her 
failings - as who has not? - but I never knew her do it when company was 
present; at which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or 
malt liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is 
lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the 'ealthiest 
outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore you. Would you be 
so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a declaration - to make an 
offer!"
Mr Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table, and not much 
frightened. I said, "Get up from that ridiculous position immediately, sir, 
or you will oblige me to break my implied promise and ring the bell!"
"Hear me out, miss!" said Mr Guppy, folding his hands.
"I cannot consent to hear another word, sir," I returned, "unless you get 
up from the carpet directly, and go and sit down at the table, as you ought 
to do if you have any sense at all."
He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.
"Yet what a mockery it is, miss," he said, with his hand upon his heart, 
and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the tray, "to be 
stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils from food at such 
a moment, miss."
"I beg you to conclude," said I; "you have asked me to hear you out, and I 
beg you to conclude."
"I will, miss," said Mr Guppy. "As I love and honour, so likewise I obey. 
Would that I could make Thee the subject of that vow, before the shrine!"
"That is quite impossible," said I, "and entirely out of the question."
"I am aware," said Mr Guppy, leaning forward over the tray, and regarding 
me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not directed to him, 
with his late intent look, "I am aware that in a worldly point of view, 
according to all appearances, my offer is a poor one. But, Miss Summerson! 
Angel! - No, don't ring - I have been brought up in a sharp school, and am 
accustomed to a variety of general practice. Though a young man, I have 
ferreted out evidence, got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your 
hand, what means might I not find of advancing your interests, and pushing 
your fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know 
nothing now, certainly; but what might I not, if I had your confidence, and 
you set me on?"
I told him that he addressed my interest, or what he supposed to be my 
interest, quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination; and he 
would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go away 
immediately.
"Cruel miss," said Mr Guppy, "hear but another word! I think you must have 
seen that I was struck with those charms, on the day when I waited at the 
Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I could not forbear a 
tribute to those charms when I put up the steps of the 'ackney coach. It 
was a feeble tribute to Thee, but it was well meant. Thy image has ever 
since been fixed in my breast. I have walked up and down, of an evening, 
opposite Jellyby's house, only to look upon the bricks that once contained 
Thee. This out of today, quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, 
which was its pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for Thee 
alone. If I speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my 
respectful wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it."
"I should be pained, Mr Guppy," said I, rising and putting my hand upon the 
bell-rope, "to do you or any one who was sincere, the injustice of 
slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably expressed. If you have 
really meant to give me a proof of your good opinion, though ill-timed and 
misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank you. I have very little reason to 
be proud, and I am not proud, I hope," I think I added, without very well 
knowing what I said, "that you will now go away as if you had never been so 
exceedingly foolish, and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's business."
"Half a minute, miss!" cried Mr Guppy, checking me as I was about to ring. 
"This has been without prejudice?"
"I will never mention it," said I, "unless you should give me future 
occasion to do so."
"A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better - at any 
time, however distant, that's no consequence, for my feelings can never 
alter - of anything I have said, particularly what might I not do - Mr 
William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or, if removed, or dead (of 
blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs Guppy, three hundred 
and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient."
I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr Guppy, laying his written card 
upon the table, and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my eyes as he 
went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had passed the door.
I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments, and 
getting through plenty of business. Then, I arranged my desk, and put 
everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought I had 
quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went upstairs to my 
own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh about it, and then 
surprised myself still more by beginning to cry about it. In short, I was 
in a flutter for a little while; and felt as if an old chord had been more 
coarsely touched than it ever had been since the days of the dear old doll, 
long buried in the garden.


Chapter 10

The Law-Writer

On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say more particularly 
in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr Snagsby, Law Stationer, pursues his 
lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's Court, at most times a shady place, 
Mr Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins 
and rolls of parchment; in paper - foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, 
whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India-
rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red tape, and 
green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacks, diaries, and law lists; in string 
boxes, rulers, inkstands - glass and leaden, penknives, scissors, bodkins, 
and other small office cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to 
mention; ever since he was out of his time, and went into partnership with 
Peffer. On that occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionised by 
the new inscription in fresh paint, Peffer and Snagsby, displacing the time-
honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend, Peffer only. For smoke, 
which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's name, and 
clung to his dwelling-place, that the affectionate parasite quite 
overpowered the parent tree.
Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there, for he 
has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard of St. 
Andrew's, Holborn, with the wagons and hackney-coaches roaring past him, 
all the day and half the night, like one great dragon. If he ever steal 
forth when the dragon is at rest, to air himself again in Cook's Court, 
until admonished to return by the crowning of the sanguine cock in the 
cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street, whose ideas of daylight it 
would be curious to ascertain, since he knows from his personal observation 
next to nothing about it - if Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of 
Cook's Court, which no law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he 
comes invisibly, and no one is the worse or wiser.
In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time" of seven 
long years, there dwelt with Peffer, in the same law-stationering premises, 
a niece - a short, shrewd niece, something too violently compressed about 
the waist, and with a sharp nose like a sharp autumn evening, inclining to 
be frosty towards the end. The Cook's-Courtiers had a rumour flying among 
them, that the mother of this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved 
by too jealous a solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, 
lace her up every morning with her maternal foot, against the bed-post for 
a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited internally 
pints of vinegar and lemon-juice: which acids, they held, had mounted to 
the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever of the many tongues of 
Rumour this frothy report originated, it either never reached, or never 
influenced, the ears of young Snagsby; who, having wooed and won its fair 
subject on his arrival at man's estate, entered into two partnerships at 
once. So now, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr Snagsby and the niece 
are one; and the niece still cherishes her figure - which, however tastes 
may differ, is unquestionably so far precious, that there is mighty little 
of it.
Mr and Mrs Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the 
neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed from 
Mrs Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr Snagsby, 
otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet tones, is rarely 
heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man, with a shining head, and a scrubby 
clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends to meekness and 
obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook's Court, in his grey shop-coat 
and black calico sleeves, looking up at the clouds; or stands behind a desk 
in his dark shop, with a heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at 
sheepskin, in company with his two 'Prentices; he is emphatically a 
retiring and unassuming man. From beneath his feet, at such times, as from 
a shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently arise complainings 
and lamentations in the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some 
occasions, when these reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr Snagsby mentions 
to the 'Prentices, "I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!"
This proper name, so used by Mr Snagsby, has before now sharpened the wit 
of the Cook's-Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the name of Mrs 
Snagsby; seeing that she might with great force and expression be termed a 
Guster, in compliment to her stormy character. It is, however, the 
possession, and the only possession, except fifty shillings per annum and a 
very small box indifferently filled with clothing, of a lean young woman 
from a workhouse (by some supposed to have been christened Augusta); who, 
although she was farmed or contracted for, during her growing time, by an 
amiable benefactor of his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to 
have been developed under the most favourable circumstances, "has fits" - 
which the parish can't account for.
Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten years 
older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits; and is so 
apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron Saint, that 
except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink, or the 
copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be near her at the 
time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a satisfaction to the 
parents and guardians of the 'Prentices, who feel that there is little 
danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the breast of youth; she is a 
satisfaction to Mrs Snagsby, who can always find fault with her; she is a 
satisfaction to Mr Snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her. The Law-
stationer's establishment is, in Guster's eyes, a Temple of plenty and 
splendour. She believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as 
one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most 
elegant apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court at 
one end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor-street) and of Coavins's the 
sheriff's officer's back-yard at the other, she regards as a prospect of 
unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil - and plenty of it too -
 of Mr Snagsby looking at Mrs Snagsby, are in her eyes as achievements of 
Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many privations.
Mr Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business 
to Mrs Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the Tax-gatherers, 
appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licenses Mr Snagsby's 
entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she thinks 
fit to provide for dinner; insomuch that she is the high standard of 
comparison among the neighbouring wives, a long way down Chancery Lane on 
both sides, and even out in Holborn, who, in any domestic passages of arms, 
habitually call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their 
(the wives') position and Mrs Snagsby's, and their (the husbands') 
behaviour and Mrs Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying, bat-like, about Cook's 
Court, and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say that Mrs 
Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive; and that Mr Snagsby is sometimes 
worried out of house and home, and that if he had the spirit of a mouse he 
wouldn't stand it. It is even observed, that the wives who quote him to 
their self-willed husbands as a shining example, in reality look down upon 
look down upon him; and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness 
than one particular lady whose lord is more than suspected of laying his 
umbrella on her as an instrument of correction. But these vague whisperings 
may arise from Mr Snagsby's being, in his way, rather a meditative and 
poetical man; loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer time, and to 
observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are; also to lounge 
about the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon, and to remark (if in good 
spirits) that there were old times once, and that you'd find a stone coffin 
or two, now, under that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. 
He solaces his imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and 
Vices, and Masters of the Rolls, who are deceased; and he gets such a 
flavour of the country out of telling the two 'Prentices how he has heard 
say that a brook "as clear as crystal" once ran right down the middle of 
Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile leading slap away into the 
meadows - gets such a flavour of the country out of this, that he never 
wants to go there.
The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but it is not yet fully 
effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr Snagsby standing at his shop-door 
looking up at the clouds, sees a crow, who is out late, skim westward over 
the leaden slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow flies straight 
across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden, into Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr Tulkinghorn. It 
is let off in sets of chambers now; and in those shrunken fragments of its 
greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy staircases, 
passages, and antechambers, still remain; and even its painted ceilings, 
where Allegory, in Roman helmet, and celestial linen, sprawls among 
balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes 
the head ache - as would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. 
Here, among his many boxes labelled with transcendant names, lives Mr 
Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where the 
great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is today, quiet at his 
table. An Oyster of the old school, whom nobody can open.
Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of the present 
afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from attention, able to afford 
it. Heavy broad-backed old-fashioned mahogany and horse-hair chairs, not 
easily lifted, obsolete tables with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers, 
presentation prints of the holders of great titles in the last generation, 
or the last but one, environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles 
the floor where he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver 
candlesticks, that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The 
titles on the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything 
that can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers 
are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring to it. 
With the round top of an inkstand, and two broken bits of sealing-wax, he 
is silently and slowly working out whatever train of indecision is in his 
mind. Now, the inkstand top is in the middle: now, the red bit of sealing-
wax, now, the black bit. That's not it. Mr Tulkinghorn must gather them all 
up, and begin again.
Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory staring down 
at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he cutting it dead, 
Mr Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. He keeps no staff; only 
one middle-aged man, usually a little out at elbows, who sits in a high Pew 
in the hall, and is rarely overburdened with business. Mr Tulkinghorn is 
not in a common way. He wants no clerks. He is a great reservoir of 
confidences, not to be so tapped. His clients want him; he is all in all. 
Drafts that he requires to be drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the 
Temple on mysterious instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made, 
are made at the stationers, expense being no consideration. The middle-aged 
man in the Pew, knows scarcely more of the affairs of the Peerage, than any 
crossing-sweeper in Holborn.
The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top, the 
little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to the left. 
This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or never. - Now! Mr 
Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on his hat, puts the 
manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the middle-aged man out at 
elbows, "I shall be back presently." Very rarely tells him anything more 
explicit.
Mr Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came - not quite so straight, but nearly - 
to Cook's Court, Cursitor street. To Snagsby's Law Stationer's, Deeds 
engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in all its branches, etc., etc., 
etc.
It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a balmy 
fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about Snagsby's 
door. The hours are early there; dinner at half-past one, and supper at 
half-past nine. Mr Snagsby was about to descend into the subterranean 
regions to take tea, when he looked out of his door just now, and saw the 
crow who was out late.
"Master at home?"
Guster is minding the shop, for the 'Prentices take tea in the kitchen, 
with Mr and Mrs Snagsby; consequently, the robemaker's two daughters, 
combing their curls at the two glasses in the two second-floor windows of 
the opposite house, are not driving the two 'Prentices to distraction, as 
they fondly suppose, but are merely awakening the unprofitable admiration 
of Guster, whose hair won't grow, and never would, and, it is confidently 
thought, never will.
"Master at home?" says Mr Tulkinghorn.
Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad to 
get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and veneration, 
as a store house of awful implements of the great torture of the law: a 
place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.
Mr Snagsby appears: greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a bit of 
bread and butter. Says, "Bless my soul, sir! Mr Tulkinghorn!"
"I want half a word with you, Snagsby."
"Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man round for 
me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir." Snagsby has brightened in a moment.
The confined room, strong of parchment grease, is warehouse, counting-
house, and copying-office. Mr Tulkinghorn sits, facing round, on a stool at 
the desk.
"Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby."
"Yes, sir." Mr Snagsby turns up the gas, and coughs behind his hand, 
modestly anticipating profit. Mr Snagsby, as a timid man, is accustomed to 
cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save words.
"You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately."
"Yes, sir, we did."
"There was one of them," says Mr Tulkinghorn, carelessly feeling - tight, 
unopenable Oyster of the old school! - in the wrong coat pocket, "the 
handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather like. As I happened to be 
passing, and thought I had it about me, I looked in to ask you - but I 
haven't got it. No matter, any other time will do - Ah! here it is! - I 
looked in to ask you who copied this?"
"Who copied this, sir?" says Mr Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat on the 
desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a twist of the 
left hand peculiar to law-stationers. "We gave this out, sir. We were 
giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that time. I can tell 
you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to my Book."
Mr Snagsby takes his Book down from the safe, makes another bolt of the bit 
of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes the affidavit 
aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down a page of the Book. 
"Jewby - Packer - Jarndyce."
"Jarndyce! Here we are, sir," says Mr Snagsby. "To be sure! I might have 
remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a Writer who lodges just over on 
the opposite side of the lane."
Mr Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the Law-stationer, read 
it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.
"What do you call him? Nemo?" says Mr Tulkinghorn.
"Nemo, sir. Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night, 
at eight o'clock; brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine."
"Nemo!" repeats Mr Tulkinghorn. "Nemo is Latin for no one."
"It must be English for some one, sir, I think," Mr Snagsby submits, with 
his deferential cough. "It is a person's name. Here it is, you see, sir! 
Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o'clock; brought in, 
Thursday morning, half after nine."
The tail of Mr Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs Snagsby 
looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by deserting his tea. Mr 
Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs Snagsby, as who should say, 
"My dear, a customer!"
"Half after nine, sir," repeats Mr Snagsby. "Our law-writers, who live by 
job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but it's the name 
he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a written 
advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the King's Bench 
Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know the kind of 
document, sir - wanting employ?"
Mr Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of Coavins's, 
the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavins's windows. Coavins's 
coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of several gentlemen under a 
cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr Snagsby takes the opportunity of 
slightly turning his head, to glance over his shoulder at his little woman, 
and to make apologetic motions with his mouth to this effect:
"Tul-king-horn - rich - in-flu-en-tial!"
"Have you given this man work before?" asks Mr Tulkinghorn.
"O dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."
"Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he lived?"
"Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a - " Mr Snagsby makes another 
bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable - "at a Rag and 
Bottle shop."
"Can you show me the place as I go back?"
"With the greatest pleasure, sir!"
Mr Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his black 
coat, takes his hat from its peg. "Oh! here is my little woman!" he says 
aloud. "My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one of the lads to look 
after the shop, while I step across the lane with Mr Tulkinghorn? Mrs 
Snagsby, sir - I shan't be two minutes, my love!"
Mrs Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps at them 
through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office, refers to the 
entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently curious.
"You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr Snagsby, walking 
deferentially in the road, and leaving the narrow pavement to the lawyer; 
"and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in general, sir. The 
advantage of this particular man is, that he never wants sleep. He'll go at 
it right on end, if you want him to, as long as ever you like."
It is quite dark now, and the gaslamps have acquired their full effect. 
Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against 
counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and 
defendants, and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in 
whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles 
to the transaction of the commonest business of life - diving through law 
and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made 
of nobody knows what, and collects about us nobody knows whence or how: we 
only knowing in general that when there is too much of it, we find it 
necessary to shovel it away - the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a 
Rag and Bottle shop, and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, 
lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is 
announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
"This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.
"This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly. "Thank 
you."
"Are you not going in, sir?"
"No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good evening. 
Thank you!" Mr Snagsby lifts his hat, and returns to his little woman and 
his tea.
But, Mr Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes a 
short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr Krook, and enters it 
straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, 
and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. The old man 
rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in his hand.
"Pray is your lodger within?"
"Male or female, sir?" says Mr Krook.
"Male. The person who does copying."
Mr Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an indistinct 
impression of his aristocratic repute.
"Did you wish to see him, sir?"
"Yes."
"It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr Krook with a grin. "Shall I call 
him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"
"I'll go up to him, then," says Mr Tulkinghorn.
"Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr Krook, with his cat 
beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase looking after Mr 
Tulkinghorn. "Hi - hi!" he says, when Mr Tulkinghorn has nearly 
disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the handrail. The cat expands her 
wicked mouth, and snarls at him.
"Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know what they 
say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
"What do they say of him?"
"They say he has sold himself to the Enemy; but you and I know better - he 
don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humoured and 
gloomy, that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other. Don't 
put him out, sir. That's my advice!"
Mr Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door on the 
second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally 
extinguishes his candle in doing so.
The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it, if he had 
not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. In 
the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if Poverty had 
gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner by the chimney, stand 
a deal table and a broken desk; a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In 
another corner, a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs, serves 
for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the 
cheeks of a starved man. The floor is bare; except that one old mat, 
trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain 
veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn 
together; and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be 
staring in - the Banshee of the man upon the bed.
For on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork, lean-
ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just within the 
doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with 
bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a candle that 
has guttered down, until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has 
doubled over, and left a tower of winding sheet above it. His hair is 
ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard - the latter ragged too, 
and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy 
as the room is, foul and filthy as the air, it is not easy to perceive what 
fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the 
general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there 
comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
"Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick against the 
door.
He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away, but his 
eyes are surely open.
"Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo!"
As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long, goes out, 
and leaves him in the dark; with the gaunt eyes in the shutters staring 
down upon the bed.


Chapter 11

Our Dear Brother

A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand, as he stands in the dark room, 
irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?"
"It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his ear. 
"Can't you wake him?"
"No."
"What have you done with your candle?"
"It's gone out. Here it is."
Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and tries to 
get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his endeavours are 
vain. Muttering after an ineffectual call to his lodger, that he will go 
downstairs and bring a lighted candle from the shop, the old man departs. 
Mr Tulkinghorn, for some new reason that he has, does not await his return 
in the room, but on the stairs outside.
The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up, with 
his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man generally sleep 
like this?" inquires the lawyer, in a low voice. "Hi! I don't know," says 
Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows. "I know next to nothing 
of his habits, except that he keeps himself very close."
Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the great 
eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes upon the 
bed.
"God save us!" exclaims Mr Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!"
Krook drops the heavy hand he has taken up, so suddenly that the arm swings 
over the bedside.
They look at one another for a moment.
"Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's 
poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with his lean 
hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.
Mr Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing, and calls "Miss Flite! Flite! Make 
haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!" Krook follows him with his eyes, and, 
while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old portmanteau and 
steal back again.
"Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!" So Mr Krook addresses a crazy 
little woman, who is his female lodger: who appears and vanishes in a 
breath: who soon returns, accompanied by a testy medical man, brought from 
his dinner - with a broad snuffy upper lip, and a broad Scotch tongue.
"Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at them 
after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!"
Mr Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has been 
dead any time?
"Any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "It's probable he wull have 
been dead aboot three hours."
"About that time, I should say," observes a dark young man, on the other 
side of the bed.
"Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the first.
The dark young man says yes.
"Then I'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other; "for I'm nae gude 
here!" With which remark, he finishes his brief attendance, and returns to 
finish his dinner.
The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face, and 
carefully examines the Law-writer, who has established his pretensions to 
his name by becoming indeed No one.
"I knew this person by sight, very well," says he. "He has purchased opium 
of me, for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related to him?" 
glancing round upon the three bystanders.
"I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from the 
surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once, I was the nearest relation 
he had."
"He has died," says the surgeon, "of an overdose of opium, there is no 
doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough here now," 
taking an old teapot from Mr Krook, "to kill a dozen people."
"Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook.
"Took the overdose?"
"Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible 
interest.
"I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit of 
taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?"
"I suppose he was. His room - don't look rich," says Krook; who might have 
changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around. "But I have 
never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to name the 
circumstances to me."
"Did he owe you any rent?"
"Six weeks."
"He will never pay it?" says the young man, resuming his examination. "It 
is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to judge from 
his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy release. Yet he 
must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare say good-looking." He 
says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead's edge, with his 
face towards that other face, and his hand upon the region of the heart. "I 
recollect once thinking there was something in his manner, uncouth as it 
was, that denoted a fall in life. Was that so? he continues, looking round.
Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose heads 
of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my lodger for a 
year and a half, and lived - or didn't live - by law-writing, I know no 
more of him.
During this dialogue, Mr Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old 
portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all appearance, 
from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the bed - from the young 
surgeon's professional interest in death, noticeable as being quite apart 
from his remarks on the deceased as an individual; from the old man's 
unction; and the little crazy woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been 
as inexpressive as his rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been 
thinking all this while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor 
attention nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily 
might the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, 
as the tone of Mr Tulkinghorn from his case.
He now interposes; addressing the young surgeon, in his unmoved 
professional way: -
"I looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the intention of 
giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some employment at his 
trade of copying. I had heard of him from my stationer - Snagsby of Cook's 
Court. Since no one here knows anything about him, it might be as well to 
send for Snagsby. Ah!" to the little crazy woman, who has often seen him in 
Court, and whom he has often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-
show, to go for the law stationer. "Suppose you do!"
While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation, and 
covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr Krook and he 
interchange a word or two. Mr Tulkinghorn says nothing; but stands, ever, 
near the old-portmantuea.
Mr Snabsby arrives hastily, in his grey coat and his black sleeves. "Dear 
me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless my soul!"
"Can you give the person of the house any information about this 
unfortunate creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr Tulkinghorn. "He was in arrears 
with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know."
"Well, sir," says Mr Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind his 
hand; "I really don't know what advice I could offer, except sending for 
the beadle."
"I don't speak of advice," returns Mr Tulkinghorn. "I could advise - "
("No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr Snagsby, with his deferential 
cough.)
"I speak of affording some clue to his connections, or to where he came 
from, or to anything concerning him."
"I assure you, sir," says Mr Snagsby, after prefacing his reply with his 
cough of general propitiation, "that I no more know where he came from, 
than I know - "
"Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon, to help him out.
A pause. Mr Tulkinghorn looking at the law stationer. Mr Krook, with his 
mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
"As to his connections, sir," says Mr Snagsby, "if a person was to say to 
me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you in the Bank 
of England, if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do it, sir! About a 
year and a half ago - to the best of my belief at the time when he first 
came to lodge at the present Rag and Bottle Shop - "
"That was the time!" says Krook, with a nod.
"About a year and a half ago," says Mr Snagsby, strengthened, "he came into 
our place one morning after breakfast, and, finding my little woman (which 
I name Mrs Snagsby when I use that appellation) in our shop, produced a 
specimen of his handwriting, and gave her to understand that he was in 
wants of copying work to do, and was - not to put too fine a point upon it -
 " a favourite apology for plain-speaking with Mr Snagsby, which he always 
offers with a sort of argumentative frankness, "hard up! My little woman is 
not in general partial to strangers, particular - not to put too fine a 
point upon it - when they want anything. But she was rather took by 
something about this person; whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair 
being in want of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you 
to judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My 
little woman has't a good ear for names," proceeds Mr Snagsby, after 
consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and she considered 
Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which, she got into a 
habit of saying to me at meals, 'Mr Snagsby, you haven't found Nimrod any 
work yet?' or 'Mr Snagsby, why didn't you give that eight-and-thirty 
Chancery folio in Jarndyce, to Nimrod?' or such like. And that is the way 
he gradually fell into job-work at our place; and that is the most I know 
of him, except that he was a quick hand, and a hand not sparing of night-
work; and that if you gave him out, say five-and-forty folio on the 
Wednesday night, you would have it brought in on the Thursday morning. All 
of which - " Mr Snagsby concludes by politely motioning with his hat 
towards the bed, as much as to add, "I have no doubt my honourable friend 
would confirm, if he were in a condition to do it."
"Hadn't you better see," says Mr Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he had any 
papers that may enlighten you? There will be an Inquest, and you will be 
asked the question. You can read?"
"No, I can't," returns the old man, with a sudden grin.
"Snagsby," says Mr Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will get 
into some trouble or difficulty, otherwise. Being here I'll wait, if you 
make haste; and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should ever be 
necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the candle for Mr 
Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is anything to help you."
"In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr Tulkinghorn does not appear to have seen it 
before, though he is standing so close to it, and though there is very 
little else, Heaven knows.
The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer conducts 
the search. The surgeon leans against a corner of the chimney-piece; Miss 
Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt old scholar of the 
old school, with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees, 
his large black waistcoat, his long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of 
limp white neckerchief tied in the bow the Peerage knows so well, stands in 
exactly the same place and attitude.
There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau; there 
is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets on the road 
of Poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium, on which are 
scrawled rough memoranda - as, took, such a day, so many grains; took, such 
another day, so many more - begun some time ago, as if with the intention 
of being regularly continued, but soon left off. There are a few dirty 
scraps of newspapers, all referring to Coroners' Inquests; there is nothing 
else. They search the cupboard, and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. 
There is not a morsel of an old letter, or of any other writing, in either. 
The young surgeon examines the dress on the law writer. A knife and some 
odd halfpence are all he finds. Mr Snagsby's suggestion is the practical 
suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out of 
the room. "Don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon: "that won't do!" 
Mr Krook therefore drives her out before him; and she goes furtively 
downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her lips.
"Good night!" says Mr Tulkinghorn; and goes home to Allegory and 
meditation.
By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its inhabitants 
assemble to discuss the thing; and the outposts of the army of observation 
(principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr Krook's window, which they 
closely invest. A policeman has already walked up to the room, and walked 
down again to the door, where he stands like a tower, only condescending to 
see the boys at his base occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they 
quail and fall back. Mrs Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on 
speaking terms with Mrs Piper, in consequence of an unpleasantness 
originating in young Perkins having "fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews 
her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the 
corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge of 
life, and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges 
confidential communications with the policeman, and has the appearance of 
an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in 
station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and bare-headed 
scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's the matter. The 
general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr Krook warn't made away 
with first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was not. 
In the midst of this sensation, the beadle arrives.
The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a 
ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the moment, 
if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The policeman 
considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen-
times; but gives him admission, as something that must be borne with until 
Government shall abolish him. The sensation is heightened, as the tidings 
spread from mouth to mouth that the beadle is on the ground, and has gone 
in.
By-and-by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation, which 
has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be in want of 
witnesses, for the inquest tomorrow, who can tell the Coroner and Jury 
anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is immediately referred to 
innumerable people who can tell nothing whatever. Is made more imbecile by 
being constantly informed that Mrs Green's son "was a law-writer hisself, 
and knowed him better than anybody" - which son of Mrs Green's appears, on 
inquiry, to be at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three 
months out, but considered accessible by telegraph, on application to the 
Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, 
examining the inhabitants; always shutting the door first, and by 
exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy, exasperating the public. Policeman 
seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest, and undergoes reaction. 
Taunts the beadle, in shrill youthful voices, with having boiled a boy; 
chorusses fragments of a popular song to that effect, and importing that 
the boy was made into soup for the workhouse. Policeman at last finds it 
necessary to support the law, and seize a vocalist; who is released upon 
the flight of the rest, on condition of his getting out of this then, come! 
and cutting it - a condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies 
off for the time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more 
or less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible 
greatcoat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues his 
lounging way with a heavy tread: beating the palms of his white gloves one 
against the other, and stopping now and then, at a street-corner, to look 
casually about for anything between a lost child and a murder.
Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting about 
Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every Juror's name is wrongly 
spelt, and nothing is rightly spelt but the beadle's own name, which nobody 
can read or wants to know. The summonses served, and his witnesses 
forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr Krook's, to keep a small appointment he 
has made with certain paupers; who, presently arriving, are conducted 
upstairs; where they leave the great eyes in the shutter something new to 
stare at, in that last shape which earthly lodgings take for No one - and 
for Every one.
And, all that night, the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau; and 
the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through five-and-
forty years, lies there, with no more track behind him, that any one can 
trace, than a deserted infant.
Next day the court is all alive - is like a fair, as Mrs Perkins, more than 
reconciled to Mrs Piper, says, in amicable conversation with that excellent 
woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor room at the Sol's Arms, 
where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice a-week, and where the chair is 
filled by a gentleman of professional celebrity, faced by little Swills, 
the comic vocalist, who hopes (according to the bill in the window) that 
his friends will rally round him, and support first-rate talent. The Sol's 
Arms does a brisk stroke of business all the morning. Even children so 
require sustaining, under the general excitement, that a pieman who has 
established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court, says his 
brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering between the 
door of Mr Krook's establishment and the door of the Sol's Arms, shows the 
curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet spirits, and accepts the 
compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
At the appointed hour arrives the Coroner, for whom the Jurymen are 
waiting, and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good dry 
skittle-ground attached to the Sol's Arms. The Coroner frequents more 
public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer, tobacco-
smoke, and spirits, is inseparable in his vocation from death in its most 
awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the landlord to the 
Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the piano, and takes a 
Windsor-chair at the head of a long table, formed of several short tables 
put together, and ornamented with glutinous rings in endless involutions, 
made by pots and glasses. As many of the Jury as can crowd together at the 
table sit there. The rest get among the spittoons and pipes, or lean 
against the piano. Over the Coroner's head is a small iron garland, the 
pendant handle of a bell, which rather gives the Majesty of the Court the 
appearance of going to be hanged.
Call over and swear the Jury! While the ceremony is in progress, sensation 
is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a large shirt-collar, 
with a moist eye, and an inflamed nose, who modestly takes a position near 
the door as one of the general public, but seems familiar with the room 
too. A whisper circulates that this is little Swills. It is considered not 
unlikely that he will get up an imitation of the Coroner, and make it the 
principal feature of the Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
"Well, gentlemen - " the Coroner begins.
"Silence there, will you!" says the beadle. Not to the Coroner, though it 
might appear so.
"Well, gentlemen!" resumes the Coroner. "You are impanelled here, to 
inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given before you, 
as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will give your 
verdict according to the - skittles; they must be stopped you know, beadle! 
- evidence, and not according to anything else. The first thing to be done, 
is to view the body."
"Make way there!" cries the beadle.
So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a 
straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr Krook's back second 
floor, from which a few of the Jurymen retire pale and precipitately. The 
beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and 
buttons (for whose accommodation he has provided a special little table 
near the Coroner, in the Harmonic Meeting Room) should see all that is to 
be seen. For they are the public chroniclers of such inquiries, by the 
line; and he is not superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to 
read in print what "Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the 
district," said and did; and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as 
familiarly and patronisingly mentioned as the name of the Hangman is, 
according to the latest examples.
Little Swills is waiting for the Coroner and Jury on their return. Mr 
Tulkinghorn, also. Mr Tulkinghorn is received with distinction, and seated 
near the Coroner; between that high judicial officer, a bagatelle-board, 
and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The Jury learn how the subject of 
their inquiry died, and learn no more about him. "A very eminent solicitor 
is in attendance, gentlemen," says the Coroner, "who, I am informed, was 
accidentally present, when discovery of the death was made; but he could 
only repeat the evidence you have already heard from the surgeon, the 
landlord, the lodger, and the law-stationer; and it is not necessary to 
trouble him. Is anybody in attendance who knows anything more?"
Mrs Piper pushed forward by Mrs Perkins. Mrs Piper sworn.
Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs Piper - what have you 
got to say about this?
Why, Mrs Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without 
punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs Piper lives in the court (which her 
husband is a cabinet-maker) and it has long been well be-known among the 
neighbours (counting from the day next but one before the half baptizing of 
Alexander James Piper aged eighteen months and four days old on accounts of 
not being expected to live such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child 
in his gums) as the Plaintive - so Mrs Piper insists on calling the 
deceased - was reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the Plaintive's 
air in which that report originatinin. See the Plaintive often, and 
considered as his air was feariocious, and not to be allowed to go about 
some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs Perkins may be brought 
forward for she is here and will do credit to her husband and herself and 
family). Has seen the Plaintive wexed and worrited by the children (for 
children they will ever be and you cannot expect them specially if of 
playful dispositions to be Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On 
accounts of this and his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a 
pickaxe from his pocket and split Johnny's head (which the child knows not 
fear and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never however 
see the Plaintive take a pickaxe or any other wepping far from it. Has seen 
him hurry away when run and called after as if not partial to children and 
never see him speak to neither child nor grown person at any time 
(excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing down the lane over the way 
round the corner which if he was here would tell you that he has been seen 
a speaking to him frequent).
Says the Coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is not 
here. Says the Coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of the active 
and intelligent, the Coroner converses with Mr Tulkinghorn.
O! Here's the boy, gentlemen!
Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! - But stop a 
minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary paces.
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody has two 
names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is short for a 
longer name. Thinks it long enough for him. He don't find no fault with it. 
Spell it? No. He can't spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never 
been to school. What's home? Knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked 
to tell a lie. Don't recollect who told him about the broom, or about the 
lie, but knows both. Can't exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's 
dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen, here, but believes it'll be 
something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right - and so he'll tell 
the truth.
"This won't do, gentlemen!" says the Coroner, with a melancholy shake of 
the head.
"Don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an attentive 
Juryman.
"Out of the question," says the Coroner. "You have heard the boy. 'Can't 
exactly say' won't do, you know. We can't take that, in a Court of Justice, 
gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside."
Boy put aside; to the great edification of the audience; - especially of 
Little Swills, the Comic Vocalist.
Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.
Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in the 
habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, found dead 
of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to lead you to the 
conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come to that conclusion. If 
you think it is a case of accidental death, you will find a Verdict 
accordingly.
Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are 
discharged. Good afternoon.
While the Coroner buttons his great coat, Mr Tulkinghorn and he give 
private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.
That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he recognised 
just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and 
pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night, when he, the boy, 
was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at 
him, and came back, and, having questioned him and found that he had not a 
friend in the world, said, "Neither have I. Not one!" and gave him the 
price of a supper and a night's lodging. That the man had often spoken to 
him since; and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore 
cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die; and similar strange 
questions. That when the man had no money, he would say in passing, "I am 
as poor as you today, Jo;" but that when he had any, he had always (as the 
boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him some.
"He wos wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched 
sleeve. "Wen I see him a layin' so stritched out just now, I wished he 
could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he wos!"
As he shuffles downstairs, Mr Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a half-
crown in his hand. "If ever you see me coming past your crossing with my 
little woman - I mean a lady - " says Mr Snagsby, with his finger on his 
nose, "don't allude to it!"
For some little time the Jurymen hang about the Sol's Arms colloquially. In 
the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of pipe smoke that 
pervades the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to Hampstead; and four 
engage to go half-price to the play at night, and top up with oysters. 
Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being asked what he thinks of 
the proceedings, characterises them (his strength lying in a slangular 
direction) as "a rummy start." The landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding 
Little Swills so popular, commends him highly to the Jurymen and public; 
observing that, for a song in character, he don't know his equal, and that 
that man's character-wardrobe would fill a cart.
Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night, and then 
flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving, the 
gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair; is faced (red-faced) 
by Little Swills; their friends rally round them, and support first-rate 
talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little Swills says, Gentlemen, if 
you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short description of a scene of real life 
that came off here today. Is much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the 
room as Swills; comes in as the Coroner (not the least in the world like 
him); describes the Inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte 
accompaniment to the refrain - With his (the Coroner's) tippy tol li doll, 
tippy tol lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally round 
their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now laid in its 
last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt eyes in the 
shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this forlorn man could have 
been prophetically seen lying here, by the mother at whose breast he 
nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised to her loving face, and soft 
hand scarcely knowing how to close upon the neck to which it crept, what an 
impossibility the vision would have seemed! O, if, in brighter days, the 
now-extinguished fire within him ever burned for one woman who held him in 
her heart, where is she, while these ashes are above the ground!
It is anything but a night of rest at Mr Snagsby's in Cook's Court; where 
Guster murders sleeps by going, as Mr Snagsby himself allows - not to put 
too fine a point upon it - out of one fit into twenty. The occasion of this 
seizure is, that Guster has a tender heart, and a susceptible something 
that possibly might have been imagination, but for Tooting and her patron 
saint. Be it what it may, now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by 
Mr Snagsby's account of the inquiry at which he had assisted, that at 
supper-time she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying 
Dutch-cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration: which she only came 
out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of fits, 
with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically availed herself 
by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs Snagsby not to give her warning 
"when she quite comes to;" and also in appeals to the whole establishment 
to lay her down on the stones, and go to bed. Hence, Mr Snagsby, at last 
hearing the cock at the little dairy in Cursitor Street go into that 
disinterested ecstacy of his on the subject of daylight, says, drawing a 
long breath, though the most patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am 
sure!"
What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he strains 
himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men crow on 
various triumphant public occasions, however) about what cannot be of any 
moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that daylight comes, morning 
comes, noon comes.
Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers as 
such, comes with his pauper company to Mr Krook's, and bears off the body 
of our dear brother here departed, to a hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous 
and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of 
our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed; while our dear 
brothers and sisters who hang about official back-stairs - would to Heaven 
they had departed! - are very complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly 
scrap of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination, and a 
Caffre would shudder at, they bring our dear brother here departed, to 
receive Christian burial.
With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel 
of a court gives access to the iron gate - with every villany of life in 
action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close 
on life - here, they lower our dear brother down a foot or two: here, sow 
him in corruption, to be raised in corruption: an avenging ghost at many a 
sick-bedside: a shameful testimony to future ages, how civilisation and 
barbarism walked this boastful island together.
Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon, or stay too long, 
by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the 
ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this 
dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so sullenly above the 
iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its witch-ointment slimy to 
the touch! It is well that you should call to every passer-by, "Look here!"
With the night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the 
outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in 
between the bars; stands looking in, for a little while.
It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes 
the archway clean. It does so, very busily and trimly; looks in again, a 
little while; and so departs.
Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't exactly 
say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's, thou art not 
quite in outer darkness. There is something like a distant ray of light in 
thy muttered reason for this:
"He wos wery good to me, he wos!"


Chapter 12

On The Watch

It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire, at last, and Chesney Wold has 
taken heart. Mrs Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares, for Sir Leicester 
and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The fashionable intelligence has 
found it out, and communicates the glad tidings to benighted England. It 
has also found out, that they will entertain a brilliant and distinguished 
circle of the elite of the beau monde (the fashionable intelligence is weak 
in English, but a giant-refreshed in French), at the ancient and hospitable 
family seat in Lincolnshire.
For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and of 
Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in the park is 
mended; and the water, now retired within its proper limits and again 
spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect from the house. The 
clear cold sunshine glances into the brittle woods, and approvingly beholds 
the sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the moss. It glides over 
the park after the moving shadows of the clouds, and chases them, and never 
catches them, all day. It looks in at the windows, and touches the 
ancestral portraits with bars and patches of brightness, never contemplated 
by the painters. Athwart the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-
piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly 
into the hearth, and seems to rend it.
Through the same cold sunshine, and the same sharp wind, my Lady and Sir 
Leicester, in their travelling chariot, (my Lady's woman, and Sir 
Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble,) start for home. With a 
considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging 
demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses, and two Centaurs with 
glazed hats, jackboots, and flowing manes and tales, they rattle out of the 
yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome, and canter between the sun-
and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli and the garden of the 
ill-fated palace of a headless king and queen, off by the Place of Concord, 
and the Elysian Fields, and the Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast; for even here, my Lady Dedlock 
has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing 
is new to my Lady, under the worn-out heavens. Only last Sunday, when poor 
wretches were gay - within the walls, playing with children among the 
clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score 
abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and 
wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy 
Cathedral of our Lady, to say a word or two at the base of a pillar, within 
flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers - without the 
walls, encompassing Paris with dancing, lovemaking, wine-drinking, tobacco-
smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard, card, and domino playing, quack-
doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate - only last 
Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the Clutch of Giant 
Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies 
before her, as it lies behind - her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the 
whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped - but the imperfect remedy is 
always to fly, from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling 
Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and 
cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some 
leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the 
sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain: two dark square towers rising 
out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in 
Jacob's dream!
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he 
has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is 
a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject. 
After reading his letters, he leans back in his corner of the carriage, and 
generally reviews his importance to society.
"You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my Lady, 
after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read a page in 
twenty miles.
"Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever."
"I saw one of Mr Tulkinghorn's long effusions I think?"
"You see everything," says Sir Leicester, with admiration.
"Ha!" sighs my Lady. "He is the most tiresome of men."
"He sends - I really beg your pardon - he sends," says Sir Leicester, 
selecting the letter, and unfolding it, "a message to you. Our stopping to 
change horses, as I came to his postscript, drove it out of my memory, I 
beg you'll excuse me. He says - " Sir Leicester is so long in taking out 
his eyeglass and adjusting it, that my Lady looks a little irritated. "He 
says 'In the matter of the right of way - ' I beg your pardon, that's not 
the place. He says - yes! Here I have it! He says, 'I beg my respectful 
compliments to my Lady, who, I hope, has benefited by the change. Will you 
do me the favour to mention (as it may interest her), that I have something 
to tell her on her return, in reference to the person who copied the 
affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her 
curiosity. I have seen him.'"
My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
"That's the message," observed Sir Leicester.
"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady, still looking out of her 
window.
"Walk?" repeats Sir Leicester, in a tone of surprise.
"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady, with unmistakeable 
distinctness. "Please to stop the carriage."
The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the rumble, 
opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an impatient motion of 
my Lady's hand. My Lady alights so quickly, and walks away so quickly, that 
Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous politeness is unable to assist her, 
and is left behind. A space of a minute or two has elapsed before he comes 
up with her. She smiles, looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with 
him for a quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in 
the carriage.
The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three days, 
with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more or less 
plunging of Centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly politeness to 
each other, at the Hotels where they tarry, is the theme of general 
admiration. Though my Lord is a little aged for my Lady, says Madame, the 
hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be her amiable father, one 
can see at a glance that they love each other. One observes my Lord with 
his white hair, standing, hat in hand, to help my Lady to and from the 
carriage. One observes my Lady, how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, 
with an inclination of her gracious head, and the concession of her so-
genteel fingers! It is ravishing!
The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like small 
fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose countenance it greenly 
mottles in the manner of sage-cheese, and in whose aristocratic system it 
effects a dismal revolution. It is the Radical of Nature to him. 
Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it, after stopping to refit: and he 
goes on with my Lady for Chesney Wold, lying only one night in London on 
the way to Lincolnshire.
Through the same cold sunlight - colder as the day declines, - and through 
the same sharp wind - sharper as the separate shadows of bare trees gloom 
together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched at the western 
corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to coming night, - they 
drive into the park. The Rooks, swinging in their lofty houses in the elm-
tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of the occupancy of the carriage 
as it passes underneath; some agreeing that Sir Leicester and my Lady are 
come down; some arguing with malcontents who won't admit it; now, all 
consenting to consider the question disposed of; now, all breaking out 
again in violent debate, incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird, who will 
persist in putting in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and 
caw, the travelling chariot rolls on to the house; where fires gleam warmly 
through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an 
inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the brilliant and 
distinguished circle will soon do that.
Mrs Rouncewell is in attendance, and receives Sir Leicester's customary 
shake of the hand with a profound curtsey.
"How do you do, Mrs Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
"I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir Leicester?"
"In excellent health, Mrs Rouncewell."
"My Lady is looking charmingly well," says Mrs Rouncewell, with another 
curtsey.
My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is as 
wearily well as she can hope to be.
But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who has 
not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she may have 
conquered, asks:
"Who is that girl?"
"A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa."
"Come here, Rosa!" Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance of 
interest. "Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says, touching 
her shoulder with her two forefingers.
Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and glances 
up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, but looks all the 
prettier.
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen, my Lady."
"Nineteen," repeats my Lady, thoughtfully. "Take care they don't spoil you 
by flattery."
"Yes, my Lady."
My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers, and 
goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester pauses for 
her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a panel, as large as 
life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what to make of it - which was 
probably his general state of mind in the days of Queen Elizabeth.
That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but murmur 
Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so beautiful, so 
elegant; has such a sweet voice, and such a thrilling touch, that Rosa can 
feel it yet! Mr Rouncewell confirms all this, not without personal pride, 
reserving only the one point of affability. Mrs Rouncewell is not quite 
sure as to that. Heaven forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise 
of any member of that excellent family; above all, of my Lady, whom the 
whole world admires; but if my Lady would only be "a little more free," not 
quite so cold and distant, Mrs Rouncewell thinks she would be more affable.
"'This almost a pity," Mrs Rouncewell adds - only "almost," because its 
borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it is, in 
such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs, "that my Lady has no 
family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young lady, to interest her, 
I think she would have had the only kind of excellence she wants."
"Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says Watt; 
who has been home and come back again, he is such a good grandson.
"More and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are words 
it's not my place to use - nor so much as to hear - applied to any drawback 
on my Lady."
"I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?"
"If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always reason to 
be."
"Well!" says Watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their Prayer-Books a 
certain passage for the common people about pride and vainglory. Forgive 
me, grandmother! Only a joke!"
"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for joking."
"Sir Leicester is no joke by any means," says Watt; "and I humbly ask his 
pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that, even with the family and their guests 
down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my stay at the Dedlock 
Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller might?"
"Surely, none in the world, child."
"I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I - because I have an 
inexpressible desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful 
neighbourhood."
He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down, and is very shy, indeed. But, 
according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that burn, and 
not her fresh bright cheeks; for my Lady's maid is holding forth about her 
at this moment, with surpassing energy.
My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two-and-thirty, from somewhere in the 
Southern country about Avignon and Marseilles - a large-eyed brown woman 
with black hair; who would be handsome, but for a certain feline mouth and 
general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws too eager, and 
the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably keen and wan about 
her anatomy; and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of 
her eyes without turning her head, which could be pleasantly dispensed with 
- especially when she is in an ill-humour and near knives. Through all the 
good taste of her dress and little adornments, these objections so express 
themselves, that she seems to go about like a very neat She-Wolf 
imperfectly tamed. Besides being accomplished in all the knowledge 
appertaining to her post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance 
with the language - consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon 
Rosa for having attracted my Lady's attention; and she pours them out with 
such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner, that her companion, the 
affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon stage of 
that performance.
Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady's service since five years, and 
always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, caressed - 
absolutely caressed - by my Lady on the moment of her arriving at the 
house! Ha, ha, ha! "And do you know how pretty you are, child?" - "No, my 
Lady." - You are right there? "And how old are you, child! And take care 
they do not spoil you by flattery, child!" O how droll! It is the best 
thing altogether.
In short, it is such an admirable thing, that Mademoiselle Hortense can't 
forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her countrywomen 
and others attached in like capacity to the troop of visitors, relapses 
into silent enjoyment of the joke - an enjoyment expressed, in her own 
convivial manner, by an additional tightness of face, thin elongation of 
compressed lips, and sidewise look: which intense appreciation of humour is 
frequently reflected in my Lady's mirrors, when my Lady is not among them.
All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now: many of them 
after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering faces, youthful 
faces, faces of threescore-and-ten that will not submit to be old; the 
entire collection of faces that have come to pass a January week or two at 
Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable intelligence, a mighty hunter 
before the Lord, hunts with a keen scent, from their breaking cover at the 
Court of Saint James's to their being run down to Death. The place in 
Lincolnshire is all alive. By day, guns and voices are heard ringing in the 
woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-
on pervade the Village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night, from distant 
openings in the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where 
my Lady's picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of 
jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday, the chill little church is almost 
warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of the Dedlock 
dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.
The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it, no contracted 
amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and virtue. Yet there 
is something a little wrong about it, in despite of its immense advantages. 
What can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more's the pity!) to set 
the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel neckcloths, no 
short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There are no caricatures, 
now, of effeminate Exquisites so arrayed, swooning in opera boxes with 
excess of delight, and being revived by other dainty creatures, poking long-
necked scent-bottles at their noses. There is no beau whom it takes four 
men at once to shake into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the 
executions, or who is troubled with the self-reproach of having once 
consumed a pea. But is there Dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished 
circle notwithstanding, Dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got 
below the surface and is doing less harmless things than jack-towelling 
itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no rational person need 
particularly object?
Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There are, at Chesney Wold this January 
week, some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who have set up a 
Dandyism - in Religion, for instance. Who, in mere lackadaisical want of an 
emotion, have agreed upon a little dandy talk about the Vulgar wanting 
faith in things in general; meaning, in the things that have been tried and 
found wanting; as though a low fellow should unaccountably lose faith in a 
bad shilling, after finding it out! Who would make the Vulgar very 
picturesque and faithful, by putting back the hands upon the Clock of Time, 
and cancelling a few hundred years of history.
There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new, but 
very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world, and to 
keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be languid and 
pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who are to rejoice at 
nothing, and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be disturbed by ideas. On 
whom even the Fine Arts, attending in powder and walking backward like the 
Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves in the milliners' and tailors' 
patterns of past generations, and be particularly careful not to be in 
earnest, or to receive any impress from the moving age.
Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his party who 
has known what office is, and who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock with much 
gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age 
is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to be; the House is not what 
the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He 
perceives with astonishment, that supposing the present Government to be 
overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new 
Ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle - supposing 
it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be 
assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that 
affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the Leadership of 
the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to 
Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? 
You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for 
Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good 
enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, 
and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester 
Dedlock), because you can't provide for Noodle!
On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends 
across the table with some one else, that the shipwreck of the country - 
about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it that is in 
question - is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you 
ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented 
him from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into an alliance with 
Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater 
to Guffy, you would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of 
Huffy, you would have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, 
and you would have strengthened your administration by the official 
knowledge and the business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as 
you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!
As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences of 
opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished 
circle, all round, that nobody is in question but Boodle and his retinue, 
and Buffy and his retinue. These are the great actors for whom the stage is 
reserved. A People there are, no doubt - a certain large number of 
supernumeraries, who are to be occasionally addressed and relied upon for 
shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, 
their followers and families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and 
assigns, are the born first actors, managers, and leaders, and no others 
can appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the 
brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the long 
run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as with the 
circle the necromancer draws around him - very strange appearances may be 
seen in active motion outside. With this difference: that, being realities 
and not phantoms, there is the greater danger of their breaking in.
Chesney Wold is quite full, anyhow; so full, that a burning sense of injury 
arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies' maids, and is not to be 
extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of the third 
order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished, and having an old-
fashioned business air. It is Mr Tulkinghorn's room, and is never bestowed 
on anybody else, for he may come at any time. He is not come yet. It is his 
quiet habit to walk across the park from the village, in fine weather; to 
drop into this room, as if he had never been out of it since he was last 
seen there; to request a servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is 
arrived, in case he should be wanted; and to appear ten minutes before 
dinner, in the shadow of the library door. He sleeps in his turret, with a 
complaining flag-staff over his head; and has some leads outside, on which, 
any fine morning, when he is down here, his black figure may be seen 
walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the library, 
but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances down the table 
for the vacant place, that would be waiting to receive him if he had just 
arrived; but there is no vacant place. Every night, my Lady casually asks 
her maid: "Is Mr Tulkinghorn come?"
Every night the answer is, "No, my Lady, not yet."
One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in deep 
thought after this reply, until she sees her own brooding face, in the 
opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.
"Be so good as to attend," says my Lady then, addressing the reflection of 
Hortense, "to your business. You can contemplate your beauty at another 
time."
"Pardon! It was your Ladyship's beauty."
"That," says my Lady, "you needn't contemplate at all."
At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright groups of 
figures, which have for the last hour or two enlivened the Ghost's Walk, 
are all dispersed, and only Sir Leicester and my Lady remain upon the 
terrace, Mr Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards them at his usual 
methodical pace, which is never quickened, never slackened. He wears his 
usual expressionless mask - if it be a mask - and carries family secrets in 
every limb of his body, and every crease of his dress. Whether his whole 
soul is devoted to the great, or whether he yields them nothing beyond the 
services he sells, is his personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the 
secrets of his clients; he is his own client in that matter, and will never 
betray himself.
"How do you do, Mr Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
Mr Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady is quite 
well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands behind him, walks 
at Sir Leicester's side, along the terrace. My Lady walks upon the other 
side.
"We expected you before," says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation. As 
much as to say, "Mr Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when you are 
not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a fragment of our 
minds upon you, sir, you see!"

Mr Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head, and says he is much 
obliged.
"I should have come down sooner," he explains, "but that I have been much 
engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself and 
Boythorn."
"A man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes Sir Leicester, with 
severity. "An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a very 
low character of mind."
"He is obstinate," says Mr Tulkinghorn.
"It is natural to such a man to be so," says Sir Leicester, looking most 
profoundly obstinate himself. "I am not at all surprised to hear it."
"The only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up 
anything."
"No, sir," replies Sir Leicester. "Nothing. I give up?"
"I don't mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you would not 
abandon. I mean any minor point."
"Mr Tulkinghorn," returns Sir Leicester, "there can be no minor point 
between myself and Mr Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe that I cannot 
readily conceive how any right of mine can be a minor point, I speak not so 
much in reference to myself as an individual, as in reference to the family 
position I have it in charge to maintain."
Mr Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. "I have now my instructions," he 
says. "Mr Boythorn will give us a good deal of trouble - "
"It is the character of such a mind, Mr Tulkinghorn," Sir Leicester 
interrupts him, "to give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned, levelling 
person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have been tried at 
the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and severely punished - if 
not," adds Sir Leicester, after a moment's pause, "if not hanged, drawn, 
and quartered."
Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden, in 
passing this capital sentence; as if it were the next satisfactory thing to 
having the sentence executed.
"But night is coming on," says he, "and my Lady will take cold. My dear, 
let us go in."
As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr Tulkinghorn 
for the first time.
"You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened to 
inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstances; I had quite 
forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't imagine what 
association I had, with a hand like that; but I surely had some."
"You had some?" Mr Tulkinghorn repeats.
"O yes!" returns my Lady, carelessly. "I think I must have had some. And 
did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that actual thing 
- what is it! - Affidavit?"
"Yes."
"How very odd!"
They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground-floor, lighted in the 
day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows brightly on the 
panelled wall, and palely on the window-glass, where, through the cold 
reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in the wind, and a 
grey mist creeps along: the only traveller besides the waste of clouds.
My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir Leicester 
takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands before the fire, with 
his hand out at arm's length, shading his face. He looks across his arm at 
my Lady.
"Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And what is very 
strange, I found him - "
"Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!" Lady Dedlock languidly 
anticipates.
"I found him dead!"
"O dear me!" remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the fact, 
as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
"I was directed to his lodging - a miserable, poverty-stricken place - and 
I found him dead."
"You will excuse me, Mr Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I think the 
less said - "
"Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady speaking). 
"It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking! Dead?"
Mr Tulkinghorn reasserts it by another inclination of his head. "Whether by 
his own hand - "
"Upon my honour!" cries Sir Leicester. "Really!"
"Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady.
"Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say - "
"No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr Tulkinghorn."
Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point; though he still feels that to 
bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is really - really -
"I was about to say," resumes the lawyer, with undisturbed calmness, "that 
whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my power to tell 
you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying that he had 
unquestionably died of his own act; though whether by his own deliberate 
intention, or by mischance, can never certainly be known. The coroner's 
jury found that he took the poison accidentally."
"And what kind of man," my Lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?"
"Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "He had 
lived so wretchedly, and was so neglected, with his gypsy colour, and his 
wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him the commonest 
of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had once been something 
better, both in appearance and condition."
"What did they call the wretched being?"
"They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his name."
"Not even any one who had attended on him?"
"No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found him."
"Without any clue to anything more?"
"Without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old 
portmanteau; but - No, there were no papers."
During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady Dedlock and 
Mr Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their customary deportment, 
have looked very steadily at one another - as was natural, perhaps, in the 
discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir Leicester has looked at the fire, 
with the general expression of the Dedlock on the staircase. The story 
being told, he renews his stately protest, saying, that as it is quite 
clear that no association in my Lady's mind can possibly be traceable to 
this poor wretch (unless he was a begging-letter writer); he trusts to hear 
no more about a subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
"Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her 
mantles and furs; "but they interest one for the moment! Have the kindness, 
Mr Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
Mr Tulkinghorn does so with deference, and holds it open, while she passes 
out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner, and insolent 
grace. They meet again at dinner - again, next day - again, for many days 
in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded 
by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while 
presiding at her own shrine. Mr Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless 
repository of noble confidences: so oddly out of place, and yet so 
perfectly at home. They appear to take as little note of one another, as 
any two people, enclosed within the same walls, could. But, whether each 
evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great 
reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, 
and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the 
other knows - all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.


Chapter 13

Esther's Narrative

We held many consultations about what Richard was to be; first, without Mr 
Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him; but it was a long 
time before we seemed to make progress. Richard said he was ready for 
anything. When Mr Jarndyce doubted whether he might not already be too old 
to enter the Navy, Richard said he had thought of that, and perhaps he was. 
When Mr Jarndyce asked him what he thought of the Army, Richard said he had 
thought of that, too, and it wasn't a bad idea. When Mr Jarndyce advised 
him to try and decide within himself, whether his old preference for the 
sea was an ordinary boyish inclination, or a strong impulse, Richard 
answered, well, he really had tried very often, and he couldn't make out.
"How much of this indecision of character," Mr Jarndyce said to me, "is 
chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination 
on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't pretend to say; but 
that Chancery, among its other sins, is responsible for some of it, I can 
plainly see. It has engendered or confirmed in him a habit of putting off - 
and trusting to this, that, and the other chance, without knowing what 
chance - and dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. 
The character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the 
circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a 
boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences, and 
escape them."
I felt this to be true; though, if I may venture to mention what I thought 
besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's education had not 
counteracted those influences, or directed his character. He had been eight 
years at a public school, and had learnt, I understood, to make Latin 
Verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. But I never heard 
that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, 
or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him. He had 
been adapted to the Verses, and had learnt the art of making them to such 
perfection, that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I 
suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again, unless 
he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I 
had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very 
sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all 
through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some 
one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.
To be sure, I know nothing of the subject, and do not even now know whether 
the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to the same 
extent - or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever did.
"I haven't the least idea," said Richard musing, "what I had better be. 
Except that I am quite sure I don't want to go into the Church, it's a toss-
up."
"You have no inclination in Mr Kenge's way?" suggested Mr Jarndyce.
"I don't know that, sir!" replied Richard. "I am fond of boating. Articled 
clerks go a good deal on the water. It's a capital profession!"
"Surgeon - " suggested Mr Jarndyce.
"That's the thing, sir!" cried Richard.
I doubt if he had ever once thought of it before.
"That's the thing, sir;" repeated Richard, with the greatest enthusiasm. 
"We have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!"
He was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily. He 
said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it, the more 
he thought that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was the art of 
all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this conclusion, 
because, having never had much chance of finding out for himself what he 
was fitted for, and having never been guided to the discovery, he was taken 
by the newest idea, and was glad to get rid of the trouble of 
consideration, I wondered whether the Latin Verses often ended in this, or 
whether Richard's was a solitary case.
Mr Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him, seriously, and to put it to 
his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter. Richard was 
a little grave after these interviews; but invariably told Ada and me "that 
it was all right," and then began to talk about something else.
"By Heaven!" cried Mr Boythorn, who interested himself strongly in the 
subject - though I need not say that, for he could do nothing weakly; "I 
rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry devoting himself 
to that noble profession! The more spirit there is in it, the better for 
mankind, and the worse for those mercenary task-masters and low tricksters 
who delight in putting that illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. 
By all that is base and despicable," cried Mr Boythorn, "the treatment of 
Surgeons aboard ship is such, that I would submit the legs - both legs - of 
every member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture, and render it a 
transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them, if the 
system were not wholly changed in eight-and-forty hours!"
"Wouldn't you give them a week?" asked Mr Jarndyce.
"No!" cried Mr Boythorn, firmly. "Not on any consideration! Eight-and-forty 
hours! As to Corporations, Parishes, Vestry-Boards, and similar gatherings 
of jolter-headed clods, who assemble to exchange such speeches that, by 
Heaven! they ought to be worked in quicksilver mines for the short 
remainder of their miserable existence, if it were only to prevent their 
detestable English from contaminating a language spoken in the presence of 
the Sun - as to those fellows, who meanly take advantage of the ardour of 
gentlemen in the pursuit of knowledge, to recompense the inestimable 
services of the best years of their lives, their long study, and their 
expensive education, with pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, 
I would have the necks of every one of them wrung, and their skulls 
arranged in Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession - 
in order that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, 
in early life, how thick skulls may become!"
He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a most 
agreeable smile, and suddenly thundering, Ha, ha, ha! over and over again, 
until anybody else might have been expected to be quite subdued by the 
exertion.
As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice, after 
repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr Jarndyce, and 
had expired; and as he still continued to assure Ada and me, in the same 
final manner, that it was "all right;" it became advisable to take Mr Kenge 
into council. Mr Kenge, therefore, came down to dinner one day, and leaned 
back in his chair, and turned his eyeglasses over and over, and spoke in a 
sonorous voice, and did exactly what I remember to have seen him do when I 
was a little girl.
"Ah!" said Mr Kenge. "Yes. Well! A very good profession, Mr Jarndyce; a 
very good profession."
"The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently pursued," 
observed my Guardian, with a glance at Richard.
"O, no doubt," said Mr Kenge. "Diligently."
"But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are worth 
much," said Mr Jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration which another 
choice would be likely to escape."
"Truly," said Mr Kenge. "And Mr Richard Carstone, who has so meritoriously 
acquitted himself in the - shall I say the classic shades? - in which his 
youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply the habits, if not the 
principles and practice, of versification in that tongue in which a poet 
was said (unless I mistake) to be born, not made, to the more eminently 
practical field of action on which he enters."
"You may rely upon it," said Richard, in his offhand manner, "that I shall 
go at it, and do my best."
"Very well, Mr Jarndyce!" said Mr Kenge, gently nodding his head. "Really, 
when we are assured by Mr Richard that he means to go at it, and to do his 
best," nodding feelingly and smoothly over those expressions; "I would 
submit to you, that we have only to inquire into the best mode of carrying 
out the object of his ambition. Now, with reference to placing Mr Richard 
with some sufficiently eminent practitioner. Is there any one in view at 
present?"
"No one, Rick, I think?" said my Guardian.
"No one, sir," said Richard.
"Quite so!" observed Mr Kenge. "As to situation, now. Is there any 
particular feeling on that head?"
"N - no," said Richard.
"Quite so!" observed Mr Kenge again.
"I should like a little variety," said Richard; " - I mean a good range of 
experience."
"Very requisite, no doubt," returned Mr Kenge. "I think this may be easily 
arranged, Mr Jarndyce? We have only, in the first place, to discover a 
sufficiently eligible practitioner; and, as soon as we make our want - and, 
shall I add, our ability to pay a premium? - known, our only difficulty 
will be in the selection of one from a large number. We have only, in the 
second place, to observe those little formalities which are rendered 
necessary by our time of life, and our being under the guardianship of the 
Court. We shall soon be - shall I say, in Mr Richard's own light-hearted 
manner, 'going at it' - to our heart's content. It is a coincidence," said 
Mr Kenge, with a tinge of melancholy in his smile, "one of those 
coincidences which may or may not require an explanation beyond our present 
limited faculties, that I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might 
be deemed eligible by you, and might be disposed to respond to this 
proposal. I can answer for him as little as for you; but he might!"
As this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr Kenge 
should see his cousin. And as Mr Jarndyce had before proposed to take us to 
London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we should make our 
visit at once, and combine Richard's business with it.
Mr Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a cheerful 
lodging near Oxford Street, over an upholsterer's shop. London was a great 
wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours at a time; seeing the 
sights; which appeared to be less capable of exhaustion than we were. We 
made the round of the principal theatres, too, with great delight, and saw 
all the plays that were worth seeing. I mention this, because it was at the 
theatre that I began to be made uncomfortable again, by Mr Guppy.
I was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada; and Richard was in 
the place he liked best, behind Ada's chair; when, happening to look down 
into the pit, I saw Mr Guppy, with his hair flattened down upon his head, 
and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt, all through the 
performance, that he never looked at the actors, but constantly looked at 
me, and always with a carefully prepared expression of the deepest misery 
and the profoundest dejection.
It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night, because it was so very 
embarrassing and so very ridiculous. But, from that time forth, we never 
went to the play without my seeing Mr Guppy in the pit, always with his 
hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a general 
feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in, and I began to 
hope he would not come, and yielded myself for a little while to the 
interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his languishing eyes when 
I least expected it, and, from that time, to be quite sure that they were 
fixed upon me all the evening.
I really cannot epxress how uneasy this made me. If he would only have 
brushed up his hair, or turned up his collar, it would have been bad 
enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at me, and 
always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a constraint 
upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to cry at it, or to 
move or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing naturally. As to escaping Mr 
Guppy by going to the back of the box, I could not bear to do that; because 
I knew Richard and Ada relied on having me next them, and that they could 
never have talked together so happily if anybody else had been in my place. 
So there I sat, not knowing where to look - for wherever I looked, I knew 
Mr Guppy's eyes were following me - and thinking of the dreadful expense to 
which this young man was putting himself on my account.
Sometimes, I thought of telling Mr Jarndyce. Then I feared that the young 
man would lose his situation, and that I might ruin him. Sometimes, I 
thought of confiding in Richard; but was deterred by the possibility of his 
fighting Mr Guppy, and giving him black eyes. Sometimes, I thought, should 
I frown at him, or shake my head. Then I felt I could not do it. Sometimes, 
I considered whether I should write to his mother, but that ended in my 
being convinced that to open a correspondence would be to make the matter 
worse. I always came to the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. 
Mr Guppy's perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at 
any theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we 
were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly - where I am sure I saw 
him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful spikes. After 
we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The upholsterer's where 
we lodged, being at the corner of two streets, and my bedroom window being 
opposite the post, I was afraid to go near the window when I went upstairs, 
lest I should see him (as I did one moonlight night) leaning against the 
post, and evidently catching cold. If Mr Guppy had not been, fortunately 
for me, engaged in the daytime, I really should have had no rest from him.
While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr Guppy so 
extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring us to 
town was not neglected. Mr Kenge's cousin was a Mr Bayham Badger, who had a 
good practice at Chelsea, and attended a large public Institution besides. 
He was quite willing to receive Richard into his house, and to superintend 
his studies; and as it seemed that those could be pursued advantageously 
under Mr Badger's roof, and Mr Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he 
liked Mr Badger "well enough," an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor's 
consent was obtained, and it was all settled.
On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr Badger, we 
were all under engagement to dine at Mr Badger's house. We were to be 
"merely a family party," Mrs Badger's note said; and we found no lady there 
but Mrs Badger herself. She was surrounded in the drawing-room by various 
objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, 
playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, 
working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing 
a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully 
dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her 
accomplishments, that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any 
harm in it.
Mr Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking gentleman, 
with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised eyes: some years 
younger, I should say, than Mrs Bayham Badger. He admired her exceedingly, 
but principally, and to begin with, on the curious ground (as it seemed to 
us) of her having had three husbands. We had barely taken our seats, when 
he said to Mr Jarndyce quite triumphantly,
"You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs Bayham Badger's third!"
"Indeed?" said Mr Jarndyce.
"Her third!" said Mr Badger. "Mrs Bayham Badger has not the appearance, 
Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former husbands?"
I said, "Not at all!"
"And most remarkable men!" said Mr Badger, in a tone of confidence. 
"Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs Badger's first husband, was 
a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of Professor Dingo, my 
immediate predecessor, is one of European reputation."
Mrs Badger overheard him, and smiled.
"Yes, my dear!" Mr Badger replied to the smile, "I was observing to Mr 
Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, that you had had two former husbands - both 
very distinguished men. And they found it, as people generally do, 
difficult to believe."
"I was barely twenty," said Mrs Badger, "when I married Captain Swosser of 
the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am quite a Sailor. 
On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I became the wife of 
Professor Dingo."
("Of European reputation," added Mr Badger in an undertone.)
"And when Mr Badger and myself were married," pursued Mrs Badger, "we were 
married on the same day of the year. I had become attached to the day."
"So that Mrs Badger has been married to three husbands - two of them highly 
distinguished men," said Mr Badger, summing up the facts: "and, each time, 
upon the twenty-first of March at Eleven in the forenoon!"
We all expressed our admiration.
"But for Mr Badger's modesty," said Mr Jarndyce, "I would take leave to 
correct him, and say three distinguished men."
"Thank you, Mr Jarndyce! What I always tell him!" observed Mrs Badger.
"And, my dear," said Mr Badger, "what do I always tell you? That without 
any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction as I may have 
attained (which our friend Mr Carstone will have many opportunities of 
estimating), I am not so weak - no, really," said Mr Badger to us 
generally, "so unreasonable - as to put my reputation on the same footing 
with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo. Perhaps 
you may be interested, Mr Jarndyce," continued Mr Bayham Badger, leading 
the way into the next drawing-room, "in this portrait of Captain Swosser. 
It was taken on his return home from the African Station, where he had 
suffered from the fever of the country. Mrs Badger considers it too yellow. 
But it's a very fine head. A very fine head!"
We all echoed "A very fine head!"
"I feel when I look at it," said Mr Badger, "'that's a man I should like to 
have seen!' It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that Captain Swosser 
preeminently was. On the other side, Professor Dingo. I knew him well - 
attended him in his last illness - a speaking likeness! Over the piano, Mrs 
Bayham Badger when Mrs Swosser. Over the sofa, Mrs Bayham Badger when Mrs 
Dingo. Of Mrs Bayham Badger in esse, I possess the original, and have no 
copy."
Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very genteel 
entertainment, very handsomely served. But the Captain and the Professor 
still ran in Mr Badger's head, and, as Ada and I had the honour of being 
under his particular care, we had the full benefit of them.
"Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me the 
Professor's goblet, James!"
Ada very much admired some artificial flowers, under a glass.
"Astonishing how they keep!" said Mr Badger.
"They were presented to Mrs Bayham Badger when she was in the 
Mediterranean."
He invited Mr Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.
"Not that claret!" he said. "Excuse me! This is an occasion, and on an 
occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have. (James, 
Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr Jarndyce, this is a wine that was imported by 
the Captain, we will not say how many years ago. You will find it very 
curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of this wine with you 
(Captain Swosser's claret to your mistress, James!) My love, your health!"
After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs Badger's first and second 
husband with us. Mrs Badger gave us, in the drawing-room, a Biographical 
sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser before his marriage, and 
a more minute account of him dating from the time when he fell in love with 
her, at a ball on board the Crippler, given to the officers of that ship 
when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.
"The dear old Crippler!" said Mrs Badger, shaking her head. "She was a 
noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser used to 
say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a nautical expression; 
I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved that craft for my sake. 
When she was no longer in commission, he frequently said that if he were 
rich enough to buy her old hulk, he would have an inscription let into the 
timbers of the quarter-deck where we stood as partners in the dance, to 
mark the spot where he fell - raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to 
say) by the fire from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes."
Mrs Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
"It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo," she 
resumed, with a plaintive smile. "I felt it a good deal at first. Such an 
entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with science - 
particularly science - inured me to it. Being the Professor's sole 
companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I had ever been 
afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that the Professor was the 
Antipodes of Captain Swosser, and that Mr Badger is not in the least like 
either!"
We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and 
Professor Dingo, both of whom seemed to have had very bad complaints. In 
the course of it, Mrs Badger signified to us that she had never madly loved 
but once; and that the object of that wild affection, never to be recalled 
in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser. The Professor was yet dying 
by inches in the most dismal manner, and Mrs Badger was giving us 
imitations of his way of saying, with great difficulty, "Where is Laura? 
Let Laura give me my toast and water!" when the entrance of the gentlemen 
consigned him to the tomb.
Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past, that 
Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other's society; which 
was but natural, seeing that they were going to be separated so soon. I was 
therefore not very much surprised, when we got home, and Ada and I retired 
upstairs, to find Ada more silent than usual; though I was not quite 
prepared for her coming into my arms, and beginning to speak to me, with 
her face hidden.
"My darling Esther!" murmured Ada. "I have a great secret to tell you!"
A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
"What is it, Ada?"
"O Esther, you would never guess!"
"Shall I try to guess?" said I.
"O no! Don't! Pray don't!" cried Ada, very much startled by the idea of my 
doing so.
"Now I wonder who it can be about?" said I, pretending to consider.
"It's about," said Ada in a whisper. "It's about - my cousin Richard!"
"Well, my own!" said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I could see. 
"And what about him?"
"O Esther, you would never guess!"
It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her face; 
and to know that she was not crying in sorrow, but in a little glow of joy, 
and pride, and hope; that I would not help her just yet.
"He says - I know it's very foolish, we are both so young - but he says," 
with a burst of tears, "that he loves me dearly, Esther."
"Does he indeed?" said I. "I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet of 
pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!"
To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me round 
the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, and laugh, was so pleasant!
"Why, my darling!" said I, "what a goose you must take me for! Your cousin 
Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could, for I don't know how 
long!"
"And yet you never said a word about it!" cried Ada, kissing me.
"No, my love," said I. "I waited to be told."
"But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me; do you?" returned 
Ada. She might have coaxed me to say No, if I had been the hardest-hearted 
Duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said No, very freely.
"And now," said I, "I know the worst of it."
"O that's not quite the worst of it, Esther dear," cried Ada, holding me 
tighter, and laying down her face again upon my breast.
"No?" said I. "Not even that?"
"No, not even that!" said Ada, shaking her head.
"Why, you never mean to say -!" I was beginning in joke.
But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, "Yes I do! You 
know, you know I do!" and then sobbed out, "With all my heart I do! With 
all my whole heart, Esther!"
I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I had 
known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the talking to 
myself for a little while (though there was not much of it); and Ada was 
soon quiet and happy.
"Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?" she asked.
"Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet," said I, "I should think my cousin 
John knows pretty well as much as we know."
"We want to speak to him before Richard goes," said Ada, timidly, "and we 
wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn't mind 
Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?"
"O! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?" said I.
"I am not quite certain," returned Ada, with a bashful simplicity that 
would have won my heart, if she had not won it long before; "but I think 
he's waiting at the door."
There he was of course. They brought a chair on either side of me, and put 
me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love with me, instead 
of one another; they were so confiding, and so trustful, and so fond of me. 
They went on in their own wild way for a little while - I never stopped 
them; I enjoyed it too much myself - and then we gradually fell to 
considering how young they were, and how there must be a lapse of several 
years before this early love could come to anything, and how it could come 
to happiness only if it were real and lasting, and inspired them with a 
steady resolution to do their duty to each other, with constancy, 
fortitude, and perseverance: each always for the other's sake. Well! 
Richard said that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada 
said that she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they 
called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there, 
advising and talking, half the night. Finally before we parted, I gave them 
my promise to speak to their cousin John tomorrow.
So, when tomorrow came, I went to my Guardian after breakfast, in the room 
that was our town substitute for the Growlery, and told him that I had it 
in trust to tell him something.
"Well, little woman," said he, shutting up his book, "if you have accepted 
the trust, there can be no harm in it."
"I hope not, Guardian," said I. "I can guarantee that there is no secrecy 
in it. For it only happened yesterday."
"Aye? And what is it, Esther?"
"Guardian," said I, "you remember the happy night when we first came down 
to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?"
I wished to recall to his remembrance the look he had given me then. Unless 
I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.
"Because," said I, with a little hesitation.
"Yes, my dear!" said he. "Don't hurry."
"Because," said I, "Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have told each 
other so."
"Already!" cried my Guardian, quite astonished.
"Yes!" said I, "and to tell you the truth, Guardian, I rather expected it."
"The deuce you did!" said he.
He sat considering for a minute or two; with his smile at once so handsome 
and so kind, upon his changing face; and then requested me to let them know 
that he wished to see them. When they came he encircled Ada with one arm, 
in his fatherly way, and addressed himself to Richard with a cheerful 
gravity.
"Rick," said Mr Jarndyce, "I am glad to have won your confidence. I hope to 
preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us four which have 
so brightened my life, and so invested it with new interest and pleasures, 
I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the possibility of you and your 
pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada, don't be shy, my dear!) being in a 
mind to go through life together. I saw, and do see, many reasons to make 
it desirable. But that was afar off, Rick, afar off!"
"We look afar off, sir," returned Richard.
"Well!" said Mr Jarndyce. "That's rational. Now, hear me, my dears! I might 
tell you that you don't know your own minds yet; that a thousand things may 
happen to divert you from one another; that it is well this chain of 
flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, or it might become a chain 
of lead. But I will not do that. Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare 
say, if it is to come at all. I will assume that, a few years hence, you 
will be in your hearts to one another, what you are today. All I say before 
speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you do change - if you 
do come to find that you are more common-place cousins to each other as man 
and woman, than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, 
Rick!) - don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing 
monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I 
have no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your 
confidence, if I do nothing to forfeit it."
"I am very sure, sir," returned Richard, "that I speak for Ada, too, when I 
say that you have the strongest power over us both - rooted in respect, 
gratitude, and affection - strengthening every day."
"Dear Cousin John," said Ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place can never 
be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have rendered to him, is 
transferred to you."
"Come!" said Mr Jarndyce. "Now for our assumption. Now we lift our eyes up, 
and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before you; and it 
is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive you. Trust in 
nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never separate the two, 
like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means 
nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort. If you 
had the abilities of all the great men, past and present, you could do 
nothing well, without sincerely meaning it, and setting about it. If you 
entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in 
small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by 
fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here, or leave your cousin Ada 
here."
"I will leave it here, sir," replied Richard, smiling, "if I brought it 
here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to my cousin 
Ada in the hopeful distance."
"Right!" said Mr Jarndyce. "If you are not to make her happy, why should 
you pursue her?"
"I wouldn't make her unhappy - no, not even for her love," retorted 
Richard, proudly.
"Well said!" cried Mr Jarndyce; "that's well said! She remains here, in her 
home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less than in her home 
when you revisit it, and all will go well. Otherwise, all will go ill. 
That's the end of my preaching. I think you and Ada had better take a 
walk."
Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him, and 
then the cousins went out of the room - looking back again directly, 
though, to say that they would wait for me.
The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes, as they 
passed down the adjoining room on which the sun was shining, and out at its 
farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn through his 
arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up in his face, 
listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so beautiful, so full 
of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight, as their 
own happy thoughts might then be traversing the years to come, and making 
them all years of brightness. So they passed away into the shadow, and were 
gone. It was only a burst of light that had been so radiant. The room 
darkened as they went out, and the sun was clouded over.
"Am I right, Esther?" said my Guardian, when they were gone.
He who was so good and wise, to ask me whether he was right!
"Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core of so 
much that is good!" said Mr Jarndyce, shaking his head. "I have said 
nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near." And 
he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.
I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all I 
could to conceal it.
"Tut tut!" said he. "But we must take care, too, that our little woman's 
life is not all consumed in care for others."
"Care? My dear Guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the 
world!"
"I believe so, too," said he. "But some one may find out, what Esther never 
will - that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above all other 
people!"
I have omitted to mention in its place, that there was some one else at the 
family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It was a 
gentleman of a dark complexion - a young surgeon. He was rather reserved, 
but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least, Ada asked me if I 
did not, and I said yes.


Chapter 14

Deportment

Richard left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and 
committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. 
It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to 
remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at 
that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and 
the future. I was to write to Richard once a week, making my faithful 
report of Ada who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be 
informed, under his own hand, of all his labours and successes; I was to 
observe how resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's 
bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterwards; I 
was to keep all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever 
and a day.
"And if the suit should make us rich, Esther - which it may, you know!" 
said Richard, to crown all.
A shade crossed Ada's face.
"My dearest Ada," asked Richard pausing, "why not?"
"It had better declare us poor at once," said Ada.
"O! I don't know about that," returned Richard; "but, at all events, it 
won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in Heaven knows 
how many years."
"Too true," said Ada.
"Yes, but," urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than 
her words, "the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a 
settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?"
"You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us 
unhappy."
"But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!" cried Richard. "We know it 
better than to trust to it. We only say that if it should make us rich, we 
have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn 
settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what 
it gives us (when it gives us anything) is our right. It is not necessary 
to quarrel with our right."
"No," said Ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it."
"Well, well!" cried Richard, "then we will forget all about it! We consign 
the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and 
it's done!"
"Dame Durden's approving face," said I, looking out of the box in which I 
was packing his books, "was not very visible when you called it by that 
name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better."
So, Richard said there was an end of it, - and immediately began, on no 
other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the 
great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to 
miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr Jarndyce at Mrs Jellyby's, 
but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she 
had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. 
Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making 
and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, 
conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this 
involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her 
daughter's part in the proceedings, anything but a holiday.
It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs Jellyby's return, we 
called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, 
directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a 
Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen 
Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found 
anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with 
the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again. The oyster shells he had 
been building a house with were still in the passage, but he was nowhere 
discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had "gone after the sheep." 
When we repeated, with some surprise, "The sheep?" she said, O yes, on 
market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in 
such a state as never was!
I was sitting at the window with my Guardian, on the following morning, and 
Ada was busy writing - of course to Richard - when Miss Jellyby was 
announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some 
endeavours to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his 
face and hands, and making his hair very wet and then violently frizzling 
it with her fingers. Everything the dear child wore, was either too large 
for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the 
hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a 
small scale, the boots of a ploughman: while his legs, so crossed and 
recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a 
very short pair of plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly 
different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently 
been supplied from one of Mr Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen 
and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared 
on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I 
recognised the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She was, however, unaccountably 
improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of 
poor little Peepy being but a failure after all her trouble, and she showed 
it as she came in, by the way in which she glanced, first at him and then 
at us.
"O dear me!" said my Guardian, "Due East!"
Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome, and presented her to Mr Jarndyce; to 
whom she said, as she sat down:
"Ma's compliments, and she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's 
correcting proofs of the plan. She's going to put out five thousand new 
circulars, and she knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought 
one of them with me. Ma's compliments." With which she presented it sulkily 
enough.
"Thank you," said my Guardian. "I am much obliged to Mrs Jellyby. O dear 
me! This is a very trying wind!"
We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical hat; asking him if he 
remembered us; and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but 
relented at the sight of sponge-cake, and allowed me to take him on my lap, 
where he sat munching quietly. Mr Jarndyce then withdrawing into the 
temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual 
abruptness.
"We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies' Inn," said she. "I have no 
peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if I was a what's-
his-name - man and a brother!"
I tried to say something soothing.
"O, it's of no use, Miss Summerson," exclaimed Miss Jellyby, "though I 
thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I 
am not to be talked over. You wouldn't be talked over, if you were used so. 
Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!"
"I shan't!" said Peepy.
"Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!" returned Miss 
Jellyby, with tears in her eyes. "I'll never take pains to dress you any 
more."
"Yes, I will go, Caddy!" cried Peepy, who was really a good child, and who 
was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.
"It seems a little thing to cry about," said poor Miss Jellyby, 
apologetically; "but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars 
till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so, that that alone makes 
my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And look at that poor 
unfortunate child. Was there ever such a fright as he is!"
Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the 
carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den 
at us, while he ate his cake.
"I have sent him to the other end of the room," observed Miss Jellyby, 
drawing her chair nearer ours, "because I don't want him to hear the 
conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we 
really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and 
then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll be nobody but Ma to thank for 
it."
We said we hoped Mr Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as that.
"It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you!" returned Miss 
Jellyby, shaking her head. "Pa told me, only yesterday morning, (and 
dreadfully unhappy he is,) that he couldn't weather the storm. I should be 
surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff 
they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and I have no time 
to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't care about anything, I should 
like to make out how Pa is to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa I'd 
run away!"
"My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa, no doubt, considers his family."
"O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson," replied Miss Jellyby; 
"but what comfort is his family to him? His family is nothing but bills, 
dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion, and wretchedness. His 
scrambling home, from week's-end to week's-end, is like one great washing-
day - only nothing's washed!"
Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor, and wiped her eyes.
"I am sure I pity Pa to that degree," she said, "and am so angry with Ma, 
that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going to bear 
it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I won't submit to 
be proposed to by Mr Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a 
Philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of that!" said poor Miss Jellyby.
I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs Jellyby, 
myself; seeing and hearing this neglected girl, and knowing how much of 
bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.
"If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house," 
pursued Miss Jellyby, "I should have been ashamed to come here today, for I 
know what a figure I must seem to you two. But, as it is, I made up my mind 
to call: especially as I am not likely to see you again, the next time you 
come to town."
She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at one 
another, foreseeing something more.
"No!" said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. "Not at all likely! I know I may 
trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged."
"Without their knowledge at home?" said I.
"Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson," she returned, justifying herself 
in a fretful but not angry manner, "how can it be otherwise? You know what 
Ma is - and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by telling him."
"But would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his 
knowledge or consent, my dear?" said I.
"No," said Miss Jellyby, softening. "I hope not. I should try to make him 
happy and comfortable when he came to see me; and Peepy and the others 
should take it in turns to come and stay with me; and they should have some 
care taken of them, then."
There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more and 
more while saying this, and cried so much over the unwonted little home-
picture she had raised in her mind, that Peepy, in his cave under the 
piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud 
lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and 
had restored him to his place in my lap, and had shown him that Caddy was 
laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his 
peace of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional on his taking us 
in turns by the chin, and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At 
last, as his spirits were not yet equal to the piano, we put him on a chair 
to look out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed 
her confidence.
"It began in your coming to our house," she said.
We naturally asked how?
"I felt I was so awkward," she replied, "that I made up my mind to be 
improved in that respect, at all events, and to learn to dance. I told Ma I 
was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked at me in 
that provoking way of hers as if I wasn't in sight; but, I was quite 
determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr Turveydrop's Academy 
in Newman Street."
"And was it there, my dear - " I began.
"Yes, it was there," said Caddy, "and I am engaged to Mr Turveydrop. There 
are two Mr Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr Turveydrop is the son, of 
course. I only wish I had been better brought up, and was likely to make 
him a better wife; for I am very fond of him."
"I am sorry to hear this," said I, "I must confess."
"I don't know why you should be sorry," she retorted a little anxiously, 
"but I am engaged to Mr Turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very fond of 
me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because old Mr Turveydrop has a 
share in the connection, and it might break his heart, or give him some 
other shock, if he was told of it abruptly. Old Mr Turveydrop is a very 
gentlemanly man indeed - very gentlemanly."
"Does his wife know of it?" asked Ada.
"Old Mr Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?" returned Miss Jellyby, opening her 
eyes. "There's no such person. He is a widower."
We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on 
account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope whenever 
she was emphatic, that the afflicted child now bemoaned his sufferings with 
a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for compassion, and as I 
was only a listener, I undertook to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceeded, after 
begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss, and assuring him that she hadn't meant 
to do it.
"That's the state of the case," said Caddy. "If I ever blame myself, I 
shall think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can, and then 
I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won't much agitate Ma: I 
am only pen and ink to her. One great comfort is," said Caddy, with a sob, 
"that I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr Turveydrop 
hates it for my sake; and if old Mr Turveydrop knows there is such a place, 
it's as much as he does."
"It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think?" said I.
"Very gentlemanly, indeed," said Caddy. "He is celebrated almost 
everywhere, for his Deportment."
"Does he teach?" asked Ada.
"No, he don't teach anything in particular," replied Caddy. "But his 
Deportment is beautiful."
Caddy went on to say, with considerable hesitation and reluctance, that 
there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to know, 
and which she hoped would not offend us. It was, that she had improved her 
acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady; and that she 
frequently went there early in the morning, and met her lover for a few 
minutes before breakfast - only for a few minutes. "I go there, at other 
times," said Caddy, "but Prince does not come then. Young Mr Turveydrop's 
name is Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of 
course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr Turveydrop had him christened 
Prince, in remembrance of the Prince Regent. Old Mr Turveydrop adored the 
Prince Regent on account of his Deportment. I hope you won't think the 
worse of me for having made these little appointments at Miss Flite's, 
where I first went with you; because I like the poor thing for her own sake 
and I believe she likes me. If you could see young Mr Turveydrop, I am sure 
you would think well of him - at least, I am sure you couldn't possibly 
think any ill of him. I am going there now, for my lesson. I couldn't ask 
you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would," said Caddy, who had 
said all this, earnestly and tremblingly, "I should be very glad - very 
glad."
It happened that we had arranged with my Guardian to go to Miss Flite's 
that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our account had 
interested him; but something had always happened to prevent our going 
there again. As I trusted that I might have sufficient influence with Miss 
Jellyby to prevent her taking any very rash step, if I fully accepted the 
confidence she was so willing to place in me, poor girl, I proposed that 
she and I and Peepy should go to the Academy, and afterwards meet my 
Guardian and Ada at Miss Flite's - whose name I now learnt for the first 
time. This was on condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back 
with us to dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded 
to by both, we smartened Peepy up a little, with the assistance of a few 
pins, some soap and water, and a hairbrush; and went out: bending our steps 
towards Newman Street, which was very near.
I found the Academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the corner 
of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the same house 
there were also established, as I gathered from the plates on the door, a 
drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly, no room for his 
coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size and 
situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, Mr Turveydrop. The door 
was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several 
other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all 
looking rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the Academy 
had been lent, last night, for a concert.
We went upstairs - it had been quite a fine house once, when it was 
anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business to 
smoke in it all day - and into Mr Turveydrop's great room, which was built 
out into a mews at the back, and was lighted by a skylight. It was a bare, 
resounding room, smelling of stables; with cane forms along the walls; and 
the walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres, and little 
cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-
fashioned drops as other branches might shed autumn leaves. Several young 
lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three 
and twenty, were assembled; and I was looking among them for their 
instructor, when Caddy, pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of 
introduction. "Miss Summerson, Mr Prince Turveydrop!"
I curtseyed to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance, with 
flaxen hair parted in the middle, and curling at the ends all round his 
head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a kit, under 
his left arm, and its little bow in the same band. His little dancing shoes 
were particularly diminutive, and he had a little innocent, feminine 
manner, which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, but made this 
singular effect upon me: that I received the impression that he was like 
his mother, and that his mother had not been much considered or well used."
"I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low to me. 
"I began to fear," with timid tenderness, "as it was past the usual time, 
that Miss Jellyby was not coming."
"I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have 
detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir," said I.
"O dear!" said he.
"And pray," I entreated, "do not allow me to be the cause of any more 
delay."
With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well used 
to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady of a 
censorious countenance, whose two nieces were in the class, and who was 
very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then tinkled the 
strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to 
dance. Just then, there appeared from a side-door, old Mr Turveydrop, in 
the full lustre of his Deportment.
He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false 
whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his 
coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He 
was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as 
he could possibly bear. He had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes 
out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into 
it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up, if it were cast 
loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great size and weight, shelving 
downward from the crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of white 
gloves, with which he flapped it, as he stood poised on one leg, in a high-
shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a 
cane, he had an eyeglass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had 
wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like 
youth, he was not like age, he was like nothing in the world but a model of 
Deportment.
"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson."
"Distinguished," said Mr Turveydrop, "by Miss Summerson's presence." As he 
bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases come into 
the whites of his eyes.
"My father," said the son, aside to me, with quite an affecting belief in 
him, "is a celebrated character. My father is greatly admired."
"Go on, Prince! Go on!" said Mr Turveydrop, standing with his back to the 
fire, and waving his gloves condescendingly. "Go on, my son!"
At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on. Prince 
Turveydrop, sometimes, played the kit, dancing; sometimes played the piano, 
standing: sometimes hummed the tune with what little breath he could spare, 
while he set a pupil right; always conscientiously moved with the least 
proficient through every step and every part of the figure; and never 
rested for an instant. His distinguished father did nothing whatever, but 
stand before the fire, a model of Deportment.
"And he never does anything else," said the old lady of the censorious 
countenance. "Yet would you believe that it's his name on the door-plate?"
"His son's name is the same, you know," said I.
"He wouldn't let his son have any name, if he could take it from him," 
returned the old lady. "Look at the son's dress!" It certainly was plain - 
threadbare - almost shabby. "Yet the father must be garnished and tricked 
out," said the old lady, "because of his Deportment. I'd deport him! 
Transport him would be better!"
I felt curious to know more, concerning this person. I asked, "Does he give 
lessons in Deportment, now?"
"Now!" returned the old lady, shortly. "Never did."
After a moment's consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had been 
his accomplishment?
"I don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am," said the old lady.
I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and more 
incensed against the Master of Deportment as she dwelt upon the subject, 
gave me some particulars of his career, with strong assurances that they 
were mildly stated.
He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable connection 
(having never in his life before done anything but deport himself), and had 
worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered her to work herself to 
death, to maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable to his 
position. At once to exhibit his Deportment to the best models, and to keep 
the best models constantly before himself, he had found it necessary to 
frequent all public places of fashionable and lounging resort; to be seen 
at Brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times; and to lead an idle life in 
the very best clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little 
dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured, and would have toiled and 
laboured to that hour, if her strength had lasted so long. For, the 
mainspring of the story was, that, in spite of the man's absorbing 
selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his Deportment) had, to the last, 
believed in him, and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving terms, 
confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable claim upon 
him, and whom he could never regard with too much pride and deference. The 
son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the Deportment always 
before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, and now, at thirty years 
of age, worked for his father twelve hours a-day, and looked up to him with 
veneration on the old imaginary pinnacle.
"The airs the fellow gives himself!" said my informant, shaking her head at 
old Mr Turveydrop with speechless indignation, as he drew on his tight 
gloves: of course unconscious of the homage she was rendering. "He fully 
believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is so condescending to the 
son he so egregiously deludes that you might suppose him the most virtuous 
of parents. O!" said the old lady, apostrophising him with infinite 
vehemence, "I could bite you!"
I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with 
feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her, with the father 
and son before me. What I might have thought of them without the old lady's 
account, or what I might have thought of the old lady's account without 
them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of things in the whole that carried 
conviction with it.
My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr Turveydrop working so hard to old 
Mr Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when the latter came 
ambling up to me, and entered into conversation.
He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a distinction on 
London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary to reply that I was 
perfectly aware I should not do that, in any case, but merely told him 
where I did reside.
"A lady so graceful and accomplished," he said, kissing his right glove, 
and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, "will look leniently on the 
deficiencies here. We do our best to polish - polish - polish!"
He sat down beside me; taking some pains to sit on the form, I thought, in 
imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. And really he 
did look very like it.
"To polish - polish - polish!" he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and 
gently fluttering his fingers. "But we are not - if I may say so, to one 
formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art;" with the high-shouldered 
bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his 
eyebrows and shutting his eyes - "we are not what we used to be in point of 
Deportment."
"Are we not, sir?" said I.
"We have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could do, to 
a very limited extent, in his cravat. "A levelling age is not favourable to 
Deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little 
partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some 
years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness the Prince 
Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out 
of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building) 'Who is he? Who the Devil 
is he? Why don't I know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' But 
these are little matters of anecdote - the general property, ma'am, - still 
repeated occasionally, among the upper classes."
"Indeed?" said I.
He replied with the high-shouldered bow. "Where what is left among us of 
Deportment," he added, "still lingers. England - alas, my country! - has 
degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. She has not many 
gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us, but a race of 
weavers."
"One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here," said 
I.
"You are very good," he smiled, with the high-shouldered bow again. "You 
flatter me. But, no - no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with 
that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, 
but he has - no Deportment."

"He appears to be an excellent master," I observed.
"Understand me, my dear madam, he is an excellent master. All that can be 
acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can impart. But 
there are things" - he took another pinch of snuff and made the bow again, 
as if to add, "this kind of thing, for instance."
I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover, now 
engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever.
"My amiable child," murmured Mr Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.
"Your son is indefatigable," said I.
"It is my reward," said Mr Turveydrop, "to hear you say so. In some 
respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a 
devoted creature. But Wooman, lovely Wooman," said Mr Turveydrop, with very 
disagreeable gallantry, "what a sex you are!"
I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was, by this time, putting on her 
bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was a 
general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the unfortunate Prince 
found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't know, but they certainly 
found none, on this occasion, to exchange a dozen words.
"My dear," said Mr Turveydrop benignly to his son, "do you know the hour?"
"No, father." The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold one, 
which he pulled out, with an air that was an example to mankind.
"My son," said he "it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at 
three."
"That's time enough for me, father," said Prince. "I can take a morsel of 
dinner, standing, and be off."
"My dear boy," returned his father, "you must be very quick. You will find 
the cold mutton on the table."
"Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?"
"Yes, my dear. I suppose," said Mr Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and 
lifting up his shoulders, with modest consciousness, "that I must show 
myself, as usual, about town."
"You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere," said his son.
"My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the 
French house, in the Opera Colonnade."
"That's right. Good-bye, father!" said Prince, shaking hands.
"Good-bye, my son. Bless you!"
Mr Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his 
son good; who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to 
him, and so proud of him, that I almost felt as if it were an unkindness to 
the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. The few 
moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and 
particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced by 
favourable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for 
him, and a compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his pocket - and 
with it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy - and went away good-
humouredly to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington, that made me 
scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady.
The father opened the room door for us, and bowed us out in a manner, I 
must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style he 
presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the 
aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the 
few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in reconsidering 
what I had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was quite unable to talk 
to Caddy, or even to fix my attention on what she said to me: especially 
when I began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, 
any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a 
reputation entirely on their Deportment. This became so bewildering, and 
suggested the possibility of so many Mr Turveydrops, that I said, "Esther, 
you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether, and attend 
to Caddy." I accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to 
Lincoln's Inn.
Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected, that it was 
not always easy to read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious 
about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do 
better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words, that they 
sometimes quite lost their English appearance. "He does it with the best 
intention," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the effect he means, poor 
fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a 
scholar, when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school, and had 
done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! 
And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she 
knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. 
"Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to 
give herself airs," said Caddy. "I know little enough, I am sure; thanks to 
Ma!"
"There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone," continued 
Caddy; "which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen 
Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's of no use my 
trying to learn anything that would be useful for Prince's wife to know, in 
our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and I 
have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So I get a little 
practice with - who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning, I 
help her to tidy her room, and clean her birds; and I make her cup of 
coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so 
well that Prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would 
quite delight old Mr Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his 
coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of 
mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping 
things. I am not clever at my needle, yet," said Caddy, glancing at the 
repairs on Peepy's frock, "but perhaps I shall improve. And since I have 
been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-
tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out, at first 
this morning, to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty, and to 
feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too; but, on the whole, I hope I am better-
tempered than I was, and more forgiving to Ma."
The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched mine. 
"Caddy, my love," I replied, "I begin to have a great affection for you, 
and I hope we shall become friends."
"Oh, do you?" cried Caddy; "how happy that would make me!"
"My dear Caddy," said I, "let us be friends from this time, and let us 
often have a chat about these matters, and try to find the right way 
through them." Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could, in my old-
fashioned way, to comfort and encourage her; and I would not have objected 
to old Mr Turveydrop, that day, for any smaller consideration than a 
settlement on his daughter-in-law.
By this time we were come to Mr Krook's, whose private door stood open. 
There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to let on the 
second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded upstairs, that 
there had been a sudden death there, and an inquest; and that our little 
friend had been ill of the fright. The door and window of the vacant room 
being open, we looked in. It was the room with the dark door, to which Miss 
Flite had secretly directed my attention when I was last in the house. A 
sad and desolate place it was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a 
strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. "You look pale," said 
Caddy, when we came out, "and cold!" I felt as if the room had chilled me.
We had walked slowly, while we were talking; and my Guardian and Ada were 
here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were looking at 
the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to attend Miss 
Flite with much solicitude and compassion, spoke with her cheerfully by the 
fire.
"I have finished my professional visit," he said coming forward. "Miss 
Flite is much better, and may appear in Court (as her mind is set upon it) 
tomorrow. She has been greatly missed there, I understand."
Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency, and dropped a general 
curtsey to us.
"Honoured, indeed," said she, "by another visit from the Wards in Jarndyce! 
Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my humble roof!" 
with a special curtsey. "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear;" she had bestowed that 
name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her by it; "a double 
welcome!"
"Has she been very ill?" asked Mr Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we had 
found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly, though he 
had put the question in a whisper.
"O decidedly unwell! O very unwell indeed," she said, confidentially. "Not 
pain, you know - trouble. Not bodily so much as nervous, nervous! The truth 
is," in a subdued voice and trembling, "we have had death here. There was 
poison in the house. I am very susceptible to such horrid things. It 
frightened me. Only Mr Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr 
Woodcourt!" with great stateliness. "The Wards in Jarndyce - Jarndyce of 
Bleak House - Fitz-Jarndyce!"
"Miss Flite," said Mr Woodcourt, in a grave kind of voice, as if he were 
appealing to her while speaking to us; and laying his hand gently on her 
arm; "Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual accuracy. She was 
alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might have alarmed a stronger 
person, and was made ill by the distress and agitation. She brought me 
here, in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of 
any use to the unfortunate man. I have compensated myself for that 
disappointment by coming here since, and being of some small use to her.
"The kindest physician in the college," whispered Miss Flite to me. "I 
expect a judgement. On the day of Judgement. And shall then confer 
estates."
"She will be as well, in a day or two," said Mr Woodcourt, looking at her 
with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. In other words, quite well 
of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?"
"Most extraordinary!" said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. "You never heard 
of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge, or Guppy 
(Clerk to Conversation K.), places in my hand a paper of shillings. 
Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the paper. Always one 
for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So well-timed, is it not? 
Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you say? That is the great 
question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I think? I think," said Miss 
Flite, drawing herself back with a very shrewd look, and shaking her right 
forefinger in a most significant manner, "that the Lord Chancellor, aware 
of the length of time during which the Great Seal has been open, (for it 
has been open a long time!) forwards them. Until the Judgement I expect, is 
given. Now that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he 
is a little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending Court the other day 
- I attend it regularly - with my documents - I taxed him with it, and he 
almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and he smiled at 
me from his bench. But it's great good fortune, is it not? And Fitz-
Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage. O, I assure you to 
the greatest advantage!"
I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this fortunate 
addition to her income, and wished her a long continuance of it. I did not 
speculate upon the source from which it came, or wonder whose humanity was 
so considerate. My Guardian stood before me contemplating the birds, and I 
had no need to look beyond him.
"And what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?" said he in his pleasant 
voice. "Have they any names?"
"I can answer for Miss Flite that they have," said I, "for she promised to 
tell us what they were. Ada remembers?"
Ada remembered very well.
"Did I?" said Miss Flite - "who's that at my door? What are you listening 
at my door for, Krook?"
The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there with 
his fur-cap in his hand, and his cat at his heels.
"I warn't listening, Miss Flite," he said. "I was going to give a rap with 
my knuckles, only you're so quick!"
"Make your cat go down. Drive her away!" the old lady angrily exclaimed.
"Bah, bah! - There ain't no danger, gentlefolks," said Mr Krook, looking 
slowly and sharply from one to another, until he had looked at all of us; 
"she'd never offer at the birds when I was here, unless I told her to it."
"You will excuse my landlord," said the old lady with a dignified air. "M, 
quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?"
"Hi!" said the old man. "You know I am the Chancellor."
"Well?" returned Miss Flite. "What of that?"
"For the Chancellor," said the old man with a chuckle, "not to be 
acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't it, Miss Flite? Mightn't I take 
the liberty? - Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce a'most as 
well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never to my knowledge 
see you afore though, not even in Court. Yet, I go there a mortal sight of 
times in the course of the year, taking one day with another."
"I never go there," said Mr Jarndyce (which he never did on any 
consideration). "I would sooner go - somewhere else."
"Would you, though?" returned Krook, grinning. "You're bearing hard upon my 
noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir; though perhaps it is but 
nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What, you're looking at my 
lodger's birds, Mr Jarndyce?" The old man had come by little and little 
into the room, until he now touched my Guardian with his elbow, and looked 
close up into his face with his spectacled eyes. "It's one of her strange 
ways, that she'll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, 
though she named 'em all." This was in a whisper. "Shall I run 'em over, 
Flite?" he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned 
away, affecting to sweep the grate.
"If you like," she answered hurriedly.
The old man, looking up at the cages, after another look at us, went 
through the list.
"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, 
Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, 
Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's the whole 
collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together, by my noble and 
learned brother."
"This is a bitter wind!" muttered my Guardian.
"When my noble and learned brother gives his Judgement, they're to be let 
go free," said Krook, winking at us again. "And then," he added, whispering 
and grinning, "if that ever was to happen - which it won't - the birds that 
have never been caged would kill 'em."
"If ever the wind was in the east," said my Guardian, pretending to look 
out of the window for a weathercock, "I think it's there today!"
We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not Miss 
Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature in 
consulting the convenience of others, as there possibly could be. It was Mr 
Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr Jarndyce. If he had been 
linked to him, he could hardly have attended him more closely. He proposed 
to show us his Court of Chancery, and all the strange medley it contained; 
during the whole of our inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to 
Mr Jarndyce, and sometimes detained him, under one pretence or other, until 
we had passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon 
some secret subject, which he could not make up his mind to approach. I 
cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive of 
caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he could 
not resolve to venture on, than Mr Krook was, that day. His watchfulness of 
my Guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes from his face. If he 
went on beside him, he observed him with the slyness of an old white fox. 
If he went before he looked back. When we stood still, he got opposite to 
him, and drawing his hand across and across his open mouth with a curious 
expression of a sense of power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his 
grey eyebrows until they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every 
lineament of his face.
At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house, and 
having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was certainly 
curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here, on the head of an 
empty barrel stood on end, were an ink-bottle, some old stumps of pens, and 
some dirty playbills; and, against the wall, were pasted several large 
printed alphabets in several plain hands.
"What are you doing here?" asked my Guardian.
"Trying to learn myself to read and write," said Krook.
"And how do you get on?"
"Slow. Bad," returned the old man, impatiently. "It's hard at my time of 
life."
"It would be easier to be taught by some one," said my Guardian.
"Ay, but they might teach me wrong!" returned the old man, with a 
wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. "I don't know what I may have 
lost, by not being learnd afore. I wouldn't like to lose anything by being 
learnd wrong now."
"Wrong?" said my Guardian, with his good-humoured smile. "Who do you 
suppose would teach you wrong?"
"I don't know, Mr Jarndyce of Bleak House!" replied the old man, turning up 
his spectacles on his forehead, and rubbing his hands. "I don't suppose as 
anybody would - but I'd rather trust my own self than another!"
These answers, and his manner, were strange enough to cause my Guardian to 
inquire of Mr Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln's Inn together, 
whether Mr Krook were really, as his lodger represented him, deranged? The 
young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason to think so. He was 
exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually was, and he was always more 
or less under the influence of raw gin: of which he drank great quantities, 
and of which he and his back-shop, as we might have observed, smelt 
strongly; but he did not think him mad, as yet.
On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's affections by buying him a 
windmill and two flour-sacks, that he would suffer nobody else to take off 
his hat and gloves, and would sit nowhere but at my side. Caddy sat upon 
the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we imparted the whole history of 
the engagement as soon as we got back. We made much of Caddy, and Peepy 
too; and Caddy brightened exceedingly; and my Guardian was as merry as we 
were; and we were all very happy indeed; until Caddy went home at night in 
a hackney-coach, with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.
I have forgotten to mention - at least I have not mentioned - that Mr 
Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr Badger's. 
Or, that Mr Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or, that he came. Or, 
that when they were all gone, and I said to Ada, "Now, my darling, let us 
have a little talk about Richard!" Ada laughed and said -
But, I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always merry.


Chapter 15

Bell Yard

While we were in London, Mr Jarndyce was constantly beset by the crowd of 
excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much astonished us. 
Mr Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in all such 
excitements. He seemed to project those two shining knobs of temples of his 
into everything that went on, and to brush his hair farther and farther 
back, until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in 
inappeasable philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always 
particularly ready for anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His 
great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would 
sit, for any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples 
in the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly 
swallowed up in admiration of Mrs Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the 
absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake, and found 
him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of people.
Mrs Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something - and with her, 
Mr Quale. Whatever Mrs Pardiggle said, Mr Quale repeated to us; and just as 
he had drawn Mrs Jellyby out, he drew Mrs Pardiggle out. Mrs Pardiggle 
wrote a letter of introduction to my Guardian, in behalf of her eloquent 
friend, Mr Gusher. With Mr Gusher, appeared Mr Quale again. Mr Gusher, 
being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface, and eyes so much too small 
for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for 
somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet, he was scarcely 
seated, before Mr Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not 
a great creature - which he certainly was, flabbily speaking; though Mr 
Quale meant in intellectual beauty - and whether we were not struck by his 
massive configuration of brow? In short, we heard of a great many Missions 
of various sorts, among this set of people; but, nothing respecting them 
was half so clear to us, as that it was Mr Quale's mission to be in 
ecstasies with everybody else's mission, and that it was the most popular 
mission of all.
Mr Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in the tenderness of his heart 
and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but that he felt it 
to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic 
forms; where charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by loud professors 
and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and 
vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, 
adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly 
to help the weak from falling, rather than with a great deal of bluster and 
self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down; he 
plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr Quale, by Mr 
Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr Quale), and when Mr 
Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a meeting, including 
two charity schools of small boys and girls, who were specially reminded of 
the widow's mite, and requested to come forward with half-pence and be 
acceptable sacrifices; I think the wind was in the east for three whole 
weeks.
I mention this, because I am coming to Mr Skimpole again. It seemed to me, 
that his offhand professions of childishness and carelessness were a great 
relief to my Guardian, by contrast with such things, and were the more 
readily believed in; since, to find one perfectly undesigning and candid 
man, among many opposites, could not fail to give him pleasure. I should be 
sorry to imply that Mr Skimpole divined this, and was politic: I really 
never understood him well enough to know. What he was to my Guardian, he 
certainly was to the rest of the world.
He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we had seen 
nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning, in his usual agreeable 
way, and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were often 
bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of 
property. So he was, in a certain point of view - in his expansive 
intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish 
manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled his fees. He had 
said to the doctor, "Now, my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your 
part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with 
money - in my expansive intentions - if you only knew it!" And really (he 
said) he meant it to that degree, that he thought it much the same as doing 
it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind 
attached so much importance, to put in the doctor's hand, he would have put 
them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the 
deed. Very well! If he really meant it - if his will were genuine and real: 
which it was - it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and 
cancelled the obligation.
"It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money," said Mr 
Skimpole, "but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says 
to me, he wants that little bill. It's a part of the pleasant unconscious 
poetry of the man's nature, that he always calls it a 'little' bill - to 
make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, My good 
friend, if you knew it you are paid. You haven't had the trouble of coming 
to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it."
"But, suppose," said my Guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in the 
bill, instead of providing it!"
"My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. You take the butcher's 
position. A butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very ground. Says he, 
'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound?' 'Why did I 
eat spring lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, my honest friend?" said I, 
naturally amazed by the question. 'I like spring lamb!' This was so far 
convincing. 'Well, sir, 'says he, 'I wish I had meant the lamb as you mean 
the money!" 'My good fellow,' said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual 
beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I 
have not got the money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending 
it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!' He 
had not a word. There was an end of the subject."
"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my Guardian.
"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr Skimpole. "But, in that, he was 
influenced by passion; not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He 
writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his 
bachelor-house in Lincolnshire."
"He is a great favourite with my girls," said Mr Jarndyce, "and I have 
promised for them."
"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think?" observed Mr Skimpole to Ada and 
me. "A little too boisterous - like the sea? A little too vehement - like a 
bull, who has made up his mind to consider every colour scarlet? But, I 
grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!"
I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of 
one another; Mr Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things, and 
Mr Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides which, I had noticed Mr 
Boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong 
opinion, when Mr Skimpole was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in 
saying that we had been greatly pleased with him.
"He has invited me," said Mr Skimpole; "and if a child may trust himself in 
such hands: which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united 
tenderness of two angels to guard him: I shall go. He proposes to frank me 
down and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or 
pounds? Or something of that sort? By the bye. Coavinses. You remember our 
friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?"
He asked me, as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful light-
hearted manner, and without the least embarrassment.
"O yes!" said I.
"Coavinses has been arrested by the great Bailiff," said Mr Skimpole. "He 
will never do violence to the sunshine any more."
It quite shocked me to hear it; for, I had already recalled, with anything 
but a serious association, the image of the man sitting on the sofa that 
night, wiping his head.
"His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr Skimpole. "His 
successor is in my house now - in possession, I think he calls it. He came 
yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I put it to him, 'This is 
unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter you wouldn't 
like me to come, uninvited, on her birthday?' But, he stayed."
Mr Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity, and lightly touched the 
piano by which he was seated.
"And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put full 
stops, "That Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that 
Coavinses' profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a 
considerable disadvantage."
Mr Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr Skimpole 
played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs. Ada and I both looked at 
Mr Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind.
After walking, and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his 
head, and beginning again, my Guardian put his hand upon the keys and 
stopped Mr Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this, Skimpole," he said 
thoughtfully.
Mr Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised.
"The man was necessary," pursued my Guardian, walking backward and forward 
in the very short space between the piano and the end of the room, and 
rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had 
blown it into that form. "If we make such men necessary by our faults and 
follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we 
must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was no harm in his trade. He 
maintained his children. One would like to know more about this."
"O! Coavinses?" cried Mr Skimpole, at length perceiving what he meant. 
"Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses' headquarters, and you can know what 
you will."
Mr Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. "Come! We 
will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way, as soon as another!" We 
were quickly ready, and went out. Mr Skimpole went with us, and quite 
enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, he said, for him 
to want Coavinses, instead of Coavinses wanting him!
He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was a 
house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle. On our going 
into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out of a sort of 
office, and looked at us over a spiked wicket.
"Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his chin.
"There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr 
Jarndyce, "who is dead."
"Yes?" said the boy. "Well?"
"I want to know his name, if you please?"
"Name of Neckett," said the boy.
"And his address?"
"Bell Yard," said the boy. "Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of 
Blinder."
"Was he - I don't know how to shape the question," murmured my Guardian - 
"industrious?"
"Was Neckett?" said the boy. "Yes, wery much so. He was never tired of 
watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner, eight or ten hours at a 
stretch, if he undertook to do it."
"He might have done worse," I heard my Guardian soliloquise. "He might have 
undertaken to do it, and not done it. Thank you. That's all I want."
We left the boy, with his head on one side, and his arms on the gate, 
fondling and sucking the spikes; and went back to Lincoln's Inn, where Mr 
Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses; awaited us. Then, 
we all went to Bell Yard; a narrow alley, at a very short distance. We soon 
found the chandler's shop. In it, was a good-natured-looking old woman, 
with a dropsy, or an asthma, or perhaps both.
"Neckett's children?" said she, in reply to my inquiry. "Yes, surely, miss. 
Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the top of the stairs." And 
she handed me a key across the counter.
I glanced at the key, and glanced at her; but she took it for granted that 
I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the children's 
door, I came out, without asking anymore questions, and led the way up the 
dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could; but, four of us made some 
noise on the aged boards; and, when we came to the second story, we found 
we had disturbed a man who was standing there, looking out of his room.
"Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry 
stare.
"No, sir," said I, "I am going higher up."
He looked at Ada, and at Mr Jarndyce, and at Mr Skimpole: fixing the same 
angry stare on each in succession, as they passed and followed me. Mr 
Jarndyce gave him good day. "Good day!" he said, abruptly and fiercely. He 
was a tall sallow man with a careworn head, on which but little hair 
remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent eyes. He had a combative look; 
and a chafing, irritable manner, which, associated with his figure - still 
large and powerful, though evidently in its decline - rather alarmed me. He 
had a pen in his hand, and, in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, 
I saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.
Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at the 
door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked in. Mrs 
Blinder's got the key!"
I applied the key on hearing this, and opened the door. In a poor room, 
with a sloping ceiling, and containing very little furniture, was a mite of 
a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of 
eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both 
children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets, as a substitute. 
Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red 
and pinched, and their small figures shrunken, as the boy walked up and 
down, nursing and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder.
"Who has locked you up her alone?" we naturally asked.
"Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
"Is Charley your brother?"
"No. She's my sister Charlotte. Father called her Charley."
"Are there any more of you besides Charley?"
"Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child he was 
nursing. "And Charley."
"Where is Charley now?"
"Out a washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again, and 
taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead, by trying to gaze at 
us at the same time.
We were looking at one another, and at these two children, when there came 
into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-
looking in the face - pretty-faced too - wearing a womanly sort of bonnet 
much too large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of 
apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds 
were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have 
been a child, playing at washing, and imitating a poor working-woman with a 
quick observation of the truth.
She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood, and had made all 
the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very light, she was out 
of breath, and could not speak at first, as she stood panting, and wiping 
her arms, and looking quietly at us.
"O, here's Charley!" said the boy.
The child he was nursing, stretched forth its arms, and cried out to be 
taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner 
belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us over the 
burden that clung to her most affectionately.
"Is it possible," whispered my Guardian, as we put a chair for the little 
creature, and got her to sit down with her load: the boy keeping close to 
her, holding to her apron, "that this child works for the rest? Look at 
this! For God's sake look at this!"
It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two of 
them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an 
air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure.
"Charley, Charley!" said my Guardian. "How old are you?"
"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.
"O! What a great age," said my Guardian. "What a great age, Charley!"
I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half 
playfully, yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.
"And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my Guardian.
"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect 
confidence, "since father died."
"And how do you live, Charley? O! Charley," said my Guardian, turning his 
face away for a moment, "how do you live?"
"Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing today."
"God help you, Charley!" said my Guardian. "You're not tall enough to reach 
the tub!"
"In pattens I am, sir," she said, quickly. "I've got a high pair as 
belonged to mother."
"And when did mother die? Poor mother!"
"Mother died, just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at the 
face upon her bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good a mother to her 
as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home, and did cleaning and 
nursing and washing, for a long time before I began to go out. And that's 
how I know how; don't you see, sir?"
"And do you often go out?"
"As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes, and smiling, "because 
of earning sixpences and shillings!"
"And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"
"To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs Blinder comes up 
now and then, and Mr Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in 
sometimes, and they can play, you know, and Tom ain't afraid of being 
locked up, are you, Tom?"
"No-o!" said Tom, stoutly.
"When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they 
show up here quite bright - almost quite bright. Don't they, Tom?"
"Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright."
"Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature - O! in such a 
motherly, womanly way! "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed. And when 
he's tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and light the 
candle, and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with me. Don't 
you, Tom?"
"O yes, Charley," said Tom. "That I do!" And either in this glimpse of the 
great pleasure of his life, or in gratitude and love for Charley, who was 
all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty folds of her frock, 
and passed from laughing into crying.
It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among these 
children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father, and their 
mother, as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of taking 
courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work, and by her 
bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried; although she sat quite 
tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any movement disturb a hair 
of the head of either of her little charges; I saw two silent tears fall 
down her face.
I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops, and 
the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the birds in 
little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that Mrs Blinder, 
from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this time to 
get upstairs) and was talking to my Guardian.
"It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said: "who could take it 
from them!"
"Well, well!" said my Guardian to us two. "It is enough that the time will 
come when this good woman will find that it was much, and that forasmuch as 
she did it unto the least of these -!" This child," he added, after a few 
moments, "could she possibly continue this?"
"Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs Blinder, getting her heavy 
breath by painful degrees. "She's as handy as is possible to be. Bless you, 
sir, the way she tended them two children, after the mother died, was the 
talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her with him after he was took 
ill, it really was! 'Mrs Blinder,' he said to me the very last he spoke - 
he was lying there - 'Mrs Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see 
a Angel sitting in this room last night along with my child, and I trust 
her to Our Father!'"
"He had no other calling?" said my Guardian.
"No, sir," returned Mrs Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerer. When he 
first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I confess that 
when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in the yard. It wasn't 
approved by the other lodgers. It is not a genteel calling," said Mrs 
Blinder, "and most people do object to it. Mr Gridley objected to it very 
strong; and he is a good lodger, though his temper has been hard tried."
"So you gave him notice?" said my Guardian.
"So I gave him notice," said Miss Blinder. "But really when the time came 
and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was punctual and 
diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs Blinder, unconsciously 
fixing Mr Skimpole with her eye; "and it's something in this world, even to 
do that."
"So you kept him after all?"
"Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr Gridley, I could arrange with 
the other lodgers, and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked 
in the yard. Mr Gridley gave his consent gruff - but gave it. He was always 
gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. A person is 
never known till a person is proved."
"Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr Jarndyce.
"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs Blinder; "but, certainly not so 
many as would have been, if their father's calling had been different. Mr 
Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a little purse. Some 
neighbours in the yard, that had always joked and tapped their shoulders 
when he went by, came forward with a little subscription, and - in general -
 not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. Some people won't employ her, 
because she was a follerer's child; some people that do employ her, cast it 
at her; some make a merit of having her to work for them, with that and all 
her drawbacks upon her: and perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But 
she's patienter than others would be, and is clever too, and always willing 
up to the full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, 
not so bad, sir, but might be better."
Mrs Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity of 
recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it was 
fully restored. Mr Jarndyce was turning to speak to us, when his attention 
was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the Mr Gridley who 
had been mentioned, and whom we had seen on our way up.
"I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he said, 
as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming in. I don't 
come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom! Well, little one! How 
is it with us all today?"
He bent over the group in a caressing way, and clearly was regarded as a 
friend by the children, though his face retained its stern character, and 
his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My Guardian noticed it, and 
respected it.
"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly.
"May be so, sir; may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon his knee, 
and waving him off impatiently. "I don't want to argue with ladies and 
gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing, to last one man his life."
"You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr Jarndyce, "for being 
chafed and irritated - "
"There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of a 
quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!"
"Not very, I think."
"Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child, and going up to him as if he 
meant to strike him. "Do you know anything of Courts of Equity?"
"Perhaps I do, to my sorrow."
"To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath. "If so, I beg your 
pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir," with renewed 
violence, "I have been dragged for five-and-twenty years over burning iron, 
and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go into the Court of 
Chancery yonder, and ask what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up 
their business sometimes, and they will tell you that the best joke they 
have is the man from Shropshire. I," he said, beating one hand on the 
other, passionately, "am the man from Shropshire."
"I believe, I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing some 
entertainment in the same grave place," said my Guardian, composedly. "You 
may have heard my name - Jarndyce."
"Mr Jarndyce," said Gridley, with a rough sort of salutation, "you bear 
your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I tell you - 
and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they are friends of 
yours - that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I should be driven mad! 
It is only by resenting them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by 
angrily demanding the justice I never get, that I am able to keep my wits 
together. It is only that!" he said, speaking in a homely, rustic way, and 
with great vehemence. "You may tell me that I overexcite myself. I answer 
that it's in my nature to do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There's 
nothing between doing it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor 
little mad woman that haunts the Court. If I was once to sit down under it, 
I should become imbecile."
The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his face 
worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what he said, 
were most painful to see.
"Mr Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. As true as there is a Heaven 
above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a farmer) 
made a will, and left his farm and stock, and so forth, to my mother, for 
her life. After my mother's death, all was to come to me, except a legacy 
of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my brother. My mother died. 
My brother, some time afterwards, claimed his legacy. I, and some of my 
relations, said that he had had a part of it already, in board and lodging, 
and some other things. Now mind! That was the question, and nothing else. 
No one disputed the will; no one disputed anything but whether part of that 
three hundred pounds had been already paid or not. To settle that question, 
my brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; 
I was forced there, because the law forced me, and would let me go nowhere 
else. Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first 
came on, after two years. It was then stopped for another two years, while 
the Master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father's son - 
about which, there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature. He then 
found out, that there were not defendants enough - remember, there were 
only seventeen as yet! - but, that we must have another who had been left 
out; and must begin all over again. The costs at that time - before the 
thing was begun! - were three times the legacy. My brother would have given 
up the legacy, and joyful to escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me 
in that will of my father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, 
has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else - and 
here I stand, this day! Now, Mr Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands 
and thousands involved where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine less hard 
to bear, or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it, and has 
been thus shamefully sucked away?"
Mr Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart, and that he 
set up no monopoly, himself, in being unjustly treated by this monstrous 
system.
"There again," said Mr Gridley, with no diminution of his rage. "The 
system! I am told on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to 
individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into Court, and say, 'My Lord, I 
beg to know this from you - is this right or wrong? Have you the face to 
tell me I have received justice, and therefore am dismissed?' My Lord knows 
nothing of it. He sits there, to administer the system. I mustn't go to Mr 
Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he 
makes me furious, by being so cool and satisfied - as they all do, for I 
know they gain by it while I lose, don't I? - I mustn't say to him, I will 
have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul! He is 
not responsible. It's the system. But if I do no violence to any of them, 
here - I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at 
last! - I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, 
face to face, before the great eternal bar!"
His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage without 
seeing it.
"I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "Mr Jarndyce, I 
have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I have been in prison 
for contempt of Court. I have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. 
I have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. I am the 
man from Shropshire, and I sometimes go beyond amusing them - though they 
have found it amusing, too, to see me committed into custody, and brought 
up in custody, and all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I 
restrained myself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself, I should 
become imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People 
in my part of the country, say, they remember me so; but, now, I must have 
this vent under my sense of injury, or nothing could hold my wits together. 
'It would be far better for you, Mr Gridley,' the Lord Chancellor told me 
last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to stay usefully employed, 
down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,' said I to him, 
'and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name of 
your high office; but, unhappily for me, I can't undo the past, and the 
past drives me here!' - Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, "I'll 
shame them. To the last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I 
knew when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice 
to speak with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here, and 
sent me from here, many and many a time. Now send me out feet foremost!'"
His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious 
expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet.
"I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said, going 
to them again, "and let them play about. I didn't mean to say all this, but 
it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom; are you?"
"No!" said Tom. "You ain't angry with me."
"You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come, then, 
little one!" He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was willing 
enough to be carried. "I shouldn't wonder if we found a gingerbread soldier 
downstairs. Let's go and look for him!"
He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a certain 
respect, to Mr Jarndyce; and bowing slightly to us, went downstairs to his 
room.
Upon that, Mr Skimpole began to talk for the first time since our arrival, 
in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very pleasant to see 
how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. Here was this Mr Gridley, 
a man of a robust will and surprising energy - intellectually speaking, a 
sort of inharmonious blacksmith - and he could easily imagine that there 
Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his 
superfluous combativeness upon - a sort of Young Love among the thorns - 
when the Court of Chancery came in his way, and accommodated him with the 
exact thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise 
he might have been a great general, blowing up all sort of towns, or he 
might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of parliamentary 
rhetoric; but, as it was, he and the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each 
other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and Gridley 
was, so to speak, from that hour provided for. Then look at Coavinses! How 
delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these charming children) illustrated 
the same principle! He, Mr Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the 
existence of Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could have 
dispensed with Coavinses. There had been times, when, if he had been a 
Sultan, and his Grand Vizier had said one morning, "What does the Commander 
of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have even gone 
so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what turned out to be the 
case? That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most 
deserving man; that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses; that he had 
actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in 
this agreeable way, developing these social virtues? Insomuch that his 
heart had just now swelled, and the tears had come into his eyes, when he 
had looked round the room, and thought, "I was the great patron of 
Coavinses, and his little comforts were my work!"
There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these 
fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of the 
graver childhood we had seen, that he made my Guardian smile even as he 
turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs Blinder. We kissed 
Charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped outside the house to 
see her run away to her work. I don't know where she was going, but we saw 
her run, such a little, little creature, in her womanly bonnet and apron, 
through a covered way at the bottom of the court; and melt into the city's 
strife and sound, like a dewdrop in an ocean.


Chapter 16

Tom-All-Alone's

My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished fashionable 
intelligence hardly knows where to have her. Today she is at Chesney Wold; 
yesterday she was at her house in town; tomorrow she may be abroad, for 
anything the fashionable intelligence can with confidence predict. Even Sir 
Leicester's gallantry has some trouble to keep pace with her. It would have 
more, but that his other faithful ally, for better and for worse - the gout 
- darts into the old oak bed-chamber at Chesney Wold, and grips him by both 
legs.
Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but till a demon of 
the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male line, through a 
course of time during and beyond which the memory of man goeth not to the 
contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved, sir. Other men's fathers may 
have died of the rheumatism, or may have taken base contagion from the 
tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but the Dedlock family have communicated 
something exclusive, even to the levelling process of dying, by dying of 
their own family gout. It has come down through their illustrious line, 
like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among 
their dignities. Sir Leicester is, perhaps, not wholly without an 
impression, though he has never resolved it into words, that the angel of 
death in the discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of 
the aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to 
you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout."
Hence, Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder, as 
if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels, that for a 
Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in 
his extremities, is a liberty taken somewhere; but, he thinks, "We have all 
yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has, for some hundreds of years, been 
understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on 
more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise."

And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold, in the 
midst of the great drawing-room, before his favourite picture of my Lady, 
with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long perspective, 
through the long line of windows, and alternating with soft reliefs of 
shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in the green ground 
which has never known ploughshare, but was still a Chase when kings rode to 
battle with sword and shield, and rode a hunting with bow and arrow; bear 
witness to his greatness. Inside, his forefathers, looking on him from the 
walls, say, "Each of us was a passing reality here, and left this coloured 
shadow of himself, and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant 
voices of the rooks now lulling you to rest;" and bear their testimony to 
his greatness, too. And he is very great, this day. And woe to Boythorn, or 
other daring wight, who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!
My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester by her portrait. She 
has flitted away to town, with no intention of remaining there, and will 
soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the fashionable intelligence. 
The house in town is not prepared for her reception. It is muffled and 
dreary. Only one Mercury in powder, gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; 
and he mentioned last night to another Mercury of his acquaintance, also 
accustomed to good society, that if that sort of thing was to last - which 
it couldn't, for a man of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his 
figure couldn't be expected to bear it - there would be no resource for 
him, upon his honour, but to cut his throat!
What connection can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house 
in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with 
the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the 
churchyard-step? What connection can there have been between many people in 
the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great 
gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!
Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link 
there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by 
replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows that it's hard to keep the 
mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing 
it. Nobody taught him, even that much; he found it out.
Jo lives - that is to say, Jo has not yet died - in a ruinous place, known 
to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-alone's. It is a black, 
dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses 
were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, 
who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in 
lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of 
misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these 
ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out 
of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, 
where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, 
and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir 
Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in 
office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years - though born 
expressly to do it.
Twice, lately, there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the 
springing of a mine, in Tom-all-alone's; and, each time, a house has 
fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers, and have 
filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain, and there are 
not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several more houses are nearly 
ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-alone's may be expected to be a good 
one.
This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an insult to 
the discernment of any man with half an eye, to tell him so. Whether "Tom" 
is the popular representative of the original plaintiff or defendant in 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce; or, whether Tom lived here when the suit had laid 
the street waste, all alone, until other settlers came to join him; or, 
whether the traditional title is a comprehensive name for a retreat cut off 
from honest company and put out of the pale of hope; perhaps nobody knows. 
Certainly, Jo don't know.
"For I don't," says Jo, "I don't know nothink."
It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, 
unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of 
those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of 
streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see people read, and to 
see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not to have 
the least idea of all that language - to be, to every scrap of it, stone 
blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to 
the churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for 
perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means 
anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be 
hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear 
to be perfectly true that I have no business, here, or there, or anywhere; 
and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I am here, somehow, too, 
and everybody overlooked me until I became the creature that I am! It must 
be a strange state, not merely to be told that I am scarcely human (as in 
the case of my offering myself for a witness), but to feel it of my own 
knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattle, go by me, and 
to know that in ignorance I belong to them, and not to the superior beings 
in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a Criminal Trial, or a 
Judge, or a Bishop, or a Government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if 
he only knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material 
and immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest thing 
of all.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is always 
late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread as he comes 
along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses not yet being 
open, he sits down to breakfast on the doorstep of the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush when he 
has finished, as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the 
size of the edifice, and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor 
wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or 
what it costs to look up the precious souls among the cocoa-nuts and bread-
fruit.
He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it out for the day. The town 
awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all 
that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few 
hours, recommences. Jo, and the other lower animals, get on in the 
unintelligible mess as they can. It is market-day. The blinded oxen, over-
goaded, over-driven, never-guided, run into wrong places and are beaten 
out; and plunge, red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and often sorely 
hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his 
order; very, very like!
A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog - a 
drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and 
evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for some 
hours, and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or four; 
can't remember where he left them; looks up and down the street, as half 
expecting to see them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all 
about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public-
houses; a terrific dog to sheep; ready at a whistle to scamper over their 
backs, and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, 
developed dog, who has been taught his duties and knows how to discharge 
them. He and Jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of 
animal satisfaction; likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration, or 
regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they 
are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human listener 
is the brute!
Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years they 
will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark - but not their 
bite.
The day changes as it wears itself away, and becomes dark and drizzly. Jo 
fights it out, at his crossing, among the mud and wheels, the horses, 
whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for the unsavoury 
shelter of Tom-all-alone's. Twilight comes on; gas begins to start up in 
the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder, runs along the margin of the 
pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to close in.
In his chambers, Mr Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the 
nearest magistrate tomorrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a disappointed 
suitor, has been here today, and has been alarming. We are not to be put in 
bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow shall be held to bail again. 
From the ceiling, foreshortened Allegory, in the person of one impossible 
Roman upside down, points with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd 
one), obtrusively toward the window. Why should Mr Tulkinghorn, for such no 
reason, look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he 
does not look out of window.
And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are women 
enough in the world, Mr Tulkinghorn thinks - too many; they are at the 
bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of that, they 
create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a woman going by, even 
though she were going secretly? They are all secret. Mr Tulkinghorn knows 
that, very well.
But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house 
behind; between whose plain dress, and her refined manner, there is 
something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by her 
attire, yet, in her air and step, though both are hurried and assumed - as 
far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she treads with an 
unaccustomed foot - she is a lady. Her face is veiled, and still she 
sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of those who pass her 
look round sharply.
She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her, and 
can follow it. She never turns her head, until she comes to the crossing 
where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her, and begs. Still, she 
does not turn her head until she has landed on the other side. Then, she 
slightly beckons to him, and says "Come here!"
Jo follows her, a pace or two, into a quiet court.
"Are you the boy I have read of in the papers?" she asked behind her veil.
"I don't know," says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, "nothink about no 
papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all."
"Were you examined at an Inquest?"
"I don't know nothink about no - where I was took by the beadle, do you 
mean?" says Joe. "Was the boy's name at the Inkwhich, Jo?"
"Yes."
"That's me!" says Jo.
"Come farther up."
"You mean about the man?" says Jo, following. "Him as wos dead?"
"Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so very 
ill and poor?"
"O jist!" says Jo.
"Did he look like - not like you?" says the woman with abhorrence.
"Oh not so bad as me," says Jo. "I'm a reg'lar one I am! You didn't know 
him, did you?"
"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"
"No offence, my lady," says Jo, with humility; for even he has got at the 
suspicion of her being a lady.
"I am not a lady. I am a servant."
"You are a jolly servant!" says Jo, without the least idea of saying 
anything offensive; merely as a tribute of admiration.
"Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from me! Can you 
show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I read? The 
place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where you were taken 
to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the place where he was 
buried?"
Jo answers with a nod; having also nodded as each other place was 
mentioned.
"Go before me, and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to 
each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look back. Do what 
I want, and I will pay you well."
Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off on his 
broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider their meaning; 
considers it satisfactory, and nods his ragged head.
"I am fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!"
"What does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant, recoiling 
from him.
"Stow cutting away, you know!" says Jo.
"I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money than you 
ever had in your life."
Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub, takes 
his broom under his arm, and leads the way; passing deftly, with his bare 
feet, over the hard stones, and through the mud and mire.
Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.
"Who lives here?"
"Him wot give him his writing, and give me half a bull," says Jo in a 
whisper, without looking over his shoulder.
"Go on to the next."
Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.
"Who lives here?"
"He lived here." Jo answers as before.
After a silence he is asked, "In which room?"
"In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner. Up 
there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is the public ouse where 
I was took to."
"Go on to the next!"
It is a longer walk to the next; but, Jo, relieved of his first suspicions, 
sticks to the terms imposed upon him, and does not look round. By many 
devious ways reeking with offence of many kinds, they come to the little 
tunnel of a court, and to the gaslamp (lighted now), and to the iron gate.
"He was put there," says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.
"Where? O, what a scene of horror!"
"There!" says Jo, pointing. "Over yinder. Among them piles of bones, and 
close to that there kitchen winder. They put him wery nigh the top. They 
was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you with 
my broom, if the gate was open. That's why they locks it, I s'pose," giving 
it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! 
Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the ground!"
The servant shrinks into a corner - into a corner of that hideous archway, 
with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting out her two 
hands, and passionately telling him to keep away from her, for he is 
loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands staring, and is 
still staring when she recovers herself.
"Is this place of abomination, consecrated ground?"
"I don't know nothink of consequential ground," says Jo, still staring.
"Is it blessed?"
"Which?" says Jo, in the last degree amazed.
"Is it blessed?"
"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I shouldn't 
think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in his mind. "It 
an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think it was t'othered 
myself. But I don't know nothink!"
The servant takes as little heed of what he says, as she seems to take of 
what she has said herself. She draws off her glove, to get some money from 
her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her hand is, and what a 
jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling rings.
She drops a piece of money in his hand, without touching it, and shuddering 
as their hands approach. "Now," she adds, "show me the spot again!"
Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and with 
his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length, looking aside to 
see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds that he is alone.
His first proceeding, is, to hold the piece of money to the gaslight, and 
to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow - gold. His next is, to give 
it a one-sided bite at the edge, as a test of its quality. His next, to put 
it in his mouth for safety, and to sweep the step and passage with great 
care. His job done, he sets off for Tom-all-alone's; stopping in the light 
of innumerable gaslamps to produce the piece of gold, and give it another 
one-sided bite, as a reassurance of its being genuine.
The Mercury in powder is in no want of society tonight, for my Lady goes to 
a grand dinner, and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is fidgety, down at 
Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout; he complains to Mrs 
Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace, 
that he can't read the paper, even by the fireside in his own snug dressing-
room.
"Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the house, 
my dear," says Mrs Rouncewell to Rosa. "His dressing-room is on my Lady's 
side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon the Ghost's Walk, 
more distinct than it is tonight!"


Chapter 17

Esther's Narrative

Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though he 
soon failed in his letter writing), and with his quick abilities, his good 
spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was always delightful. 
But, though I liked him more and more, the better I knew him, I still felt 
more and more, how much it was to be regretted that he had been educated in 
no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed 
him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, 
all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his 
tasks, always with fair credit, and often with distinction; but in a 
fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very 
qualities in himself, which it had been most desirable to direct and train. 
They were great qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously 
won; but, like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very 
bad masters. If they had been under Richard's direction, they would have 
been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his 
enemies.
I write down these opinions, not because I believe that this or any other 
thing was so, because I thought so; but only because I did think so, and I 
want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These were my thoughts 
about Richard. I thought I often observed besides, how right my Guardian 
was in what he had said; and that the uncertainties and delays of the 
Chancery suit imparted to his nature something of the careless spirit of a 
gamester, who felt that he was part of a great gaming system.
Mr and Mrs Bayham Badger coming one afternoon, when my Guardian was not at 
home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired after Richard.
"Why, Mr Carstone," said Mrs Badger, "is very well, and is, I assure you, a 
great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say of me that I 
was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn to the midshipmen's 
mess when the purser's junk had become as tough as the foretopsel weather 
earrings. It was his naval way of mentioning generally that I was an 
acquisition to any society. I may render the same tribute, I am sure, to Mr 
Carstone. But I - you won't think me premature if I mention it?"
I said no, as Mrs Badger's insinuating tone seemed to require such an 
answer.
"Nor Miss Clare?" said Mrs Bayham Badger, sweetly. Ada said no, too, and 
looked uneasy.
"Why, you see, my dears," said Mrs Badger - "you'll excuse me calling you 
my dears?"
We entreated Mrs Badger not to mention it.
"Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so," pursued 
Mrs Badger, "so perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that although I am 
still young - or Mr Bayham Badger pays me the compliment of saying so - "
"No," Mr Badger called out, like some one contradicting at a public 
meeting. "Not at all!"
"Very well," smiled Mrs Badger, "we will say still young."
("Undoubtedly," said Mr Badger.)
"My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of observing 
young men. There were many such on board the dear old Crippler, I assure 
you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser in the Mediterranean, I 
embraced every opportunity of knowing and befriending the midshipmen under 
Captain Swosser's command. You never heard them called the young gentlemen, 
my dears, and probably would not understand allusions to their pipe-claying 
their weekly accounts; but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been 
a second home to me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor 
Dingo."
("A man of European reputation." murmured Mr Badger.)
"When I lost my dear first, and became the wife of my dear second," said 
Mrs Badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were parts of a 
charade, "I still enjoyed opportunities of observing youth. The class 
attendant on Professor Dingo's lectures was a large one, and it became my 
pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man seeking herself in science 
the utmost consolation it could impart, to throw our house open to the 
students, as a kind of Scientific Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was 
lemonade and a mixed biscuit, for all who chose to partake of those 
refreshments. And there was science to an unlimited extent."
("Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson," said Mr Badger, 
reverentially. "There must have been great intellectual friction going on 
there, under the auspices of such a man!")
"And now," pursued Mrs Badger, "now that I am the wife of my dear third, Mr 
Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which were formed during 
the lifetime of Captain Swosser, and adapted to new and unexpected purposes 
during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I therefore have not come to the 
consideration of Mr Carstone as a Neophyte. And yet I am very much of the 
opinion, my dears, that he has not chosen his profession advisedly."
Ada looked so very anxious now, that I asked Mrs Badger on what she founded 
her supposition?
"My dear Miss Summerson," she replied, "on Mr Carstone's character and 
conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition, that probably he would 
never think it worth while to mention how he really feels; but, he feels 
languid about the profession. He has not that positive interest in it which 
makes it his vocation. If he has any decided impression in reference to it, 
I should say it was that it is a tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not 
promising. Young men, like Mr Allan Woodcourt, who take it from a strong 
interest in all that it can do, will find some reward in it through a great 
deal of work for a very little money, and through years of considerable 
endurance and disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would 
never be the case with Mr Carstone."
"Does Mr Badger think so too?" asked Ada timidly.
"Why," said Mr Badger, "to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view of the 
matter had not occurred to me until Mrs Badger mentioned it. But, when Mrs 
Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great consideration to it; 
knowing that Mrs Badger's mind, in addition to its natural advantages, has 
had the rare advantage of being formed by two such very distinguished (I 
will even say illustrations) public men as Captain Swosser of the Royal 
Navy and Professor Dingo. The conclusion at which I have arrived is - in 
short, is Mrs Badger's conclusion."
"It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said Mrs Badger, "speaking in his 
figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot make it 
too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you should swab it as 
if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that this maxim is 
applicable to the medical, as well as to the nautical profession."
"To all professions," observed Mr Badger. "It was admirably said by Captain 
Swosser. Beautifully said."
"People objected to Professor Dingo, when we were staying in the North of 
Devon, after our marriage," said Mrs Badger, "that he disfigured some of 
the houses and other buildings, by chipping off fragments of those edifices 
with his little geological hammer. But the Professor replied, that he knew 
of no building, save the Temple of Science. The principle is the same, I 
think?"
"Precisely the same," said Mr Badger. "Finely expressed. The Professor made 
the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness; when (his mind 
wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer under the pillow, and 
chipping at the countenances of the attendants. The ruling passion!"
Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr and Mrs Badger 
pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was disinterested in them to 
express the opinion they had communicated to us, and that there was a great 
probability of its being sound. We agreed to say nothing to Mr Jarndyce 
until we had spoken to Richard; and, as he was coming next evening, we 
resolved to have a very serious talk with him.
So, after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my 
darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly right 
in whatever he said.
"And how do you get on, Richard?" said I. I always sat down on the other 
side of him. He made quite a sister of me.
"O! well enough!" said Richard.
"He can't say better than that, Esther, can he?" cried my pet, 
triumphantly.
I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I couldn't.
"Well enough?" I repeated.
"Yes," said Richard, "well enough. It's rather jog-trotty and humdrum. But 
it'll do as well as any thing else!"
"O! my dear Richard!" I remonstrated.
"What's the matter?" said Richard.
"Do as well as anything else!"
"I don't think there's any harm in that, Dame Durden," said Ada, looking so 
confidingly at me across him! "Because if it will do as well as anything 
else, it will do very well, I hope."
"O yes, I hope so," returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair from his 
forehead. "After all, it may be only a kind of probation till our suit is - 
I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit. Forbidden ground! O yes, 
it's all right enough. Let us talk about something else."
Ada would have done so, willingly, and with a full persuasion that we had 
brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought it would 
be useless to stop there, so I began again.
"No, but Richard," said I, "and my dear Ada! Consider how important it is 
to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your cousin, that 
you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any reservation. I think 
we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It will be too late, very 
soon."
"O yes! We must talk about it!" said Ada. "But I think Richard is right."
What was the use of my trying to look wise, when she was so pretty, and so 
engaging, and so fond of him!
"Mr and Mrs Badger were here yesterday, Richard," said I, "and they seemed 
disposed to think that you had no great liking for the profession."
"Did they though?" said Richard, "O! Well, that rather alters the case, 
because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not have liked to 
disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don't care much about it. 
But O, it don't matter! It'll do as well as anything else!"
"You hear him, Ada!" said I.
"The fact is," Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half jocosely, "it 
is not quite in my way. I don't take to it. And I get too much of Mrs 
Bayham Badger's first and second."
"I am sure that's very natural!" cried Ada, quite delighted. "The very 
thing we both said yesterday, Esther!"
"Then," pursued Richard, "it's monotonous, and today is too like yesterday, 
and tomorrow is too like today."
"But I am afraid," said I, "this is an objection to all kinds of 
application - to life itself, except under some very uncommon 
circumstances."
"Do you think so?" returned Richard, still considering. "Perhaps! Ha! Why, 
then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again, "we travel outside 
a circle, to what I said just now. It'll do as well as anything else. O, 
it's all right enough! Let us talk about something else."
But, even Ada, with her loving face - and if it had seemed innocent and 
trusting, when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much more 
so did it seem now, when I knew her innocent and trusting heart - even Ada 
shook her head at this, and looked serious. So I thought it a good 
opportunity to hint to Richard, that if he were sometimes a little careless 
of himself, I was sure he never meant to be careless of Ada; and that it 
was a part of his affectionate consideration for her, not to slight the 
importance of a step that might influence both their lives. This made him 
almost grave.
"My dear Mother Hubbard," he said, "that's the very thing! I have thought 
of that, several times; and have been quite angry with myself for meaning 
to be so much in earnest, and - somehow - not exactly being so. I don't 
know how it is; I seem to want something or other to stand by. Even you 
have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling cousin, I love you, so much!) 
but I don't settle down to constancy in other things. It's such uphill 
work, and it takes such a time!" said Richard, with an air of vexation.
"That may be," I suggested, "because you don't like what you have chosen."
"Poor fellow!" said Ada, "I am sure I don't wonder at it!"
No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried again; but 
how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I could, while Ada 
rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder, and while he looked at her 
tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!
"You see, my precious girl," said Richard, passing her golden curls through 
and through his hand, "I was a little hasty, perhaps; or I misunderstood my 
own inclinations, perhaps. They don't seem to lie in that direction. I 
couldn't tell, till I tried. Now the question is, whether it's worth while 
to undo all that has been done. It seems like making a great disturbance 
about nothing particular."
"My dear Richard," said I, "how can you say about nothing particular?"
"I don't mean absolutely that," he returned. "I mean that it may be nothing 
particular, because I may never want it."
Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly worth while 
to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I then asked 
Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial pursuit?
"There, my dear Mrs Shipton," said Richard, "you touch me home. Yes, I 
have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me."
"The law!" repeated Ada, as if she were afraid of the name.
"If I went into Kenge's office," said Richard, "and if I were placed under 
articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the - hum - the forbidden ground 
- and should be able to study it, and master it, and to satisfy myself that 
it was not neglected, and was being properly conducted. I should be able to 
took after Ada's interests, and my own interests (the same thing!); and I 
should peg away at Blackstone and all those fellows with the most 
tremendous ardour."
I was not by any means so sure of that; and I saw how his hankering after 
the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes, cast a shade on 
Ada's face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any project of 
continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure that his mind 
was made up now.
"My dear Minerva," said Richard, "I am as steady as you are. I made a 
mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won't do so any more, and I'll 
become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know," said 
Richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is worth while, after all, to 
make such a disturbance about nothing particular!"
This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that we had 
said already, and to our coming to much the same conclusion afterwards. 
But, we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open with Mr Jarndyce, 
without a moment's delay; and his disposition was naturally so opposed to 
concealment; that he sought him out at once (taking us with him,) and made 
a full avowal. "Rick," said my Guardian, after hearing him attentively, "we 
can retreat with honour, and we will. But we must be careful - for our 
cousin's sake - Rick, for our cousin's sake - that we make no more such 
mistakes. Therefore, in the matter of the law, we will have a good trial 
before we decide. We will look before we leap, and take plenty of time 
about it."
Richard's energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind, that he would 
have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr Kenge's office in that 
hour, and to have entered into articles with him on the spot. Submitting, 
however, with a good grace to the caution that we had shown to be so 
necessary, he contented himself with sitting down among us in his lightest 
spirits, and talking as if his one unvarying purpose in life from childhood 
had been that one which now held possession of him. My Guardian was very 
kind and cordial with him, but rather grave; enough so to cause Ada, when 
he had departed and we were going upstairs to bed, to say:
"Cousin John, I hope you don't think the worse of Richard?"
"No, my love," said he.
"Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such a 
difficult case. It is not uncommon."
"No, no, my love," said he. "Don't look unhappy."
"O, I am not unhappy, cousin John!" said Ada, smiling cheerfully, with her 
hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him good night. 
"But I should be a little so, if you thought at all the worse of Richard."
"My dear," said Mr Jarndyce. "I should think the worse of him only if you 
were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be more disposed 
to quarrel with myself, even then, than with poor Rick, for I brought you 
together. But tut, all this is nothing! He has time before him, and the 
race to run. I think the worse of him? Not I, my loving cousin! And not 
you, I swear!"
"No, indeed, cousin John," said Ada, "I am sure I could not - I am sure I 
would not - think any ill of Richard, if the whole world did. I could, and 
I would, think better of him then, than at any other time!"
So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his shoulders - 
both hands now - and looking up into his face, like the picture of Truth!
"I think," said my Guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, "I think it must 
be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall, occasionally, 
be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the fathers. Good night, 
my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant slumbers! Happy dreams!"
This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes, with 
something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well remember the 
look with which he had contemplated her and Richard, when she was singing 
in the firelight; it was but a very little while since he had watched them 
passing down the room in which the sun was shining, and away into the 
shade; but his glance was changed, and even the silent look of confidence 
in me which now followed it once more, was not quite so hopeful and 
untroubled as it had originally been.
Ada praised Richard more to me, that night, than ever she had praised him 
yet. She went to sleep, with a little bracelet he had given her clasped 
upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed her cheek 
after she had slept an hour, and saw how tranquil and happy she looked.
For I was so little inclined to sleep, myself, that night, that I sat up 
working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was 
wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don't know why. At least, I don't think 
I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don't think it matters.
At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I would 
leave myself not a moment's leisure to be low-spirited. For I naturally 
said, "Esther! You to be low-spirited. You!" And it really was time to say 
so, for I - yes, I really did see myself in the glass, almost crying. "As 
if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead of everything to make you 
happy, you ungrateful heart!" said I.
If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it directly; 
but, not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some ornamental 
work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy with at that time, 
and sat down to it with great determination. It was necessary to count all 
the stitches in that work, and I resolved to go on with it until I couldn't 
keep my eyes open, and then to go to bed.
I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in a 
work-table drawer in the temporary Growlery; and coming to a stop for want 
of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To my great 
surprise, on going in, I found my Guardian still there, and sitting looking 
at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay unheeded by his side, 
his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered confusedly upon his forehead as 
though his hand had been wandering among it while his thoughts were 
elsewhere, and his face looked worn. Almost frightened by coming upon him 
so unexpectedly, I stood still for a moment; and should have retired 
without speaking, had he not, in again passing his hand abstractedly 
through his hair, seen me and started.
"Esther!"
I told him what I had come for.
"At work so late, my dear?"
"I am working late tonight," said I, "because I couldn't sleep, and wished 
to tire myself. But, dear Guardian, you are late too, and look weary. You 
have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?"
"None, little woman, that you would readily understand," said he.
He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me, that I inwardly repeated, as if 
that would help me to his meaning, "That I could readily understand!"
"Remain a moment, Esther," said he. "You were in my thoughts."
"I hope I was not the trouble, Guardian?"
He slightly waved his hand, and fell into his usual manner. The change was 
so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much self-command, 
that I found myself again inwardly repeating, "None that I could 
understand!"
"Little woman," said my Guardian, "I was thinking - that is, I have been 
thinking since I have been sitting here - that you ought to know, of your 
own history, all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing."
"Dear Guardian," I replied, "when you spoke to me before on that subject - 
"
"But since then," he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to say, 
"I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my having 
anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It is perhaps 
my duty to impart to you the little I know."
"If you think so, Guardian, it is right."
"I think so," he returned, very gently, and kindly, and very distinctly. 
"My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can attach to your 
position, in the mind of any man or woman worth a thought, it is right that 
you, at least, of all the world, should not magnify it to yourself, by 
having vague impressions of its nature."
I sat down; and said, after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to be, 
"One of my earliest remembrances, Guardian, is of these words. 'Your 
mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time will come, 
and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and will feel it 
too, as no one save a woman can.'" I had covered my face with my hands, in 
repeating the words; but I took them away now with a better kind of shame, 
I hope, and told him, that to him I owed the blessing that I had from my 
childhood to that hour never, never never felt it. He put up his hand as if 
to stop me. I well knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no more.
"Nine years, my dear," he said, after thinking for a little while, "have 
passed since I received a letter from a lady living in seclusion, written 
with a stern passion and power that rendered it unlike all other letters I 
have ever read. It was written to me (as it told me in so many words), 
perhaps, because it was the writer's idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me: 
perhaps because it was mine to justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan 
girl then twelve years old, in some such cruel words as those which live in 
your remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from 
her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if the 
writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be left 
entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to consider if I 
would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun?"
I listened in silence, and looked attentively at him.
"Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium through 
which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the distorted 
religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the need there was for 
the child to expiate an offence of which she was quite innocent. I felt 
concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life; and replied to the 
letter."
I took his hand and kissed it.
"It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the 
writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the world, 
but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one. I accredited 
Mr Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord, and not of his seeking, that 
her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there were any ties of blood 
in such a case, the child's aunt. That more than this she would never (and 
he was well persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution), for any 
human consideration, disclose. My dear, I have told you all."
I held his hand for a little while in mine.
"I saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making light of 
it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy. She repays me 
twenty-thousand fold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!"
"And oftener still," said I, "she blesses the Guardian who is a Father to 
her!"
At the word Father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He subdued 
it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but, it had been there, and it 
had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they had given him a 
shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, "That I could readily 
understand. None that I could readily understand!" No, it was true. I did 
not understand it. Not for many and many a day.
"Take a fatherly good-night, my dear," said he, kissing me on the forehead, 
"and so to rest. These are late hours for working and thinking. You do that 
for all of us, all day long, little housekeeper!"
I neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my grateful 
heart to Heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and its care of 
me, and fell asleep.
We had a visitor next day. Mr Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take leave 
of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to China, and to 
India, as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a long, long time.
I believe - at least I know - that he was not rich. All his widowed mother 
could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his profession. It was not 
lucrative to a young practitioner, with very little influence in London; 
and although he was, night and day, at the service of numbers of poor 
people, and did wonders of gentleness and skill for them, he gained very 
little by it in money. He was seven years older than I. Not that I need 
mention it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything.
I think - I mean, he told us - that he had been in practice three or four 
years, and that if he could have hoped to contend through three or four 
more he would not have made the voyage on which he was bound. But he had no 
fortune or private means, and so he was going away. He had been to see us 
several times altogether. We thought it a pity he should go away. Because 
he was distinguished in his art among those who knew it best, and some of 
the greatest men belonging to it had a high opinion of him.
When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for the 
first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes, but she 
seemed proud. She came from Wales; and had had, a long time ago, an eminent 
person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan ap-Kerrig - of some place 
that sounded like Gimlet - who was the most illustrious person that ever 
was known, and all of whose relations were a sort of Royal Family. He 
appeared to have passed his life in always getting up into mountains, and 
fighting somebody; and a Bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had 
sung his praises, in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch 
it, Mewlinnwillinwodd.
Mrs Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great kinsman, 
said that, no doubt, wherever her son Allan went, he would remember his 
pedigree, and would on no account from an alliance below it. She told him 
that there were many handsome English ladies in India who went out on 
speculation, and that there were some to be picked up with property; but, 
that neither charms nor wealth would suffice for the descendant from such a 
line, without birth: which must ever be the first consideration. She talked 
so much about birth that, for a moment, I half fancied, and with pain - 
but, what an idle fancy to suppose that she could think or care what mine 
was!
Mr Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was too 
considerate to let her see it, and contrived delicately to bring the 
conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my Guardian for his 
hospitality, and for the very happy hours - he called them the very happy 
hours - he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he said, would go 
with him wherever he went, and would be always treasured. And so we gave 
him our hands, one after another - at least, they did - and I did; and so 
he put his lips to Ada's hand - and to mine; and so he went away upon his 
long, long voyage!
I was very busy indeed, all day, and wrote directions home to the servants, 
and wrote notes for my Guardian, and dusted his books and papers, and 
jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and another. I was still 
busy between the lights, singing and working by the window, when who should 
come in but Caddy, whom I had no expectation of seeing!
"Why, Caddy, my dear," said I, "what beautiful flowers!"
She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.
"Indeed, I think so, Esther," replied Caddy. "They are the loveliest I ever 
saw."
"Prince, my dear?" said I, in a whisper.
"No," answered Caddy, shaking her head, and holding them to me to smell. 
"Not Prince."
"Well, to be sure, Caddy!" said I. "You must have two lovers!"
"What? Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Caddy.
"Do they look like that sort of thing?" I repeated, pinching her cheek.
Caddy only laughed in return; and telling me that she had come for half-an-
hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be waiting for her at 
the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window: every now and then 
handing me the flowers again, or trying how they looked against my hair. At 
last, when she was going, she took me into my room and put them in my 
dress.
"For me?" said I, surprised.
"For you," said Caddy, with a kiss. "They were left behind by Somebody."
"Left behind?"
"At poor Miss Flite's," said Caddy. "Somebody who has been very good to 
her, was hurrying away an hour ago, to join a ship, and left these flowers 
behind. No, no! Don't take them out. Let the pretty little things lie 
here!" said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand, "because I was 
present myself, and I shouldn't wonder if Somebody left them on purpose!"
"Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Ada, coming laughingly behind 
me, and clasping me merrily round the waist. "O, yes, indeed they do, Dame 
Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing. O, very like it 
indeed, my dear!"


Chapter 18

Lady Dedlock

It was not so easy as it had appeared at first, to arrange for Richard's 
making a trial of Mr Kenge's office. Richard himself was the chief 
impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr Badger at any 
moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave him at all. He didn't 
know, he said, really. It wasn't a bad profession; he couldn't assert that 
he disliked it; perhaps he liked it as well as he liked any other - suppose 
he gave it one more chance! Upon that, he shut himself up, for a few weeks, 
with some books and some bones, and seemed to acquire a considerable fund 
of information, with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a 
month, began to cool; and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm 
again. His vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long, that 
Midsummer arrived before he finally separated from Mr Badger, and entered 
on an experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his 
waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to be in 
earnest "this time." And he was so good-natured throughout, and in such 
high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult indeed to be 
otherwise than pleased with him.
"As to Mr Jarndyce," who I may mention, found the wind much given, during 
this period, to stick in the east; "As to Mr Jarndyce," Richard would say 
to me, "he is the finest fellow in the world, Esther! I must be 
particularly careful, if it were only for his satisfaction, to take myself 
well to task, and have a regular wind-up of this business now."
The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face and 
heedless manner, and with a fancy that everything could catch and nothing 
could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us between-whiles, 
that he was doing it to such an extent, that he wondered his hair didn't 
turn grey. His regular wind-up of the business was (as I have said), that 
he went to Mr Kenge's about Midsummer, to try how he liked it.
All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in a 
former illustration: generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully 
persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to say to 
Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about the time of his 
going to Mr Kenge's, that he needed to have Fortunatus's purse, he made so 
light of money, which he answered in this way:
"My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why does she say that? 
Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it was) for a certain neat 
waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger's, I 
should have been obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow, for some heart-
breaking lecture-fees. So I make four pounds - in a lump - by the 
transaction!"
It was a question much discussed between him and my Guardian what 
arrangements should be made for his living in London, while he experimented 
on the law; for, we had long since gone back to Bleak House, and it was too 
far off to admit of his coming there oftener than once a week. My Guardian 
told me that if Richard were to settle down at Mr Kenge's he would take 
some apartments or chambers, where we, too, could occasionally stay for a 
few days at a time; "but little woman," he added, rubbing his head very 
significantly, "he hasn't settled down there yet!" The discussions ended in 
our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a 
quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the 
money he had, in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this 
lodging; and as often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase 
that he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and 
expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost, and made out that to 
spend anything less on something else was to save the difference.
While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr Boythorn's was 
postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging, there 
was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with us at that 
time of the year, very well; but he was in the full novelty of his new 
position, and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries 
of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him; and my darling was 
delighted to praise him for being so busy.
We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach, and had an 
entertaining companion in Mr Skimpole. His furniture had been all cleared 
off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it on his blue-eyed 
daughter's birthday; but, he seemed quite relieved to think that it was 
gone. Chairs and tables, he said, were wearisome objects; they were 
monotonous ideas, they had no variety of expression, they looked you out of 
countenance, and you looked them out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to 
be bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly 
among all the furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and 
from mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took 
one!
"The oddity of the thing is," said Mr Skimpole, with a quickened sense of 
the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid for, and yet my 
landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible. Now, that seems 
droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair and table merchant 
never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel 
with him? If I have a pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my 
landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch 
my chair and table merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it. His 
reasoning seems defective!"
"Well," said my Guardian, good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that whoever 
became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay for them."
"Exactly!" returned Mr Skimpole. "That's the crowning point of unreason in 
the business! I said to my landlord, 'My good man, you are not aware that 
my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for those things that you are 
sweeping off in that indelicate manner. Have you no consideration for his 
property?' He hadn't the least."
"And refused all proposals," said my Guardian.
"Refused all proposals," returned Mr Skimpole. "I made him business 
proposals. I had him into my room. I said, 'You are a man of business I 
believe?' He replied, 'I am.' 'Very well,' said I, 'now let us be business-
like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and paper, here are wafers. What 
do you want? I have occupied your house for a considerable period, I 
believe to our mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding 
arose; let us be at once friendly and business-like. What do you want?' In 
reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression - which has 
something Eastern about it - that he had never seen the colour of my money. 
'My amiable friend,' said I, 'I never have any money. I never know anything 
about money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do you offer, if I give you 
time?' 'My good fellow,' said I, 'I have no idea of time; but, you say you 
are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a 
business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper - and wafers - I am ready to 
do. Don't pay yourself at another man's expense (which is foolish), but be 
business-like!' However, he wouldn't be, and there was an end of it."
If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr Skimpole's childhood, it 
assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a very good 
appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including a basket of 
choice hot-house peaches,) but never thought of paying for anything. So 
when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he 
considered a very good fee indeed, now - a liberal one - and, on his 
replying, half-a-crown for a single passenger, said it was little enough 
too, all things considered; and left Mr Jarndyce to give it him.
It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the larks 
sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the trees were 
so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind blowing over 
them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! Late in the afternoon 
we came to the market-town where we were to alight from the coach - a dull 
little town, with a church-spire, and a market-place, and a market-cross, 
and one intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his 
legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in narrow 
little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of 
the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a 
little town as England could produce.
At the inn, we found Mr Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open 
carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was 
overjoyed to see us, and dismounted with great alacrity.
"By Heaven!" said he, after giving us a courteous greeting, "this is a most 
infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable public 
vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is twenty-five 
minutes after its time, this afternoon. The coachman ought to be put to 
death!"
"Is he after his time?" said Mr Skimpole, to whom he happened to address 
himself. "You know my infirmity."
"Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes?" replied Mr Boythorn, referring 
to his watch. "With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel has 
deliberately delayed his arrival six-and-twenty minutes. Deliberately! It 
is impossible that it can be accidental! But his father - and his uncle - 
were the most profligate coachmen that ever sat upon his box."
While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us into 
the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness, and was all smiles and 
pleasure.
"I am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the carriage-door, 
when all was ready, "that I am obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out 
of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir Leicester Dedlock's park; 
and, in that fellow's property, I have sworn never to set foot of mine, or 
horse's foot of mine, pending the present relations between us, while I 
breathe the breath of life!" And here, catching my Guardian's eye, he broke 
into one of his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the 
motionless little market-town.
"Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my Guardian as we drove along, 
and Mr Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.
"Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr Boythorn. "Ha ha ha! Sir 
Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels here. My 
Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if particularly 
to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, "is expected, I believe, 
daily. I am not in the least surprised that she postpones her appearance as 
long as possible. Whatever can have induced that transcendant woman to 
marry that effigy and figure-head of a baronet, is one of the most 
impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!"
"I suppose," said my Guardian laughing, "we may set foot in the park while 
we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?"
"I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head to Ada 
and me, with a smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon him, "except 
in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I cannot have the 
happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold, which is a very fine 
place! But, by the light of this summer day, Jarndyce, if you call upon the 
owner, while you stay with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. 
He carries himself like an eight-day clock at all times; like one of a race 
of eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went - Ha ha 
ha! - but he will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the 
friends of his friend and neighbour Boythorn!"
"I shall not put him to the proof," said my Guardian. "He is as indifferent 
to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the honour of knowing 
him. The air of the grounds, and perhaps such a view of the house as any 
other sightseer might get, are quite enough for me."
"Well!" said Mr Boythorn, "I am glad of it on the whole. It's in better 
keeping. I am looked upon, about here, as a second Ajax defying the 
lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a Sunday, a 
considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, 
scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha 
ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by Heaven! 
the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcomical and 
utterly brainless ass!"
Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending, enabled our friend 
to point out Chesney Wold itself to us, and diverted his attention from its 
master.
It was a picturesque old house, in a fine park, richly wooded. Among the 
trees, and not far from the residence, he pointed out the spire of the 
little church of which he had spoken. O, the solemn woods over which the 
light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if Heavenly wings were sweeping on 
benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth green slopes, the 
glittering water, the garden where the flowers were so symmetrically 
arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how beautiful they looked! The 
house, with gable and chimney, and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and 
broad terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying 
heaped upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely 
real in its light solidity, and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested 
all around it. To Ada and to me, that, above all, appeared the pervading 
influence. On everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old 
oaks, fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the 
prospect, to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, 
there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.
When we came into the little village, and passed a small inn with the sign 
of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr Boythorn 
interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a bench outside 
the inn-door, who had some fishing-tackle lying beside him.
"That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr Rouncewell by name," said he; "and 
he is in love with a pretty girl up at the House. Lady Dedlock has taken a 
fancy to the pretty girl, and is going to keep her about her own fair 
person - an honour which my young friend himself does not at all 
appreciate. However, he can't marry just yet, even if his Rosebud were 
willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In the meanwhile, he comes 
here pretty often, for a day or two at a time, to - fish. Ha ha ha ha!"
"Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr Boythorn?" asked Ada.
"Why, my dear Miss Clare," he returned, "I think they may perhaps 
understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I must 
learn from you on such a point - not you from me."
Ada blushed; and Mr Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey horse, 
dismounted at his own door, and stood ready, with extended arm and 
uncovered head, to welcome us when we arrived.
He lived in a pretty house, formerly the Parsonage-house, with a lawn in 
front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked orchard and 
kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable wall that had of 
itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything about the place wore 
an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like green 
cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy 
with fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched 
and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like 
profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled about 
among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and winking in the 
sun, there were such heaps of drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, 
that every foot of ground appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of 
sweet herbs and all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the 
neighbouring meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great 
nosegay. Such stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts 
of the old red wall, that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the 
birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that 
where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still clung 
to it, it was easier to fancy that they had mellowed with the changing 
seasons, than that they had rusted and decayed according to the common 
fate.
The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden, was a 
real old house, with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored kitchen, 
and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was the terrible 
piece of ground in dispute, where Mr Boythorn maintained a sentry in a 
smock-frock, day and night, whose duty was supposed to be, in case of 
aggression, immediately to ring a large bell hung up there for the purpose, 
to unchain a great bulldog established in a kennel as his ally, and 
generally to deal destruction on the enemy. Not content with these 
precautions, Mr Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted 
boards to which his name was attached in large letters, the following 
solemn warnings: "Beware of the Bulldog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence 
Boythorn."
"The blunderbuss is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn."
"Mulldogs and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and night. 
Lawrence Boythorn."
"Take notice. That any person or persons audaciously presuming to trespass 
on this property, will be punished with the utmost severity of private 
chastisement, and prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence 
Boythorn." These he showed us, from the drawing-room window, while his bird 
was hopping about his head; and he laughed, "Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to 
that extent as he pointed them out, that I really thought he would have 
hurt himself.
"But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr Skimpole in his light 
way, "when you are not in earnest after all?"
"Not in earnest!" returned Mr Boythorn, with unspeakable warmth. "Not in 
earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a Lion 
instead of that dog, and would have turned him loose upon the first 
intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on my rights. 
Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide this question by 
single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon known to mankind in any 
age or country. I am that much in earnest. Not more!"
We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all set 
forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the park, almost 
immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a pleasant footpath winding 
among the verdant turf and the beautiful trees, until it brought us to the 
church porch.
The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one, with the 
exception of a large muster of servants from the House, some of whom were 
already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There were some 
stately footmen; and there was a perfect picture of an old coachman, who 
looked as if he were the official representative of all the pomps and 
vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There was a very pretty 
show of young women; and above them, the handsome old face and fine 
responsible portly figure of the housekeeper, towered preeminent. The 
pretty girl, of whom Mr Boythorn had told us, was close by her. She was so 
very pretty, that I might have known her by her beauty, even if I had not 
seen how blushingly conscious she was of the eyes of the young fisherman, 
whom I discovered not far off. One face, and not an agreeable one, though 
it was handsome, seemed maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and 
indeed of everyone and everything there. It was a Frenchwoman's.
As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I had 
leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthly as a grave, and 
to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it was. The windows, 
heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light that made the faces 
around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in the pavement, and the time 
and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the sunshine in the little porch, 
where a monotonous ringer was working at the bell, inestimably bright. But 
a stir in that direction, a gathering of reverential awe in the rustic 
faces, and a blandly-ferocious assumption on the part of Mr Boythorn of 
being resolutely unconscious of somebody's existence, forewarned me that 
the great people were come, and that the service was going to begin.
"'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy sight - '"
Shall I ever forget the rapid beating of my heart, occasioned by the look I 
met, as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which those handsome 
proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor, and to hold mine! It was 
only a moment before I cast mine down - released again, if I may say so - 
on my book; but, I knew the beautiful face quite well, in that short space 
of time.
And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me, associated 
with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even to the days when I 
had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little glass, after dressing my 
doll. And this, although I had never seen this lady's face before in all my 
life - I was quite sure of it - absolutely certain.
It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired gentleman, the 
only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir Leicester Dedlock; and that 
the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her face should be, in a confused way, 
like a broken glass to me, in which I saw scraps of old remembrances; and 
why I should be so fluttered and troubled (for I was still), by having 
casually met her eyes; I could not think.
I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me, and I tried to overcome it by 
attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to hear 
them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered voice of my 
godmother. This made me think. Did Lady Dedlock's face accidentally 
resemble my godmother's? It might be that it did, a little; but, the 
expression was so different, and the stern decision which had worn into my 
godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the 
face before me, that it could not be that resemblance which had struck me. 
Neither did I know the loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at 
all, in any one. And yet I - I, little Esther Summerson, the child who 
lived a life apart, and on whose birthday there was no rejoicing - seemed 
to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this 
fashionable lady, whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever 
seen, but whom I perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.
It made me tremble so, to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation, that 
I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of the French 
maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here, and there, and 
everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the church. By degrees, 
though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange emotion. After a long 
time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It was while they were preparing 
to sing, before the sermon. She took no heed of me, and the beating at my 
heart was gone. Neither did it revive for more than a few moments, when she 
once or twice afterwards glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.
The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much state and 
gallantry to Lady Dedlock - though he was obliged to walk by the help of a 
thick stick - and escorted her out of church to the pony carriage in which 
they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so did the congregation: 
whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along (Mr Skimpole said to Mr 
Boythorn's infinite delight), as if he were a considerable landed 
proprietor in Heaven.
"He believes he is!" said Mr Boythorn. "He firmly believes it. So did his 
father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!"
"Do you know," pursued Mr Skimpole, very unexpectedly to Mr Boythorn, "it's 
agreeable to me to see a man of that sort."
"Is it!" said Mr Boythorn.
"Say that he wants to patronise me," pursued Mr Skimpole. "Very well! I 
don't object."
"I do," said Mr Boythorn, with great vigour.
"Do you really?" returned Mr Skimpole, in his easy light vein. "But, that's 
taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here am I, content 
to receive things childishly, as they fall out: and I never take trouble! I 
come down here for instance, and I find a mighty potentate, exacting 
homage. Very well! I say 'Mighty potentate, here is my homage! It's easier 
to give it, than to withhold it. Here it is. If you have anything of an 
agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you have 
anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.' 
Mighty potentate replies in effect, 'This is a sensible fellow. I find him 
accord with my digestion and my bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me 
the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points outward. 
I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's cloud, and 
it's more agreeable to both of us.' That's my view of such things: speaking 
as a child!"
"But suppose you went down somewhere else tomorrow," said Mr Boythorn, 
"where there was the opposite of that fellow - or of this fellow. How 
then?"
"How then?" said Mr Skimpole, with an appearance of the utmost simplicity 
and candour. "Just the same, then! I should say, 'My esteemed Boythorn' - 
to make you the personification of our imaginary friend - 'my esteemed 
Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate? Very good. So do I. I take it 
that my business in the social system is to be agreeable; I take it that 
everybody's business in the social system is to be agreeable. It's a system 
of harmony, in short. Therefore, if you object, I object. Now, excellent 
Boythorn, let us go to dinner!'"
"But, excellent Boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and 
growing very red, "I'll be - "
"I understand," said Mr Skimpole. "Very likely he would."
" - if I will go to dinner!" cried Mr Boythorn, in a violent burst, and 
stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "And he would probably add, 
'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr Harold Skimpole?'"
"To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in his gayest 
manner, and with his most ingenuous smile, "'Upon my life I have not the 
least idea! I don't know what it is you call by that name, or where it is, 
or who possesses it. If you possess it, and find it comfortable, I am quite 
delighted, and congratulate you heartily. But I know nothing about it, I 
assure you; for I am a mere child, and I lay no claim to it, and I don't 
want it!' So you see, excellent Boythorn and I would go to dinner after 
all!"
This was one of many little dialogues between them, which I always expected 
to end, and which I dare say would have ended - under other circumstances, 
in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But he had so high a 
sense of his hospitable and responsible position as our entertainer, and my 
Guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr Skimpole, as a child who blew 
bubbles and broke them all day long, that matters never went beyond this 
point. Mr Skimpole, who always seemed quite unconscious of having been on 
delicate ground, then betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park 
which he never finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or 
to singing scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree, and 
looking at the sky - which he couldn't help thinking, he said, was what he 
was meant for; it suited him so exactly.
"Enterprise and effort," he would say to us (on his back), "are delightful 
to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the deepest sympathy with 
them. I lie in a shady place like this, and think of adventurous spirits 
going to the North Pole, or penetrating to the heart of the Torrid Zone, 
with admiration. Mercenary creatures ask, 'What is the use of a man's going 
to the North Pole? What good does it do?' I can't say; but for anything I 
can say, he may go for the purpose - though he don't know it - of employing 
my thoughts as I lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the 
Slaves on American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say 
they don't altogether like it, I dare say theirs is an unpleasant 
experience on the whole; but, they people the landscape for me, they give 
it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of 
their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I shouldn't wonder 
if it were!"
I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs 
Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented 
themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand, they 
rarely presented themselves at all.
The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my heart 
in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue, that to ramble in 
the woods, and to see the light striking down among the transparent leaves, 
and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the shadows of the trees, 
while the birds poured out their songs, and the air was drowsy with the hum 
of insects, had been most delightful. We had one favourite spot, deep in 
moss, and last year's leaves, where there were some felled trees from which 
the bark was all stripped off. Seated among these, we looked through a 
green vista supported by thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems 
of trees, upon a distinct prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the 
shade in which we sat, and made so precious by the arched perspective 
through which we saw it, that it was like a glimpse of the better land. 
Upon the Saturday we sat here, Mr Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard 
thunder muttering in the distance, and felt the large raindrops rattle 
through the leaves.
The weather had been all the week extremely sultry; but, the storm broke so 
suddenly - upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot - that before we 
reached the outskirts of the wood, the thunder and lightning were frequent, 
and the rain came plunging through the leaves, as if every drop were a 
great leaden bead. As it was not a time for standing among trees, we ran 
out of the wood, and up and down the moss-grown steps which crossed the 
plantation-fence like two broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and 
made for a keeper's lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the 
dark beauty of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the 
ivy clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we had 
once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the fern, as if it were water.
The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only 
clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there, and 
put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all thrown open and 
we sat, just within the doorway, watching the storm. It was grand to see 
how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain before it like a 
cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder, and to see the lightning; 
and while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our little 
lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are, and how upon 
the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all 
this seeming rage, which seemed to make creation new again.
"Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?"
"O no, Esther dear!" said Ada, quietly.
Ada said it to me; but, I had not spoken.
The beating at my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice, as I 
had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange way. Again, 
in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable pictures of myself.
Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge, before our arrival there, and 
had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair, with her hand 
upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder, when I turned my 
head.
"I have frightened you?" she said.
"No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!"
"I believe," said Lady Dedlock to my Guardian, "I have the pleasure of 
speaking to Mr Jarndyce."
"Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would, Lady 
Dedlock," he returned.
"I recognised you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local disputes 
of Sir Leicester's - they are not of his seeking, however, I believe - 
should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show you any 
attention here."
"I am aware of the circumstances," returned my Guardian with a smile, "and 
am sufficiently obliged."
She had given him her hand, in an indifferent way that seemed habitual to 
her, and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a very 
pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful; perfectly self-
possessed; and had the air, I thought, of being able to attract and 
interest any one, if she had thought it worth her while. The keeper had 
brought her a chair, on which she sat, in the middle of the porch between 
us.
"Is the young gentleman disposed of, whom you wrote to Sir Leicester about, 
and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his power to 
advance in any way?" she said, over her shoulder, to my Guardian.
"I hope so," said he.
She seemed to respect him, and even to wish to conciliate him. There was 
something very winning in her haughty manner; and it became more familiar - 
I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be - as she spoke to 
him over her shoulder.
"I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?"
He presented Ada, in form.
"You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character," said 
Lady Dedlock to Mr Jarndyce, over her shoulder again, "if you only redress 
the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me," and she turned full upon 
me, "to this young lady too!"
"Miss Summerson really is my ward," said Mr Jarndyce. "I am responsible to 
no Lord Chancellor in her case."
"Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" said my Lady.
"Yes."
"She is very fortunate in her Guardian."
Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her, and said I was indeed. All 
at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of 
displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.
"Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr Jarndyce."
"A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you last 
Sunday," he returned.
"What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one to me!" 
she said, with some disdain. "I have achieved that reputation, I suppose."
"You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock," said my Guardian, "that you pay 
some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me."
"So much!" she repeated, slightly laughing. "Yes!"
With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know not 
what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than children. So, as 
she slightly laughed, and afterwards sat looking at the rain, she was as 
self-possessed, and as free to occupy herself with her own thoughts, as if 
she had been alone.
"I think you knew my sister, when we were abroad together, better than you 
knew me?" she said, looking at him again.
"Yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned.
"We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in common 
even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it 
could not be helped."
Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to pass 
upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased, the thunder 
rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to glisten on the wet 
leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there, silently, we saw a little 
pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry pace.
"The messenger is coming back, my lady," said the keeper, "with the 
carriage."
As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There alighted 
from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the Frenchwoman whom I had 
seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl; the Frenchwoman with a 
defiant confidence; the pretty girl confused and hesitating.
"What now?" said Lady Dedlock. "Two!"
"I am your maid, my Lady, at the present," said the Frenchwoman. "The 
message was for the attendant."
"I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady," said the pretty girl.
"I did mean you, child," replied her mistress, calmly. "Put that shawl on 
me."
She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl 
lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed, looking 
on with her lips very tightly set.
"I am sorry," said Lady Dedlock to Mr Jarndyce, "that we are not likely to 
renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send the carriage back 
for your two wards. It shall be here directly."
But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful leave 
of Ada - none of me - and put her hand upon his proffered arm, and got into 
the carriage; which was a little, low, park carriage, with a hood.
"Come, child!" she said to the pretty girl, "I shall want you. Go on!"
The carriage rolled away; and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she had 
brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had alighted.
I suppose there is nothing Pride can so little bear with, as Pride itself, 
and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her retaliation was the 
most singular I could have imagined. She remained perfectly still until the 
carriage had turned into the drive, and then, without the least 
discomposure of countenance, slipped off her shoes, left them on the 
ground, and walked deliberately in the same direction, through the wettest 
of the wet grass.
"Is that young woman mad?" said my Guardian.
"O no, sir!" said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after her. 
"Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece as the 
best. But she's mortal high and passionate - powerful high and passionate; 
and what with having notice to leave, and having others put above her, she 
don't take kindly to it."
"But why should she walk shoeless, through all that water?" said my 
Guardian.
"Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!" said the man.
"Or unless she fancies it's blood," said the woman. "She'd as soon walk 
through that as anything else, I think, when her own's up!"
We passed not far from the House, a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful as it 
had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now, with a diamond 
spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing, the birds no longer 
hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed by the late rain, and the 
little carriage shining at the doorway like a fairy carriage made of 
silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly walking towards it, a peaceful 
figure too in the landscape, went Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through 
the wet grass.


Chapter 19

Moving On

It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good ships Law 
and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, 
and not by any means fast-sailing Clippers, are laid up in ordinary. The 
Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly clients imploring all whom they may 
encounter to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time being, Heaven 
knows where. The Courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot 
sleep; Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might 
sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there, walk.
The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even unto the 
Fields, are like tidal harbours at low water; where stranded proceedings, 
offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lopsided stools that will not 
recover their perpendicular until the current of Term sets in, lie high and 
dry upon the ooze of the long vacation. Outer doors of chambers are shut up 
by the score, messages and parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by 
the bushel. A crop of grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement 
outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing 
to do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over their 
heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it thoughtfully.
There is only one Judge in town. Even he only comes twice a-week to sit in 
chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his circuit could 
see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats, no fur, no javelin-
men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved gentleman in white trousers and 
a white hat, with sea-bronze on the judicial countenance, and a strip of 
bark peeled by the solar rays from the judicial nose, who calls in at the 
shell-fish shop as he comes along, and drinks iced ginger-beer!
The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How England can 
get on through four long summer months without its bar - which is its 
acknowledged refuge in adversity, and its only legitimate triumph in 
prosperity - is beside the question; assuredly that shield and buckler of 
Britannia are not in present wear. The learned gentleman who is always so 
tremendously indignant at the unprecedented outrage committed on the 
feelings of his client by the opposite party, that he never seems likely to 
recover it, is doing infinitely better than might be expected, in 
Switzerland. The learned gentleman who does the withering business, and who 
blights all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm, is as merry as a grig at a 
French watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the 
smallest provocation, has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very learned 
gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery complexion in 
pools and fountains of law, until he has become great in knotty arguments 
for Term-time, when he poses the drowsy Bench with legal "chaff," 
inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the initiated too, is 
roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity and dust, about 
Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same great Palladium are 
to be found on the canal of Venice, at the second cataract on the Nile, in 
the baths of Germany, and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the English 
coast. Scarcely one is to be encountered in the deserted region of Chancery 
Lane. If such a lonely member of the bar do flit across the waste, and come 
upon a prowling suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of 
his anxiety, they frighten one another, and retreat into opposite shades.
It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young clerks 
are madly in love, and, according to their various degrees, pine for bliss 
with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or Gravesend. All the middle-
aged clerks think their families too large. All the unowned dogs who stray 
into the Inns of Court, and pant about staircases and other dry places, 
seeking water, give short howls of aggravation. All the blind men's dogs in 
the streets draw their masters against pumps, or trip them over buckets. A 
shop with a sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and 
silver fish in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot, that it 
is, to the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, 
and keeps them simmering all night.
There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be cool, if 
any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in dullness; but, the 
little thoroughfares immediately outside those retirements seem to blaze. 
In Mr Krook's court, it is so hot that the people turn their houses inside 
out, and sit in chairs upon the pavement - Mr Krook included, who there 
pursues his studies, with his cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The 
Sol's Arms has discontinued the harmonic meetings for the season, and 
Little Swills is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he 
comes out in quite an innocent manner, and sings comic ditties of a 
juvenile complexion, calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the 
feelings of the most fastidious mind.
Over all the legal neighbourhood, there hangs, like some great veil of 
rust, or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long 
vacation. Mr Snagsby, law-stationer of Crook's Court, Cursitor Street, is 
sensible of the influence; not only in his mind as a sympathetic and 
contemplative man, but also in his business as a law-stationer aforesaid. 
He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn, and in the Rolls Yard, during 
the long vacation, than at other seasons; and he says to the two 
'prentices, what a thing it is in such hot weather to think that you live 
in an island, with the sea a rolling and a bowling-right round you.
Guster is busy in the little drawing-room, on this present afternoon in the 
long vacation, when Mr and Mrs Snagsby have it in contemplation to receive 
company. The expected guests are rather select than numerous, being Mr and 
Mrs Chadband, and no more. From Mr Chadband's being much given to describe 
himself, both verbally and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally 
mistaken by strangers for a gentleman connected with navigation; but, he 
is, as he expresses it, "in the ministry." Mr Chadband is attached to no 
particular denomination; and is considered by his persecutors to have 
nothing so very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render 
his volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience; 
but, he has his followers and Mrs Snagsby is of the number. Mrs Snagsby has 
but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel, Chadband; and her 
attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she was something flushed by 
the hot weather.
"My little woman," says Mr Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn, "likes to 
have her religion rather sharp, you see!"
So, Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the 
handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of holding 
forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little drawing-room for 
tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the portraits of Mr and Mrs 
Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth, the best tea-service is set forth, 
and there is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, 
cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue and German sausage, and 
delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley; not to mention new-
laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For, 
Chadband is rather a consuming vessel - the persecutors say a gorging 
vessel; and can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork, 
remarkably well.
Mr Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when they are 
completed, and coughing his cough of deference behind his hand, says to Mrs 
Snagsby, "At what time did you expect Mr and Mrs Chadband, my love?"
"At six," says Mrs Snagsby.
Mr Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way, that "it's gone that."
"Perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is Mrs Snagsby's reproachful 
remark.
Mr Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says, with 
his cough of mildness, "No, my dear, no. I merely named the time."
"What's time," says Mrs Snagsby, "to eternity?"
"Very true, my dear," says Mr Snagsby. "Only when a person lays in victuals 
for tea, a person does it with a view - perhaps - more to time. And when a 
time is named for having tea, it's better to come up to it."
"To come up to it!" Mrs Snagsby repeats with severity. "Up to it! As if Mr 
Chadband was a fighter!"
"Not at all, my dear," says Mr Snagsby.
Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes 
rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular ghost, 
and, falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr and Mrs 
Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner door in the 
passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is admonished by Mrs Snagsby, 
on pain of instant reconsignment to her patron saint, not to omit the 
ceremony of announcement. Much discomposed in her nerves (which were 
previously in the best order) by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates 
that point of state as to announce "Mr and Mrs Cheeseming, least which, 
Imeantersay, whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the 
presence.
Mr Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general 
appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs Chadband 
is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr Chadband moves softly and 
cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is 
very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him, 
and he wanted to grovel; is very much in a perspiration about the head; and 
never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token 
to his hearers that he is going to edify them.
"My friends," says Mr Chadband. "Peace be on this house! On the master 
thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on the young 
men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is it war? No. Is 
it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and 
serene, and joyful? O yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon 
you and upon yours."
In consequence of Mrs Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr Snagsby thinks it 
expedient on the whole to say Amen, which is well received.
"Now, my friends," proceeds Mr Chadband, "since I am upon this theme - "
Guster presents herself. Mrs Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice, and without 
removing her eyes from Chadband, says, with dread distinctness, "Go away!"
"Now, my friends," says Chadband, "since I am upon this theme, and in my 
lowly path improving it - "
Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred and 
eighty-two." The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "Go away!"
"Now, my friends," says Mr Chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit of love - 
"
Still Guster reiterates "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two."
Mr Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be 
persecuted, and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile, says, 
"Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!"
"One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which he 
wish to know what the shilling ware for," says Guster, breathless.
"For?" returns Mrs Chadband. "For his fare!"
Guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence, or on summonsizzing 
the party." Mrs Snagsby and Mrs Chadband are proceeding to grow shrill in 
indignation, when Mr Chadband quiets the tumult by lifting up his hand.
"My friends," says he, "I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It is 
right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to murmur. 
Rachel, pay the eightpence!"
While Mrs Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr Snagsby, as who 
should say, "you hear this apostle!" and while Mr Chadband glows with 
humility and train oil, Mrs Chadband pays the money. It is Mr Chadband's 
habit - it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed - to keep this 
sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items, and to post it 
publicly on the most trival occasions.
"My friends," says Chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might justly have 
been one and fourpence: it might justly have been half-a-crown. O let us be 
joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"
With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in verse, 
Mr Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair, lifts up his 
admonitory hand.
"My friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being spread 
before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my friends? We do. And 
why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because we are but mortal, because 
we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of 
the air. Can we fly, my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my 
friends?"
Mr Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe 
in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "No wings." But, is immediately 
frowned down by Mrs Snagsby.
"I say, my friends," pursues Mr Chadband, utterly rejecting and 
obliterating Mr Snagsby's suggestion, "Why can we not fly? Is it because we 
are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? 
We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs 
would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn 
over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a 
human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our 
limbs? Is it," says Chadband, glancing over the table, "from bread in 
various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded 
untoe us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, 
from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake 
of the good things which are set before us!"
The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr Chadband's 
piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after this fashion. But 
this can only be received as a proof of their determination to persecute, 
since it must be within everybody's experience, that the Chadband style of 
oratory is widely received and much admired.
Mr Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at Mrs 
Snagsby's table, and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion of 
nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned, appears to 
be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this exemplary vessel, 
that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be described as always becoming 
a kind of considerable Oil Mills, or other large factory for the production 
of that article on a wholesome scale. On the present evening of the long 
vacation, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke 
of business, that the warehouse appears to be quite full when the works 
cease.
At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered her 
first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means of 
bringing the establishment and herself into contempt - among which may be 
briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing military music on 
Mr Chadband's head with plates, and afterwards crowning that gentleman with 
muffins - at which period of the entertainment, Guster whispers Mr Snagsby 
that he is wanted.
"And being wanted in the - not to put too fine a point upon it - in the 
shop!" says Mr Snagsby rising, "perhaps this good company will excuse me 
for half a minute."
Mr Snagsby descends, and finds the two 'prentices intently contemplating a 
police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.
"Why, bless my heart," says Mr Snagsby, "what's the matter!"
"This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to, won't 
move on - "
"I'm always a moving on, sir," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy tears 
with his arm. "I've always been a moving and a moving on, ever since I was 
born. Where can I possible move to, sir, more nor I do move!"
"He won't move on," says the constable, calmly, with a slight professional 
hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, 
"although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to 
take him into custody. He's as obstinate a young gonoph as I know. He Won't 
move on."
"O my eye! Where can I move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite desperately 
at his hair, and beating his bare feet upon the floor of Mr Snagsby's 
passage.
"Don't you come none of that, or I shall make blessed short work of you!" 
says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "My instructions are, 
that you are to move on. I have told you so five hundred times."
"But where?" cries the boy.
"Well! Really, constable, you know," says Mr Snagsby wistfully, and 
coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt; "really 
that does seem a question. Where, you know?"
"My instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. "My instructions 
are that this boy is to move on."
Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else, that the great 
lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years, in this 
business, to set you the example of moving on. The one grand recipe remains 
for you - the profound philosophical prescription - the be-all and the end-
all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on! You are by no means to 
move off, Jo, for the great lights can't at all agree about that. Move on!
Mr Snagsby says nothing to this effect; says nothing at all, indeed; but 
coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any 
direction. By this time, Mr and Mrs Chadband, and Mrs Snagsby, hearing the 
altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having never left the 
end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.
"The simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you know this 
boy. He says you do."
Mrs Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "No he don't!"
"My lit-tle woman!" says Mr Snagsby, looking up the staircase. "My love, 
permit me! Pray have a moment's patience, my dear. I do know something of 
this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say that there's any harm; 
perhaps on the contrary, constable." To whom the law-stationer relates his 
Joful and woful experience, suppressing the half-crown fact.
"Well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for what he 
said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you knew him. 
Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was acquainted with 
you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if I'd call and make the 
inquiry he'd appear. The young man don't seem inclined to keep his word, 
but - oh! Here is the young man!"
Enter Mr Guppy, who nods to Mr Snagsby, and touches his hat with the 
chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.
"I was strolling away from the office just now, when I found this row going 
on," says Mr Guppy to the law-stationer; "and as your name was mentioned, I 
thought it was right the thing should be looked into."
"It was very good-natured of you, sir," says Mr Snagsby, "and I am obliged 
to you." And Mr Snagsby again relates his experience, again suppressing the 
half-crown fact.
"Now, I know where you live," says the constable, then, to Jo. "You live 
down in Tom-all-alone's. That's a nice innocent place to live in, ain't 
it?"
"I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies Jo. "They wouldn't 
have nothink to say to me if I was to go to a nice innocent place fur to 
live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such a reg'lar one as 
me!"
"You are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable.
"Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies Jo.
"I leave you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him," says 
the constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting my hand upon 
him!"
"They're wot's left, Mr Snagsby," said Jo, "out of a sov'ring as wos give 
me by a lady in a wale as said she wos a servant and as come to my crossin 
one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse and the ouse wot him as you 
giv the writin to died at, and the berrin ground wot he's berrid in. She 
ses to me she ses 'are you the boy at the Inkwhich?' she ses. I ses 'yes' I 
ses. She ses to me she ses "can you show me all them places?' I ses 'yes I 
can' I ses. And she ses to me 'do it' and I dun it and she giv me a 
sov'ring and hooked it. And I an't had much of the sov'ring neither," says 
Jo, with dirty tears, "fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-alone's, 
afore they'd square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he 
thieved another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved 
ninepence and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it."
"You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the 
sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with ineffable 
disdain.
"I don't know as I do, sir," replies Jo. "I don't expect nothink at all, 
sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it."
"You see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience. "Well, Mr 
Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you engage for his moving 
on?"
"No!" cries Mrs Snagsby from the stairs.
"My little woman!" pleads her husband. "Constable, I have no doubt he'll 
move on. You know you really must do it," says Mr Snagsby.
"I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo.
"Do it, then," observes the constable. "You know what you have got to do. 
Do it! And recollect you won't get off so easy next time. Catch hold of 
your money. Now, the sooner you're five miles off, the better for all 
parties."
With this farewell hint, and pointing generally to the setting sun, as a 
likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good afternoon; 
and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow music for him as he walks 
away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat in his hand for a 
little ventilation.
Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has 
awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr Guppy, who has 
an inquiring mind in matters of evidence, and who has been suffering 
severely from the lassitude of the long vacation, takes that interest in 
the case, that he enters on a regular cross-examination of the witness, 
which is found so interesting by the ladies that Mrs Snagsby politely 
invites him to step upstairs, and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the 
disarranged state of the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. 
Mr Guppy yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow 
into the drawing-room doorway, where Mr Guppy takes him in hand as a 
witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape, like 
a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him according to the 
best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such model displays, both 
in respect of its eliciting nothing, and of its being lengthy; for, Mr 
Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs Snagsby feels, not only that it 
gratifies her inquisitive disposition, but that it lifts her husband's 
establishment higher up in the law. During the progress of this keen 
encounter, the vessel Chadband, being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets 
aground, and waits to be floated off.
"Well!" says Mr Guppy, "either this boy sticks to it like cobbler's wax, or 
there is something out of the common here that beats anything that ever 
came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's."
Mrs Chadband whispers Mrs Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say so!"
"For years!" replies Mrs Chadband.
"Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs Snagsby triumphantly 
explains to Mr Guppy. "Mrs Chadband - this gentleman's wife - Reverend Mr 
Chadband."
"Oh, indeed!" said Mr Guppy.
"Before I married my present husband," says Mrs Chadband.
"Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr Guppy transferring his cross-
examination.
"No."
"Not a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr Guppy.
Mrs Chadband shakes her head.
"Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in something, 
ma'am?" says Mr Guppy, who likes nothing better than to model his 
conversation on forensic principles.
"Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs Chadband, humouring the joke with a 
hard-favoured smile.
"Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr Guppy. "Very good. Pray, ma'am, was 
it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions (we will not at 
present say what transactions) with Kenge and Carboy's office, or was it a 
gentleman of your acquaintance? Take time, ma'am. We shall come to it 
presently. Man or woman, ma'am?"
"Neither," says Mrs Chadband, as before.
"Oh! A child!" says Mr Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs Snagsby the 
regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British jurymen. "Now, 
ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us what child."
"You have got it at last, sir," says Mrs Chadband, with another hard-
favoured smile. "Well, sir, it was before your time, most likely, judging 
from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child named Esther 
Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and Carboy."
"Miss Summerson, ma'am!" cries Mr Guppy, excited.
"I call her Esther Summerson," says Mrs Chadband, with austerity. "There 
was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther. 'Esther, do this! 
Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it."
"My dear ma'am," returns Mr Guppy, moving across the small apartment, "the 
humble individual who now addresses you received that young lady in London, 
when she first came here from the establishment to which you have alluded. 
Allow me to have the pleasure of taking you by the hand."
Mr Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed signal, 
and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his pocket-handkerchief. 
Mrs Snagsby whispers "Hush!"
"My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken, in moderation" (which was 
certainly not the case so far as he was concerned), "of the comforts which 
have been provided for us. May this house live upon the fatness of the 
land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may it grow, may it thrive, 
may it prosper, may it advance, may it proceed, may it press forward! But, 
my friends, have we partaken of anything else? We have. My friends, of what 
else have we partaken? Of spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we 
derived that spiritual profit? My young friend, stand forth!"
Jo, thus apostrophised, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch 
forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent 
Chadband, with evident doubts of his intentions.
"My dear friend," says Chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are to us a 
diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my young 
friend?"
"I don't know," replies Jo. "I don't know nothink."
"My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing that you 
are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young friend? Are you a 
beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A fish of the sea or river? 
No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy. O glorious to be a 
human boy! And why glorious, my young friend? Because you are capable of 
receiving the lessons of wisdom, because you are capable of profiting by 
this discourse which I now deliver for your good, because you are not a 
stick, or a staff, or a stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.

O running stream of sparkling joy
To be a soaring human boy!

And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No. Why do 
you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a state of 
darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because you are in a 
state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of bondage. My young 
friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of love, inquire."
At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have been 
gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his face, and 
gives a terrible yawn. Mrs Snagsby indignantly expresses her belief that he 
is a limb of the archfiend.
"My friends," says Mr Chadband, with his persecuted chin folding itself 
into its fat smile again, as he looks round, "it is right that I should be 
humbled, it is right that I should be tired, it is right that I should be 
mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I stumbled, on Sabbath 
last, when I thought with pride of my three hours' improving. The account 
is now favourably balanced: my creditor has accepted a composition. O let 
us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"
Great sensation on the part of Mrs Snagsby.
"My friends," says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "I will not 
proceed with my young friend now. Will you come tomorrow, my young friend, 
and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to deliver a discourse 
untoe you, and will you come like the thirsty swallow upon the next day, 
and upon the day after that, and upon the day after that, and upon many 
pleasant days, to hear discourses?" (This, with a cow-like lightness.)
Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms, gives a 
shuffling nod. Mr Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mr Snagsby calls to 
Guster to see him safely out of the house. But, before he goes downstairs, 
Mr Snagsby loads him with some broken meats from the table, which he 
carries away, hugging in his arms.
So, Mr Chadband - of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he 
should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable nonsense, but 
that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave off, having once the 
audacity to begin - retires into private life until he invests a little 
capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo moves on, through the long vacation, 
down to Blackfriars Bridge, where he finds a baking stony corner, wherein 
to settle to his repast.
And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great Cross 
on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above a red and violet-
tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might suppose that sacred 
emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion of the great, confused 
city; so golden, so high up, so far out of his reach. There he sits, the 
sun going down, the river running fast, the crowd flowing by him in two 
streams - everything moving on to some purpose and to one end - until he is 
stirred up, and told to "move on" too.


Chapter 20

A New Lodger

The long vacation saunters on towards term-time, like an idle river very 
leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr Guppy saunters along 
with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his penknife, and broken 
the point off, by sticking that instrument into his desk in every 
direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will, but he must do 
something, and it must be something of an exciting nature, which will lay 
neither his physical nor his intellectual energies under too heavy 
contribution. He finds that nothing agrees with him so well, as to make 
little gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape.
Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken out a 
shooting license, and gone down to his father's, and Mr Guppy's two fellow 
stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr Guppy, and Mr Richard Carstone, divide 
the dignity of the office. But Mr Carstone is for the time being 
established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr Guppy chafes. So exceedingly, that 
he with bitter sarcasm informs his mother, in the confidential moments when 
he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce, in the Old Street Road, that he 
is afraid the office is hardly good enough for swells, and that if he had 
known there was a swell coming, he would have got it painted.
Mr Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool in 
Kenge and Carboy's office, of entertaining, as a matter of course, sinister 
designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants to depose him. 
If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he shuts up one eye and 
shakes his head. On the strength of these profound views, he in the most 
ingenious manner takes infinite pains to counterplot, when there is no 
plot; and plays the deepest games of chess without any adversary.
It is a source of much gratification to Mr Guppy, therefore, to find the 
newcomer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; for he 
well knows that nothing but confusion and failure can come of that. His 
satisfaction communicates itself to a third saunterer through the long 
vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office; to wit, Young Smallweed.
Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick Weed, as 
it were jocularly to express a fledgling,) was ever a boy, is much doubted 
in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen, and an old limb of the 
law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a passion for a lady at a 
cigar shop, in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, and for her sake to have 
broken off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged some 
years. He is a town-made article, of small statute and weazen features; but 
may be perceived from a considerable distance by means of his very tall 
hat. To become a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that 
gentleman (by whom he is patronised), talks at him, walks at him, founds 
himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr Guppy's particular 
confidence, and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his 
experience, on difficult points in private life.
Mr Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning, after trying all 
the stools in succession and finding more of them easy, and after several 
times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of cooling it. Mr 
Smallweed has been twice despatched for effervescent drinks, and has twice 
mixed them in the two official tumblers and stirred them up with the ruler. 
Mr Guppy propounds, for Mr Smallweed's consideration, the paradox that the 
more you drink the thirstier you are; and reclines his head upon the window-
sill in a state of hopeless languor.
While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, 
surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr Guppy becomes conscious of 
a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below, and turning itself 
up in the direction of his face. At the same time, a low whistle is wafted 
through the Inn, and a suppressed voice cries, "Hip! Gup-py!"
"Why, you don't mean it?" says Mr Guppy, aroused. "Small! Here's Jobling!" 
Small's head looks out of window too, and nods to Jobling.
"Where have you sprung up from?" inquires Mr Guppy.
"From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any longer. I 
must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half-a-crown. Upon my soul I'm 
hungry."
Jobling looks hungry, and also has the appearance of having run to seed in 
the market-gardens down by Deptford.
"I say! Just throw out half-a-crown, if you have got one to spare. I want 
to get some dinner."
"Will you come and dine with me?" says Mr Guppy, throwing out the coin, 
which Mr Jobling catches neatly.
"How long should I have to hold out?" says Jobling.
"Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes," returns Mr 
Guppy, butting inward with his head.
"What enemy?"
"A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?"
"Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says Mr Jobling.
Smallweed suggests the Law List. But Mr Jobling declares, with much 
earnestness, that he "can't stand it."
"You shall have the paper," says Mr Guppy. "He shall bring it down. But you 
had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and read. It's a 
quiet place."
Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed 
supplies him with the newspaper, and occasionally drops his eye upon him 
from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted with 
waiting, and makes an untimely departure. At last the enemy retreats, and 
then Smallweed fetches Mr Jobling up.
"Well, and how are you?" says Mr Guppy, shaking hands with him.
"So, so. How are you?"
Mr Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr Jobling ventures on 
the question, "How is she?" This Mr Guppy resents as a liberty; retorting, 
"Jobling, there are chords in the human mind - " Jobling begs pardon.
"Any subject but that!" says Mr Guppy, with a gloomy enjoyment of his 
injury. "For there are chords, Jobling - "
Mr Jobling begs pardon again.
During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the dinner 
party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper, "Return 
immediately." This notification to all whom it may concern, he inserts in 
the letter-box; and then putting on the tall hat, at the angle of 
inclination at which Mr Guppy wears his, informs his patron that they may 
now make themselves scarce.
Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of the 
class known among its frequenters by the denomination Slap-Bang, where the 
waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to have made some 
impression on the susceptible Smallweed; of whom it may be remarked that he 
is a weird changeling, to whom years are nothing. He stands precociously 
possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it 
seems as if he must have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, 
has Smallweed; and he drinks, and smokes, in a monkeyish way; and his neck 
is stiff in his collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all 
about it, whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up, he has been so 
nursed by Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil Imp, to 
account for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public 
offices that his father was John Doe, and his mother the only female member 
of the Roe family: also that his first long-clothes were made from a blue 
bag.
Into the Dining House, unaffected by the seductive show in the window, of 
artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of peas, 
coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr Smallweed 
leads the way. They know him there, and defer to him. He has his favourite 
box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, who keep 
them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with 
anything less than a full-sized "bread," or proposing to him any joint in 
cut, unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gravy he is 
adamant.
Conscious of his elfin power, and submitting to his dread experience, Mr 
Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet; turning an 
appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue of viands, 
and saying "What do you take, Chick?" Chick, out of the profundity of his 
artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and French beans - And don't you 
forget the stuffing, Polly," (with an unearthly cock of his venerable eye); 
Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of half-and-
half are superadded. Quickly the waitress returns, bearing what is 
apparently a model of the tower of Babel, but what is really a pile of 
plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr Smallweed, approving of what is set 
before him, conveys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye, and winks 
upon her. Then, amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running 
about, and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine 
which brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more 
nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost of 
nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and steam of hot 
joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated atmosphere in which the 
soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break out spontaneously into 
eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the legal triumvirate appease 
their appetites.
Mr Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require. His hat 
presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening nature, as if it 
had been a favourite snail promenade. The same phenomenon is visible on 
some parts of his coat, and particularly at the seams. He has the faded 
appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed circumstances; even his light 
whiskers droop with something of a shabby air.
His appetite is so vigorous, that it suggests spare living for some little 
time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and ham, 
bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in theirs, that 
Mr Guppy proposes another. "Thank you, Guppy," says Mr Jobling, "I really 
don't know but what I will take another."
Another being brought, he falls to with great good will.
Mr Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals, until he is half way 
through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at his pint 
pot of half-and-half (also renewed), and stretches out his legs and rubs 
his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment, Mr Guppy says:
"You are a man again, Tony!"
"Well, not quite, yet," says Mr Jobling. "Say, just born."
"Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?"
"Thank you, Guppy," says Mr Jobling. "I really don't know but what I will 
take summer cabbage."
Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr Smallweed) of "Without 
slugs, Polly!" And cabbage produced.
"I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr Jobling, plying his knife and fork with a 
relishing steadiness.
"Glad to hear it."
"In fact, I have just turned into my teens," says Mr Jobling.
He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as 
Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs; thus getting over the ground in 
excellent style, and beating those two gentlemen easily by a veal and ham 
and a cabbage.
"Now Small," says Mr Guppy, "what would you recommend about pastry?"
"Marrow puddings," says Mr Smallweed, instantly.
"Ay, ay!" cries Mr Jobling, with an arch look. "You're there, are you? 
Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I will take a marrow pudding."
Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr Jobling adds, in a pleasant 
humour, that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of Mr 
Smallweed, "three Cheshires;" and to those, "three small rums." This apex 
of the entertainment happily reached, Mr Jobling puts up his legs on the 
carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to himself), leans against 
the wall, and says, "I am grown up, now, Guppy. I have arrived at 
maturity."
"What do you think, now," says Mr Guppy, "about - you don't mind 
Smallweed?"
"Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good 
health."
"Sir, to you!" says Mr Smallweed.
"I was saying, what do you think now," pursues Mr Guppy, "of enlisting?"
"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr Jobling, "is one thing, my 
dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another thing. Still, 
even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I to do? How am I to 
live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr Jobling, pronouncing that word as 
if he meant a necessary fixture in an English stable. "Ill fo manger. 
That's the French saying, and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a 
Frenchman. Or more so."
Mr Smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so."
"If any man had told me," pursues Jobling, "even so lately as when you and 
I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over to see that 
house at Castle Wold - "
Mr Smallweed corrects him - Chesney Wold.
"Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any man 
had told me, then, that I should be as hard up at the present time as I 
literally find myself, I should have - well, I should have pitched into 
him," says Mr Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water with an air of 
desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his head."
"Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then," remonstrates Mr 
Guppy. "You were talking about nothing else in the gig."
"Guppy," says Mr Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong side of 
the post. But I trusted to things coming round."
That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their being 
beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As though a 
lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular!
"I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all 
square," says Mr Jobling, with some vagueness of expression, and perhaps of 
meaning, too. "But I was disappointed. They never did. And when it came to 
creditors making rows at the office, and to people that the office dealt 
with making complaints about dirty trifles of borrowed money, why there was 
an end of that connection. And of any new professional connection, too; for 
if I was to give a reference tomorrow, it would be mentioned, and would sew 
me up. Then, what's a fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way, and 
living cheap, down about the market-gardens; but what's the use of living 
cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live dear."
"Better," Mr Smallweed thinks.
"Certainly. It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have been my 
weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr Jobling. "They are 
great weaknesses - Damme, sir, they are great. Well!" proceeds Mr Jobling, 
after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water, "what can a fellow do, I ask 
you, but enlist?"
Mr Guppy comes more fully into the conversation, to state what, in his 
opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive manner of a 
man who has not committed himself in life, otherwise than as he has become 
the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.
"Jobling," says Mr Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed - "
(Mr Smallweed modestly observes "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.)
"Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once, since you - 
"
"Say, got the sack!" cries Mr Jobling, bitterly. "Say it, Guppy. You mean 
it."
"N-o-o! Left the Inn," Mr Smallweed delicately suggests.
"Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr Guppy; "and I have mentioned, to 
our mutual friend Smallweed, a plan I have lately thought of proposing. You 
know Snagsby the stationer?"
"I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr Jobling. "He was not ours, 
and I am not acquainted with him."
"He is ours, Jobling, and I am acquainted with him," Mr Guppy retorts. 
"Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him, through some 
accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of his in private 
life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer in argument. They 
may - or they may not - have some reference to a subject, which may - or 
may not - have cast its shadow on my existence."
As it is Mr Guppy's perplexing way, with boastful misery to tempt his 
particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it, to turn 
on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the human mind; 
both Mr Jobling and Mr Smallweed decline the pitfall, by remaining silent.
"Such things may be," repeats Mr Guppy, "or they may not be. They are no 
part of the case. It is enough to mention, that both Mr and Mrs Snagsby are 
very willing to oblige me; and that Snagsby has, in busy times, a good deal 
of copying work to give out. He has all Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent 
business besides. I believe, if our mutual friend Smallweed were put into 
the box, he could prove this?"
Mr Smallweed nods, and appears greedy to be sworn.
"Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr Guppy, " - I mean, now Jobling - you 
may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted. But it's better than 
nothing, and better than enlistment. You want time. There must be time for 
these late affairs to blow over. You might live through it on much worse 
terms than by writing for Snagsby."
Mr Jobling is about to interrupt, when the sagacious Smallweed checks him 
with a dry cough, and the words, "Hem! Shakespeare!"
"There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr Guppy. "That is 
the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the Chancellor, across the 
lane. Come, Jobling," says Mr Guppy, in his encouraging cross-examination-
tone, "I think you know Krook, the Chancellor, across the lane?"
"I know him by sight," says Mr Jobling.
"You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?"
"Everybody knows her," says Mr Jobling.
"Everybody knows her. Very well. Now it has been one of my duties of late, 
to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the amount of 
her weekly rent; which I have paid (in consequence of instructions I have 
received) to Krook himself, regularly, in her presence. This has brought me 
into communication with Krook, and into a knowledge of his house and his 
habits. I know he has a room to let. You may live there, at a very low 
charge, under any name you like; as quietly as if you were a hundred miles 
off. He'll ask no questions; and would accept you as a tenant, at a word 
from me - before the clock strikes, if you chose. And I'll tell you another 
thing, Jobling," says Mr Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice, and 
become familiar again, "he's an extraordinary old chap - always rummaging 
among a litter of papers, and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and 
write; without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most 
extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but what it might be worth a 
fellow's while to look him up a bit."
"You don't mean -?" Mr Jobling begins.
"I mean," returns Mr Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming modesty, 
"that I can't make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend Smallweed whether 
he has or has not heard me remark, that I can't make him out."
Mr Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"
"I have seen something of the profession, and something of life, Tony," 
says Mr Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out, more or less. But 
such an old card as this; so deep, so sly, and secret (though I don't 
believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now, he must be precious 
old, you know, and he has not a soul about him, and he is reported to be 
immensely rich; and whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an 
unlicensed pawnbroker, or a money-lender - all of which I have thought 
likely at different times - it might pay you to knock up a sort of 
knowledge of him. I don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when 
everything else suits."
Mr Jobling, Mr Guppy, and Mr Smallweed, all lean their elbows on the table, 
and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling. After a time, 
they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in their pockets, and 
look at one another.
"If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr Guppy, with a sigh. 
"But there are chords in the human mind - "
Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water, Mr 
Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling, and informing 
him that during the vacation and while things are slack, his purse, "as far 
as three or four or even five pound goes," will be at his disposal. "For 
never shall it be said," Mr Guppy adds with emphasis, "that William Guppy 
turned his back upon his friend!"
The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose, that Mr 
Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!" Mr Guppy presents 
it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!" Mr Jobling returns, "Guppy, we 
have been pals now for some years!" Mr Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have." 
They then shake hands, and Mr Jobling adds in a feeling manner, "Thank you, 
Guppy, I don't know but what I will take another glass, for old 
acquaintance sake."
"Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr Guppy, in an incidental way.
"Did he, though!" says Mr Jobling.
"There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don't mind that?"
"No," says Mr Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have died 
somewhere else. It's devilish odd that he need go and die at my place!" Mr 
Jobling quite resents this liberty; several times returning to it with such 
remarks as, "There are places enough to die in, I should think!" or, "He 
wouldn't have liked my dying at his place, I dare say!"
However, the compact being virtually made, Mr Guppy proposes to despatch 
the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr Krook is at home, as in that case 
they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr Jobling approving, 
Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and conveys it out of the dining-
rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon returns with the intelligence that Mr 
Krook is at home, and that he has seen him through the shop-door, sitting 
in his back premises, sleeping, "like one o'clock."
"Then I'll pay," says Mr Guppy; "and we'll go and see him. Small, what will 
it be!"
Mr Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one hitch of 
his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and hams is three, 
and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer cabbage is three and 
six, and three marrows is four and six, and six breads is five, and three 
Cheshires is five and three, and four pints of half-and-half is six and 
three, and four small rums is eight and three, and three Pollys is eight 
and six. Eight and six is half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteen-pence out!"
Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed dismisses 
his friends with a cool nod, and remains behind to take a little admiring 
notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to read the daily papers: 
which are so very large in proportion to himself, shorn of his hat, that 
when he holds up The Times to run his eye over the columns, he seems to 
have retired for the night, and to have disappeared under the bed-clothes.
Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where they find 
Krook still sleeping like one o'clock; that is to say, breathing 
stertorously with his chin upon his breast, and quite insensible to any 
external sounds, or even to gentle shaking. On the table beside him, among 
the usual lumber, stand an empty gin bottle and a glass. The unwholesome 
air is so stained with this liquor, that even the green eyes of the cat 
upon her shelf, as they open and shut and glimmer on the visitors, look 
drunk.
"Hold up here!" says Mr Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old man 
another shake. "Mr Krook! Halloa, sir!"
But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes, with a 
spirituous heat smouldering in it. "Did you ever see such a stupor as he 
falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr Guppy.
"If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed, "it'll 
last a long time one of these days, I am thinking."
"It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr Guppy, shaking him again. 
"Halloa, your lordship! Why he might be robbed, fifty times over! Open your 
eyes!"
After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his visitors, 
or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another, and folds his 
hands, and several times closes and opens his parched lips, he seems to all 
intents and purposes as insensible as before.
"He is alive, at any rate," says Mr Guppy. "How are you, my Lord 
Chancellor? I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter of 
business."
The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips, without the least 
consciousness. After some minutes, he makes an attempt to rise. They help 
him up, and he staggers against the wall, and stares at them.
"How do you do, Mr Krook?" says Mr Guppy, in some discomfiture. "How do you 
do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr Krook. I hope you are pretty well?"
The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr Guppy, or at nothing, 
feebly swings himself round, and comes with his face against the wall. So 
he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it; and then staggers 
down the shop to the front door. The air, the movement in the court, the 
lapse of time, or the combination of these things, recovers him. He comes 
back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur-cap on his head, and looking keenly 
at them.
"Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake, odd 
times."
"Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr Guppy.
"What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the suspicious Krook.
"Only a little," Mr Guppy explains.
The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up, examines it, 
and slowly tilts it upside down.
"I say!" he cries, like the hobgoblin in the story. "Somebody's been making 
free here!"
"I assure you we found it so," says Mr Guppy. "Would you allow me to get it 
filled for you?"
"Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook, in high glee. "Certainly I would! 
Don't mention it! Get it filled next door - Sol's Arms - the Lord 
Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know me!"
He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr Guppy, that that gentleman, with a 
nod to his friend, accepts the trust, and hurries out and hurries in again 
with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in his arms like a beloved 
grandchild, and pats it tenderly.
"But, I say!" he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting it, 
"this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is eighteenpenny!"
"I thought you might like that better," says Mr Guppy.
"You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook, with another taste - and his hot 
breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "You're a baron of the 
land."
Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr Guppy presents his friend 
under the impromptu name of Mr Weevle, and states the object of their 
visit. Krook with his bottle under his arm (he never gets beyond a certain 
point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time to survey his proposed 
lodger, and seems to approve of him. "You'd like to see the room, young 
man?" he says. "Ah! It's a good room! Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down 
with soft soap and soda. Hi! It's worth twice the rent; letting alone my 
company when you want it, and such a cat to keep the mice away."
Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them upstairs, 
where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be, and also 
containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up from his 
inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded - for the Lord 
Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr Guppy, associated as he is with Kenge and 
Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other famous claims on his professional 
consideration - and it is agreed that Mr Weevle shall take possession on 
the morrow. Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy then repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor 
Street, where the personal introduction of the former to Mr Snagsby is 
effected, and (more important) the vote and interest of Mrs Snagsby are 
secured. They then report progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the 
office in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate; Mr Guppy explaining 
that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at the 
play, but that there are chords in the human mind which would render it a 
hollow mockery.
On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr Weevle modestly appears at 
Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself in 
his new lodging; where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him in his 
sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day Mr Weevle, who 
is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow, borrows a needle and 
thread of Miss Flite, and a hammer of his landlord, and goes to work 
devising apologies for window-curtains, and knocking up apologies for 
shelves, and hanging up his two teacups, milkpot, and crockery sundries on 
a penny-worth of little hooks, like a shipwrecked sailor making the best of 
it.
But what Mr Weevle prizes most, of all his few possessions (next after his 
light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only whiskers can 
awaken in the breast of man), is a choice collection of copper-plate 
impressions from that truly national work, the Divinities of Albion, or 
Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies of title and fashion 
in every variety of smirk that art, combined with capital, is capable of 
producing. With these magnificent portraits, unworthily confined in a band-
box during his seclusion among the market-gardens, he decorates his 
apartment; and as the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety 
of fancy dress, plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every 
variety of dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every 
variety of flowerpot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.
But fashion is Mr Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's weakness. To borrow 
yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening, and read about the 
brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting across the 
fashionable sky in every direction, is unspeakable consolation to him. To 
know what member of what brilliant and distinguished circle accomplished 
the brilliant and distinguished feat of joining it yesterday, or 
contemplates the no less brilliant and distinguished feat of leaving it 
tomorrow, gives him a thrill of joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery 
of British Beauty is about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy 
marriages are on the tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is 
to become acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr Weevle 
reverts from this intelligence, to the Galaxy portraits implicated; and 
seems to know the originals, and to be known of them.
For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices as 
before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself, as well as to 
carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of evening 
have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not visited by Mr 
Guppy, or by a small light in his likeness quenched in a dark hat, he comes 
out of his dull room - where he has inherited the deal wilderness of desk 
bespattered with a rain of ink - and talks to Krook, or is "very free," as 
they call it in the court, commendingly, with any one disposed for 
conversation. Wherefore, Mrs Piper, who leads the court, is impelled to 
offer two remarks to Mrs Perkins: Firstly, that if her Johnny was to have 
whiskers, she could wish 'em to be identically like that young man's; and 
secondly, Mark my words, Mrs Perkins, ma'am, don't you be surprised Lord 
bless you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!


Chapter 21

The Smallweed Family

In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one of its 
rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin Smallweed, 
christened Bartholomew, and known on the domestic hearth as Bart, passes 
that limited portion of his time on which the office and its contingencies 
have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street, always solitary, shady, 
and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like a tomb, but where there yet 
lingers the stump of an old forest tree, whose flavour is about as fresh 
and natural as the Smallweed smack of youth.
There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several 
generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child, until 
Mrs Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her intellect, and 
fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With such infantine graces 
as a total want of observation, memory, understanding and interest, and an 
eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr 
Smallweed's grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family.
Mr Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a helpless 
condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper limbs; but his 
mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held, the first four rules 
of arithmetic, and a certain small collection of the hardest facts. In 
respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological 
attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr 
Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and 
is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of Mount 
Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of spider, 
who spun webs to catch unwary flies, and retired into holes until they were 
entrapped. The name of this old pagan's God was Compound Interest. He lived 
for it, married it, died of it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest 
little enterprise in which all the loss was intended to have been on the 
other side, he broke something - something necessary to his existence; 
therefore it couldn't have been his heart - and made an end of his career. 
As his character was not good, and he had been bred at a Charity School, in 
a complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient 
people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an example of 
the failure of education.
His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of "going 
out" early in life, and whom he made a clerk in a sharp scrivener's office 
at twelve years old. There, the young gentleman improved his mind, which 
was of a lean and anxious character; and, developing the family gifts, 
gradually elevated himself into the discounting profession. Going out early 
in life and marrying late, as his father had done before him, he too begat 
a lean and anxious-minded son; who, in his turn, going out early in life 
and marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, 
twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family 
tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has 
strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all 
amusements, discountenanced all storybooks, fairy-tales, fictions, and 
fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact, 
that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete little men and 
women whom it has produced, have been observed to bear a likeness to old 
monkeys with something depressing on their minds.
At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below the 
level of the street - a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only ornamented with 
the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest of sheet-iron tea-
trays, and offering in its decorative character no bad allegorical 
representation of Grandfather Smallweed's mind - seated in two black 
horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side of the fireplace, the 
superannuated Mr and Mrs Smallweed wile away the rosy hours. On the stove 
are a couple of trivets for the pots and kettles which it is Grandfather 
Smallweed's usual occupation to watch, and projecting from the chimney-
piece between them is a sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also 
superintends when it is in action. Under the venerable Mr Smallweeds seat, 
and guarded by his spindle legs, is a drawer in his chair, reported to 
contain property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion, with 
which he is always provided, in order that he may have something to throw 
at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she makes an 
allusion to money - a subject on which he is particularly sensitive.
"And where's Bart?" Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's twin-
sister.
"He an't come in yet," says Judy.
"It's his tea time, isn't it?"
"No."
"How much do you mean to say it wants then?"
"Ten minutes."
"Hey?"
"Ten minutes." - (Loud on the part of Judy.)
"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Ten minutes."
Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at the 
trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money, and 
screeches, like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "Ten ten-pound 
notes!"
Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.
"Drat you, be quite!" says the good old man.
The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles up Mrs 
Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's chair, and causes her to 
present, when extricated by her grand-daughter, a highly unbecoming state 
of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr Smallweed himself, whom it 
throws back into his porter's chair, like a broken puppet. The excellent 
old gentleman being, at these times, a mere clothes-bag with a black skull-
cap on the top of it, does not present a very animated appearance, until he 
has undergone the two operations at the hands of his grand-daughter, of 
being shaken up like a great bottle, and poked and punched like a great 
bolster. Some indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, 
he and the sharer of his life's evening again sit fronting one another in 
their two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on 
their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.
Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so indubitably 
sister to Mr Smallweed the younger, that the two kneaded into one would 
hardly make a young person of average proportions; while she so happily 
exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness to the monkey tribe, that, 
attired in a spangled robe and cap, she might walk about the table-land on 
the top of a barrel-organ without exciting much remark as an unusual 
specimen. Under existing circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, 
spare gown of brown stuff.
Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at any 
game. She once or twice fell into children's company when she was about ten 
years old, but the children couldn't get on with Judy, and Judy couldn't 
get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another species, and there 
was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is very doubtful whether Judy 
knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen the thing done, that the 
probabilities are strong the other way. Of anything like a youthful laugh, 
she certainly can have no conception. If she were to try one, she would 
find her teeth in her way; modelling that action of her face, as she has 
unconsciously modelled all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid 
age. Such is Judy.
And her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for his life. He knows no more 
of Jack the Giant Killer, or of Sinbad the Sailor, than he knows of the 
people in the stars. He could as soon play at leapfrog, or at cricket, as 
change into a cricket or a frog himself. But, he is so much the better off 
than his sister, that on his narrow world of fact an opening has dawned, 
into such broader regions as lie within the ken of Mr Guppy. Hence, his 
admiration and emulation of that shining enchanter.
Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron tea-
trays on the table, and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she puts on in 
an iron basket; and the butter (and not much of it) in a small pewter 
plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as it is served out, 
and asks Judy where the girl is?
"Charley, do you mean?" says Judy.
"Hey?" from Grandfather Smallweed.
"Charley do you mean?"
This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling, as usual, 
at the trivets, cries - "Over the water! Charley over the water, Charley 
over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the water, over the 
water to Charley!" and becomes quite energetic about it. Grandfather looks 
at the cushion, but has not sufficiently recovered his late exertion.
"Ha!" he says, when there is silence - "if that's her name. She eats a 
deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep."
Judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head, and purses up her mouth 
into No, without saying it.
"No?" returns the old man. "Why not?"
"She'd want sixpence a-day, and we can do it for less," says Judy.
"Sure?"
Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning, and calls, as she scrapes the 
butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste, and cuts it into 
slices, "You Charley, where are you?" Timidly obedient to the summons, a 
little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with her hands covered 
with soap and water, and a scrubbing brush in one of them, appears, and 
curtseys.
"What work are you about now?" says Judy, making an ancient snap at her, 
like a very sharp old beldame.
"I'm a cleaning the upstairs back room, miss," replies Charley.
"Mind you do it thoroughly, and don't loiter. Shirking won't do for me. 
Make haste! Go along!" cries Judy, with a stamp upon the ground. "You girls 
are more trouble than you're worth, by half."
On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the butter 
and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother, looking in at the 
window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens the street door.
"Ay, ay, Bart!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Here you are, hey?"
"Here I am," says Bart.
"Been alone with your friend again, Bart?"
Small nods.
"Dining at his expense, Bart?"
Small nods again.
"That's right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take warning by 
his foolish example. That's the use of such a friend. The only use you can 
put him to," says the venerable sage.
His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he might, 
honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight wink and a nod, 
and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces then hover over 
teacups, like a company of ghastly cherubim; Mrs Smallweed perpetually 
twitching her head and chattering at the trivets, and Mr Smallweed 
requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a large black draught.
"Yes, yes," says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of wisdom. 
"That's such advice as your father would have given you, Bart. You never 
saw your father. More's the pity. He was my true son." Whether it is 
intended to be conveyed that he was particularly pleasant to look at, on 
that account, does not appear.
"He was my true son," repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread and 
butter on his knee; "a good accountant, and died fifteen years ago."
Mrs Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with "Fifteen 
hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen hundred pound 
locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!" Her worthy husband, 
setting aside his bread and butter, immediately discharges the cushion at 
her, crushes her against the side of her chair, and falls back in his own, 
overpowered. His appearance, after visiting Mrs Smallweed with one of these 
admonitions, is particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing: 
firstly, because the exertion generally twists his black skull cap over one 
eye and gives him an air of goblin rakishness; secondly, because he mutters 
violent imprecations against Mrs Smallweed; and thirdly, because the 
contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure is 
suggestive of a baleful old malignant, who would be very wicked if he 
could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family circle, that 
it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely shaken, and has his 
internal feathers beaten up; the cushion is restored to its usual place 
beside him; and the old lady, perhaps with her cap adjusted, and perhaps 
not, is planted in her chair again, ready to be bowled down like a ninepin.
Some time elapses, in the present instance, before the old gentleman is 
sufficiently cool to resume his discourse; and even then he mixes it up 
with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious partner of 
his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth but trivets. As 
thus:
"If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he might have been worth a great 
deal of money - you brimstone chatterer! - but just as he was beginning to 
build up the house that he had been making the foundations for, through 
many a year - you jade of a magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you 
mean! - he took ill and died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a 
spare man, full of business care - I should like to throw a cat at you 
instead of a cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of 
yourself! - and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip, just 
dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born - You are an old 
pig. You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!"
Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect in a 
basin various tributary streams of tea from the bottoms of cups and saucers 
and from the bottom of the teapot, for the little charwoman's evening meal. 
In like manner she gets together, in the iron bread-basket, as many outside 
fragments and worn-down heels of loaves as the rigid economy of the house 
has left in existence.
"But your father and me were partners, Bart," says the old gentleman; "and 
when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It's rare for you 
both, that you went out early in life - Judy to the flower business, and 
you to the law. You won't want to spend it. You'll get your living without 
it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will go back to the flower 
business, and you'll stick to the law."
One might infer, from Judy's appearance, that her business rather lay with 
the thorns than the flowers; but, she has, in her time, been apprenticed to 
the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A close observer might 
perhaps detect both in her eye and her brother's, when their venerable 
grandsire anticipates his being gone, some little impatience to know when 
he may be going, and some resentful opinion that it is time that he went.
"Now, if everybody has done," says Judy, completing her preparations, "I'll 
have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off, if she took it by 
herself in the kitchen."
Charley is accordingly introduced, and, under a heavy fire of eyes, sits 
down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In the active 
superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed appears to attain a 
perfectly geological age, and to date from the remotest periods. Her 
systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing on her, with or without 
pretence, whether or no, is wonderful; evincing an accomplishment in the 
art of girl-driving, seldom reached by the oldest practitioners.
"Now, don't stare about you all the afternoon," cried Judy, shaking her 
head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance which has 
been previously sounding the basin of tea, "but take your victuals and get 
back to your work."
"Yes, miss," says Charley.
"Don't say yes," returns Miss Smallweed, "for I know what you girls are. Do 
it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you."
Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission, and so 
disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to 
gormandise, which, "in you girls," she observes, is disgusting. Charley 
might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the general subject 
of girls, but for a knock at the door.
"See who it is, and don't chew when you open it!" cries Judy.
The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss Smallweed 
takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the bread and butter 
together, and launching two or three dirty teacups into the ebb-tide of the 
basin of tea; as a hint that she considers the eating and drinking 
terminated.
"Now! Who is it, and what's wanted?" says the snappish Judy.
It is one "Mr George," it appears. Without other announcement or ceremony, 
Mr George walks in.
"Whew!" says Mr George. "You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well! Perhaps 
you do right to get used to one." Mr George makes the latter remark to 
himself, as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.
"Ho! It's you!" cries the old gentleman. "How de do? How de do?"
"Middling," replies Mr George, taking a chair. "Your grand-daughter I have 
had the honour of seeing before: my service to you, miss."
"This is my grandson," says Grandfather Smallweed. "You ha'n't seen him 
before. He is in the law, and not much at home."
"My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his sister. 
He is devilish like his sister," says Mr George, laying a great and not 
altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.
"And how does the world use you, Mr George?" Grandfather Smallweed 
inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.
"Pretty much as usual. Like a football."
He is a swarthy browned man of fifty; well made, and good-looking; with 
crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and powerful 
hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a pretty rough 
life. What is curious about him is, that he sits forward on his chair as if 
he were, from long habit, allowing space for some dress or accoutrements 
that he has altogether laid aside. His step too is measured and heavy, and 
would go well with a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved 
now, but his mouth is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar 
with a great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm 
of his broad brown hand upon it, is to the same effect. Altogether, one 
might guess Mr George to have been a trooper once upon a time.
A special contrast Mr George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper was 
never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a broadsword to 
an oyster knife. His developed figure, and their stunted forms; his large 
manner, filling any amount of room, and their little narrow pinched ways; 
his sounding voice, and their sharp spare tones; are in the strongest and 
the strangest opposition. As he sits in the middle of the grim parlour, 
leaning a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs, and his elbows 
squared, he looks as though, if remained there long, he would absorb into 
himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-
kitchen and all.
"Do you rub your legs to rub life into 'em?" he asks of Grandfather 
Swallweed, after looking round the room.
"Why, it's partly a habit, Mr George, and - yes - it partly helps the 
circulation," he replies.
"The cir-cu-la-tion!" repeats Mr George, folding his arms upon his chest, 
and seeming to become two sizes larger. "Not much of that, I should think."
"Truly I'm old, Mr George," says Grandfather Smallweed. "But I can carry my 
years. I'm older than her," nodding at his wife, "and see what she is! - 
You're a brimstone chatterer!" with a sudden revival of his late hostility.
"Unlucky old soul!" says Mr George, turning his head in that direction. 
"Don't scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor cap half off her 
head, and her poor chair all in a muddle. Hold up, ma'am. That's better. 
There we are! Think of your mother, Mr Smallweed," says Mr George, coming 
back to his seat from assisting her, "if your wife an't enough."
"I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr George," the old man hints, with a 
leer.
The colour of Mr George's face rather deepens, as he replies; "Why no. I 
wasn't."
"I am astonished at it."
"So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to have been 
one. But I wasn't. I was a thundering bad son, that's the long and the 
short of it, and never was a credit to anybody."
"Surprising!" cries the old man.
"However," Mr George resumes, "the less said about it the better now. Come! 
You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two months' interest! 
(Bosh! It's all correct. You needn't be afraid to order the pipe. Here's 
the new bill, and here's the two months' interest-money, and a devil-and-
all of a scrape it is to get it together in my business)."
Mr George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the parlour, 
while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black leathern cases 
out of a locked bureau; in one of which he secures the document he has just 
received, and from the other takes another similar document which he hands 
to Mr George, who twists it up for a pipe-light. As the old man inspects, 
through his glasses, every up-stroke and downstroke of both documents, 
before he releases them from their leathern prison; and as he counts the 
money three times over, and requires Judy to say every word she utters at 
least twice, and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is 
possible to be; this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite 
concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and fingers from 
it, and answers Mr George's last remark by saying, "Afraid to order the 
pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir. Judy, see directly to the pipe 
and the glass of cold brandy and water for Mr George."
The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all this 
time, except when they have been engrossed by the leathern cases, retire 
together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but leaving him to the old 
man, as two young cubs might leave a traveller to the parental bear.
"And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh!" says Mr George, with 
folded arms.
"Just so, just so," the old man nods.
"And don't you occupy yourself at all?"
"I watch the fire - and the boiling and the roasting - "
"When there is any," says Mr George, with great expression.
"Just so. When there is any."
"Don't you read, and get read to?"
The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have never 
been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness. Folly. No, no!"
"There's not much to choose between your two states," says the visitor, in 
a key too low for the old man's dull hearing, as he looks from him to the 
old woman and back again. "I say!" in a louder voice.
"I hear you."
"You'll sell me up at last I suppose, when I am a day in arrear."
"My dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both hands to 
embrace him. "Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in the city that 
I got to lend you the money - he might!"
"O! you can't answer for him?" says Mr George; finishing the inquiry, in 
his lower key, with the words "you lying old rascal!"
"My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn't trust him. He will 
have his bond, my dear friend."
"Devil doubt him," says Mr George. Charley appearing with a tray, on which 
are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the brandy and water, he asks 
her, "How do you come here! you haven't got the family face."
"I goes out to work, sir," returns Charley.
The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off, with a 
light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head. "You give the 
house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth as much as it wants 
fresh air." Then he dismisses her, lights his pipe, and drinks to Mr 
Smallweed's friend in the city - the one solitary flight of that esteemed 
old gentleman's imagination.
"So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?"
"I think he might - I am afraid he would. I have known him to do it," says 
Grandfather Smallweed, incautiously, "twenty times."
Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing over 
the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers "Twenty thousand 
pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a moneybox, twenty guineas, twenty 
million twenty per cent, twenty - " and is then cut short by the flying 
cushion, which the visitor, to whom the singular experiment appears to be a 
novelty, snatches from her face as it crushes her in the usual manner.
"You're a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion - a brimstone scorpion! You're 
a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick witch, that 
ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his chair. "My dear 
friend, will you shake me up a little?"
Mr George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the other, 
as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by the throat on 
receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his chair as easily as 
if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future 
power of cushioning out of him, and shake him into his grave. Resisting the 
temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make his head roll like a 
harlequin's, he puts him smartly down in his chair again, and adjusts his 
skull-cap with such a rub, that the old man winks both eyes for a minute 
afterwards.
"O Lord!" gasps Mr Smallweed. That'll do. Thank you, my dear friend, 
that'll do. O dear me, I'm out of breath. O Lord!" And Mr Smallweed says 
it, not without evident apprehensions of his dear friend, who still stands 
over him looming larger than ever.
The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair, and 
falls to smoking in long puffs; consoling itself with the philosophical 
reflection, "The name of your friend in the city begins a D, comrade, and 
you're about right respecting the bond."
"Did you speak, Mr George?" inquires the old man.
The trooper shakes his head; and leaning forward with his right elbow on 
his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his other hand, 
resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a martial manner, 
continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr Smallweed with grave 
attention, and now and then fans the cloud of smoke away, in order that he 
may see him the more clearly.
"I take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in his 
position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips, with a round, 
full action, "that I am the only man alive (or dead either), that gets the 
value of a pipe out of you?"
"Well!" returns the old man, "it's true that I don't see company, Mr 
George, and that I don't treat. I can't afford to it. But as you, in your 
pleasant way, made your pipe a condition - "
"Why, it's not for the value of it; that's no great thing. It was a fancy 
to get it out of you. To have something in for my money."
"Ha! You're prudent, prudent, sir!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing 
his legs.
"Very. I always was." Puff. "It's a sure sign of my prudence, that I ever 
found the way here." Puff. "Also, that I am what I am." Puff. "I am well 
known to be prudent," says Mr George, composedly smoking. "I rose in life, 
that way."
"Don't be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet."
Mr George laughs and drinks.
"Ha'n't you no relations, now," asks Grandfather Smallweed, with a twinkle 
in his eyes, "who would pay off this little principal, or who would lend 
you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in the city to make 
you a further advance upon? Two good names would be sufficient for my 
friend in the city. Ha'n't you no such relations, Mr George?"
Mr George, still composedly smoking, replies, "If I had, I shouldn't 
trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day. It may 
be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted the best 
time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he never was a 
credit to, and live upon them; but it's not my sort. The best kind of 
amends then, for having gone away, is to keep away, in my opinion."
"But natural affection, Mr George," hints Grandfather Smallweed.
"For two good names, hey?" says Mr George, shaking his head, and still 
composedly smoking. "No. That's not my sort, either."
Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair since 
his last adjustment, and is now a bundle of clothes, with a voice in it 
calling for Judy. That Houri appearing, shakes him up in the usual manner, 
and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him. For he seems chary 
of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating his late attentions.
"Ha!" he observes, when he is in trim again. "If you could have traced out 
the Captain, Mr George, it would have been the making of you. If, when you 
first came here, in consequence of our advertisements in the newspapers - 
when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of my friend in the 
city, and one or two others who embark their capital in the same way, and 
are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give me a lift with my little 
pittance - if, at that time, you could have helped us, Mr George, it would 
have been the making of you."
"I was willing enough to be 'made,' as you call it," says Mr George, 
smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of Judy he 
has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of the admiring 
kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by her grandfather's 
chair; "but, on the whole, I am glad I wasn't now."
"Why, Mr George? In the name of - of Brimstone, why?" says Grandfather 
Smallweed, with a plain appearance of exasperation. (Brimstone apparently 
suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs Smallweed in her slumber.)
"For two reasons, comrade."
"And what two reasons, Mr George? In the name of the - "
"Of our friend in the city?" suggests Mr George, composedly drinking.
"Ay, if you like. What two reasons?"
"In the first place," returns Mr George; but still looking at Judy, as if, 
she being so old and so like her grandfather, it is indifferent which of 
the two he addresses; "you gentlemen took me in. You advertised that Mr 
Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying, Once a captain always a 
captain) was to hear of something of his advantage."
"Well?" returns the old man, shrilly and sharply.
"Well!" says Mr George, smoking on. "It wouldn't have been much to his 
advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and judgment 
trade of London."
"How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his 
debts, or compounded for 'em. Besides, he had taken us in. He owed us 
immense sums, all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no 
return. If I sit here thinking of him," snarls the old man, holding up his 
impotent ten fingers, "I want to strangle him now." And in a sudden access 
of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs Smallweed, but it 
passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.
"I don't need to be told," returns the trooper, taking his pipe from his 
lips for a moment, and carrying his eyes back from following the progress 
of the cushion, to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, "that he carried on 
heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand many a day, when he 
was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him, when he was sick and 
well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him, after he had run through 
everything and broken down everything beneath him - when he held a pistol 
to his head."
"I wish he had let it off!" says the benevolent old man, "and blown his 
head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!"
"That would have been a smash indeed," returns the trooper coolly; "any 
way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone by; and I am 
glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to a result so much to 
his advantage. That's reason number one."
"I hope number two's as good?" snarls the old man.
"Why, no. It's more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must have 
gone to the other world to look. He was there."
"How do you know he was there?"
"He wasn't here."
"How do you know he wasn't here?"
"Don't lose your temper as well as your money," says Mr George, calmly 
knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "He was drowned long before. I am 
convinced of it. He went over a ship's side. Whether intentionally or 
accidentally, I don't know. Perhaps your friend in the city does. - Do you 
know what that tune is, Mr Smallweed?" he adds, after breaking off to 
whistle one, accompanied on the table with the empty pipe.
"Tune!" replies the old man. "No. We never have tunes here."
"That's the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it; so it's the 
natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty grand-daughter - excuse me, 
miss - will condescend to take care of this pipe for two months, we shall 
save the cost of one next time. Good evening, Mr Smallweed!"
"My dear friend!" The old man gives him both his hands.
"So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me, if I fail in a 
payment?" says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant.
"My dear friend, I am afraid he will," returns the old man, looking up at 
him like a pigmy.
Mr George laughs; and with a glance at Mr Smallweed, and a parting 
salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing 
imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.
"You're a damned rogue," says the old gentleman, making a hideous grimace 
at the door as shuts it. "But I'll lime you, you dog, I'll lime you!"
After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting regions 
of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to it; and again 
he and Mrs Smallweed wile away the rosy hours, two unrelieved sentinels 
forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.
While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr George strides through the 
streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough face. It is eight 
o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He stops hard by Waterloo 
Bridge, and reads a play-bill; decides to go to Astley's Theatre. Being 
there, is much delighted with the horses and the feats of strength; looks 
at the weapons with a critical eye; disapproves of the combats, as giving 
evidences of unskillful swordsmanship; but is touched home by the 
sentiments. In the last scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a 
cart and condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with 
the Union-Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.
The theatre over, Mr George comes across the water again, and makes his way 
to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and Leicester Square, 
which is a centre of attraction to indifferent foreign hotels and 
indifferent foreigners, racket-courts, fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, 
old china, gaming houses, exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and 
shrinking out of sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he 
arrives, by a court and a long whitewashed passage, at a great brick 
building, composed of bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights; on 
the front of which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted 
George's Shooting Gallery, etc.
Into George's Shooting Gallery, etc., he goes; and in it there are gaslights 
(partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for rifle-shooting, and 
archery accommodation, and fencing appliances, and all necessaries for the 
British art of boxing. None of these sports or exercises are being pursued 
in George's Shooting Gallery tonight; which is so devoid of company, that a 
little grotesque man, with a large head, has it all to himself, and lies 
asleep upon the floor.
The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green baize apron 
and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder, and begrimed with 
the loading of guns. As he lies in the light, before a glaring white 
target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off, is the strong, rough, 
primitive table, with a vice upon it, at which he has been working. He is a 
little man with a face all crushed together, who appears, from a certain 
blue and speckled appearance that one of his cheeks presents, to have been 
blown up, in the way of business, at some odd time or times.
"Phil!" says the trooper, in a quiet voice.
"All right!" cries Phil, scrambling to his feet.
"Anything been doing!"
"Flat as ever so much swipes," says Phil. "Five dozen rifle and a dozen 
pistol. As to aim!" Phil gives a howl at the recollection.
"Shut up shop, Phil!"
As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is lame, 
though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his face he has 
no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black one, which want of 
uniformity gives him a very singular and rather sinister appearance. 
Everything seems to have happened to his hands that could possibly take 
place, consistently with the retention of all the fingers; for they are 
notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over. He appears to be very strong, 
and lifts heavy benches about as if he had no idea what weight was. He has 
a curious way of limping round the gallery with his shoulder against the 
wall, and tacking off at objects he wants to lay hold of, instead of going 
straight to them, which has left a smear all round the four walls, 
conventionally called "Phil's mark."
This custodian of George's Gallery in George's absence concludes his 
proceedings, when he has locked the great doors, and turned out all the 
lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from a wooden 
cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being drawn to opposite 
ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed, and Phil makes his.
"Phil!" says the master, walking towards him without his coat and 
waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. "You were 
found in a doorway, weren't you?"
"Gutter," says Phil. "Watchman tumbled over me."
"Then, vagabondising came natural to you, from the beginning."
"As nat'ral as possible," says Phil.
"Good-night!"
"Good-night, guv'ner."
Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to shoulder 
round two sides of the gallery, and then tack off at his mattress. The 
trooper, after taking a turn or two in the rifle-distance, and looking up 
at the moon now shining through the skylights, strides to his own mattress 
by a shorter route, and goes to bed too.


Chapter 22

Mr Bucket

Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln's Inn Fields, though the evening is 
hot; for, both Mr Tulkinghorn's windows are wide open, and the room is 
lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable characteristics when 
November comes with fog and sleet, or January with ice and snow; but they 
have their merits in the sultry long vacation weather. They enable 
Allegory, though it has cheeks like peaches, and knees like bunches of 
blossoms, and rosy swellings for calves to its legs and muscles to its 
arms, to look tolerably cool tonight.
Plenty of dust comes in at Mr Tulkinghorn's windows, and plenty more has 
generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick everywhere. When a 
breeze from the country that has lost its way, takes fright, and makes a 
blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as much dust in the eyes of 
Allegory as the law - or Mr Tulkinghorn, one of its trustiest 
representatives - may scatter, on occasion, in the eyes of the laity.
In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which his 
papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth, animate 
and inanimate, are resolving, Mr Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open 
windows, enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, 
dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless 
binn of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his 
many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined today, and 
has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-
house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted 
mansion, and, heralded by a remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes 
gravely back, encircled by an earthy atmosphere, and carrying a bottle from 
which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes 
in the glass to find itself so famous, and fills the whole room with the 
fragrance of southern grapes.
Mr Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys his 
wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and 
seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever, he 
sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy; pondering, at that 
twilight hour, on all the mysteries he knows, associated with darkening 
woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in town; and perhaps 
sparing a thought or two for himself, and his family history, and his 
money, and his will - all a mystery to everyone - and that one bachelor 
friend of his, a man of the same mould and a lawyer too, who lived the same 
kind of life until he was seventy-five years old, and then, suddenly 
conceiving (as it is supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, 
gave his gold watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening, and walked 
leisurely home to the Temple, and hanged himself.
But, Mr Tulkinghorn is not alone tonight, to ponder at his usual length. 
Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and uncomfortably 
drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining man, who coughs 
respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him fill his glass.
"Now, Snagsby," says Mr Tulkinghorn, "to go over this odd story again."
"If you please, sir."
"You told me when you were so good as to step round here, last night - "
"For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but I 
remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person, and I 
thought it possible that you might - just - wish - to - "
Mr Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion, or to admit 
anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr Snagsby trails off 
into saying, with an awkward cough, "I must ask you to excuse the liberty, 
sir, I am sure."
"Not at at all," says Mr Tulkinghorn. "You told me, Snagsby, that you put 
on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to your wife. 
That was prudent I think, because it's not a matter of such importance that 
it requires to be mentioned."
"Well, sir," returns Mr Snagsby, "you see my little woman is - not to put 
too fine a point upon it - inquisitive. She's inquisitive. Poor little 
thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good for her to have her mind 
employed. In consequence of which, she employs it - I should say upon every 
individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it concerns her or not - 
especially not. My little woman has a very active mind, sir."
Mr Snagsby drinks, and murmurs, with an admiring cough behind his hand. 
"Dear me, very fine wine indeed!"
"Therefore you kept your visit to yourself, last night?" says Mr 
Tulkinghorn. "And tonight, too?"
"Yes, sir, and tonight, too. My little woman is at present in - not to put 
too fine a point on it - in a pious state, or in what she considers such, 
and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name they go by) of a 
reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a great deal of eloquence at 
his command undoubtedly, but I am not quite favourable to his style myself. 
That's neither here nor there. My little woman being engaged in that way, 
made it easier for me to step round in a quiet manner."
Mr Tulkinghorn assents. "Fill your glass, Snagsby."
"Thank you, sir, I am sure," returns the stationer, with his cough of 
deference. "This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!"
"It is a rare wine now," says Mr Tulkinghorn. "It is fifty years old."
"Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It might 
be - any age almost." After rendering this general tribute to the port, Mr 
Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his hand for drinking 
anything so precious.
"Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?" asks Mr Tulkinghorn, 
putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty small-clothes and leaning 
quietly back in his chair.
"With pleasure, sir."
Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer repeats 
Jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On coming to the 
end of his narrative, he gives a great start, and breaks off with - "Dear 
me, sir, I wasn't aware there was any other gentleman present!"
Mr Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face between 
himself and the lawyer, at a little distance from the table, a person with 
a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he himself came in, and 
has not since entered by the door or by either of the windows. There is a 
press in the room, but its hinges have not creaked, nor has a step been 
audible upon the floor. Yet this third person stands there, with his 
attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind 
him, a composed and quiet listener. He is a stoutly-built, steady-looking, 
sharp-eyed man in black, of about the middle-age. Except that he looks at 
Mr Snagsby as if he were going to take his portrait, there is nothing 
remarkable about him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.
"Don't mind this gentleman," says Mr Tulkinghorn, in his quiet way. "This 
is only Mr Bucket."
"Oh indeed, sir?" returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that he is 
quite in the dark as to who Mr Bucket may be.
"I wanted him to hear this story," says the lawyer, "because I have half a 
mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very intelligent in such 
things. What do you say to this, Bucket?"
"It's very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and he's 
not to be found on his old lay, if Mr Snagsby don't object to go down with 
me to Tom-all-Alone's and point him out, we can have him here in less than 
a couple of hours' time. I can do it without Mr Snagsby, of course; but 
this is the shortest way."
"Mr Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby," says the lawyer in 
explanation.
"Is he indeed, sir?" says Mr Snagsby, with a strong tendency in his clump 
of hair to stand on end.
"And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr Bucket to the place in 
question," pursues the lawyer, "I shall feel obliged to you if you will do 
so."
In a moment's hesitation on the part of Mr Snagsby, Bucket dips down to the 
bottom of his mind.
"Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy," he says. "You won't do that. It's 
all right as far as the boy's concerned. We shall only bring him here to 
ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and he'll be paid for his 
trouble, and sent away again. It'll be a good job for him. I promise you, 
as man, that you shall see the boy sent away all right. Don't you be afraid 
of hurting him; you an't going to do that."
"Very well, Mr Tulkinghorn!" cries Mr Snagsby cheerfully, and reassured, 
"since that's the case - "
"Yes! and lookee here, Mr Snagsby," resumes Bucket, taking him aside by the 
arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a confidential 
tone. "You're a man of the world, you know, and a man of business, and a 
man of sense. "That's what you are."
"I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion," returns the 
stationer, with his cough of modesty, "but - "
"That's what you are, you know," says Bucket. "Now, it an't necessary to 
say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a business of 
trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his senses about him, 
and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in your business once) - it 
an't necessary to say to a man like you, that it's the best and wisest way 
to keep little matters like this quiet. Don't you see? Quiet!"
"Certainly, certainly," returns the stationer.
"I don't mind telling you," says Bucket, with an engaging appearance of 
frankness, "that, as far as I can understand it, there seems to be a doubt 
whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little property, and whether 
this female hasn't been up to some games respecting that property, don't 
you see!"
"O!" says Mr Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.
"Now, what you want," pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr Snagsby on the 
breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, "is, that every person should 
have their rights according to justice. That's what you want."
"To be sure," returns Mr Snagsby with a nod.
"On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a - do you call it, in 
your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used to call it."
"Why, I generally say customer myself," replies Mr Snagsby.
"You're right!" returns Mr Bucket, shaking hands with him quite 
affectionately, - "on account of which, and at the same time to oblige a 
real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in confidence, to Tom-all-
Alone's, and to keep the whole thing quiet ever afterwards and never 
mention it to any one. That's about your intentions if I understand you."
"You are right, sir. You are right," says Mr Snagsby.
"Then here's your hat," returns his new friend, quite as intimate with it 
as if he had made it; "and if you're ready, I am."
They leave Mr Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his 
unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the streets.
"You don't happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of 
Gridley, do you?" says Bucket, in a friendly converse as they descend the 
stairs.
"No," says Mr Snagsby, considering, "I don't know anybody of that name. 
Why?"
"Nothing particular," says Bucket; "only, having allowed his temper to get 
a little the better of him, and having been threatening some respectable 
people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have got against him - 
which it's a pity that a man of sense should do."
As they walk along, Mr Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that, however quick 
their pace may be, his companion still seems in some undefinable manner to 
lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going to turn to the right or 
left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind of going straight 
ahead, and wheels off, sharply, at the very last moment. Now and then, when 
they pass a police constable on his beat, Mr Snagsby notices that both the 
constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come towards 
each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other and to gaze into 
space. In a few instances, Mr Bucket, coming behind some undersized young 
man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair twisted into one flat curl on 
each side of his head, almost without glancing at him touches him with his 
stick; upon which the young man, looking round, instantly evaporates. For 
the most part Mr Bucket notices things in general with a face as unchanging 
as the great mourning ring on his little finger, or the brooch, composed of 
not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.
When they came at last to Tom-all-Alone's, Mr Bucket stops for a moment at 
the corner, and takes a lighted bull's-eye from the constable on duty 
there, who then accompanies him with his own particular bull's-eye at his 
waist. Between his two conductors Mr Snagsby passes along the middle of a 
villanous street, undrained, unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt 
water - though the roads are dry elsewhere - and reeking with such smells 
and sights that he, who has lived in London all his life, can scarce 
believe his senses. Branching from this street and its heap of ruins, are 
other streets and courts so infamous that Mr Snagsby sickens in body and 
mind, and feels as if he were going, every moment deeper down, into the 
infernal gulf.
"Draw off a bit here, Mr Snagsby," says Bucket, as a kind of shabby 
palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "Here's the 
fever coming up the street!"
As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of attraction, 
hovers round the three visitors, like a dream of horrible faces, and fades 
away up alleys and into ruins, and behind walls; and with occasional cries 
and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth flits about them until they 
leave the place.
"Are those the fever-houses, Darby?" Mr Bucket coolly asks, as he turns his 
bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.
Darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for months and 
months, the people "have been down by dozens," and have been carried out, 
dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." Bucket observing to Mr Snagsby as 
they go on again, that he looks a little poorly, Mr Snagsby answers that he 
feels as if he couldn't breathe the dreadful air.
There is inquiry made at various houses, for a boy named Jo. As few people 
are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign, there is much reference 
to Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the Colonel, or Gallows, or Young 
Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or the Brick. Mr Snagsby describes over 
and over again. There are conflicting opinions respecting the original of 
his picture. Some think it must be Carrots; some say the Brick. The Colonel 
is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr Snagsby and his 
conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid 
depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr Bucket. Whenever they move, and 
the angry bull's eyes glare, it fades away, and flits about them up the 
alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as before.
At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject lays 
him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may be Jo. 
Comparison of notes between Mr Snagsby and the proprietress of the house - 
a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring out of a heap of rags 
on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her private apartment - leads to the 
establishment of this conclusion. Toughy has gone to the Doctor's to get a 
bottle of stuff for a sick woman, but will be here anon.
"And who have we got here tonight?" says Mr Bucket, opening another door 
and glaring in with his bull's-eye. "Two drunken men, eh? And two women? 
The men are sound enough," turning back each sleeper's arm from his face to 
look at him. "Are these your good men, my dears?"
"Yes, sir," returns one of the women. "They are our husbands."
"Brickmakers, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"What are you doing here? You don't belong to London?"
"No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire."
"Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?"
"Saint Albans."
"Come up on the tramp?"
"We walked up yesterday. There's no work down with us at present, but we 
have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect."
"That's not the way to do much good," says Mr Bucket, turning his head in 
the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.
"It an't indeed," replies the woman with a sigh. "Jenny and me knows it 
full well."
The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low that the 
head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the blackened ceiling if he 
stood upright. It is offensive to every sense; even the gross candle burns 
pale and sickly in the polluted air. There are a couple of benches, and a 
higher bench by way of table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, 
but the women sit by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has 
spoken, is a very young child.
"Why, what age do you call that little creature?" says Bucket. "It looks as 
if it was born yesterday." He is not at all rough about it; and as he turns 
his light gently on the infant, Mr Snagsby is strangely reminded of another 
infant, encircled with light, that he has seen in pictures.
"He is not three weeks old yet, sir," says the woman.
"Is he your child?"
"Mine."
The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops down 
again, and kisses it as it lies asleep.
"You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself," says Mr 
Bucket.
"I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died."
"Ah Jenny, Jenny!" says the other woman to her; "better so. Much better to 
think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better."
"Why, you an't such an unnatural woman, I hope," returns Bucket, sternly, 
"as to wish your own child dead?"
"God knows you are right, master," she returns. "I am not. I'd stand 
between it and death, with my own life if I could, as true as any pretty 
lady."
"Then don't talk in that wrong manner," says Mr Bucket, mollified again. 
"Why do you do it?"
"It's brought into my head, master," returns the woman, her eyes filling 
with tears, "when I look down at the child lying so. If it was never to 
wake no more, you'd think me mad, I should take on so. I know that very 
well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers - warn't I, Jenny? - and I know 
how she grieved. But look around you, at this place. Look at them;" 
glancing at the sleepers on the ground. "Look at the boy you're waiting 
for, who's gone out to do me a good turn. Think of the children that your 
business lays with often and often, and that you see grow up!"
"Well, well!" says Mr Bucket, "you train him respectable, and he'll be a 
comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know."
"I mean to try hard," she answers, wiping her eyes. "But I have been a 
thinking, being overtired tonight, and not well with the ague, of all the 
many things that'll come in his way. My master will be against it, and 
he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his home, and perhaps to 
stray wild. If I work for him ever so much and ever so hard, there's no one 
to help me; and if he should be turned bad, spite of all I could do, and 
the time should come when I should sit by him in his sleep, made hard and 
changed, an't it likely I should think of him as he lies in my lap now, and 
wish he had died as Jenny's child died!"
"There, there!" says Jenny. "Liz, you're tired and ill. Let me take him."
In doing so, she displaces the mother's dress, but quickly readjusts it 
over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.
"It's my dead child," says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses, "that 
makes me love this child so dear, and it's my dead child that makes her 
love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken away from her now. 
While she thinks that, I think what fortune would I give to have my darling 
back. But we mean the same thing, if we knew how to say it, us two mothers 
does in our poor hearts!"
As Mr Snagsby blows his nose, and coughs his cough of sympathy, a step is 
heard without. Mr Bucket throws his light into the doorway, and says to Mr 
Snagsby, "Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will he do?"
"That's Jo," says Mr Snagsby.
Jo stands amazed in the disc of light, like a ragged figure in a magic 
lanthorn, trembling to think that he has offended against the law in not 
having moved on far enough. Mr Snagsby, however, giving him the consolatory 
assurance, "It's only a job you will be paid for, Jo," he recovers; and, on 
being taken outside by Mr Bucket for a little private confabulation, tells 
his tale satisfactorily, though out of breath.
"I have squared it with the lad," says Mr Bucket, returning, "and it's all 
right. Now, Mr Snagsby, we're ready for you."
First, Jo has to complete his errand of good-nature by handing over the 
physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic verbal 
direction that "it's to be took all d'rectly." Secondly, Mr Snagsby has to 
lay upon the table half-a-crown, his usual panacea for an immense variety 
of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr Bucket has to take Jo by the arm a little above 
the elbow and walk him on before him: without which observance, neither the 
Tough Subject nor any other subject could be professionally conducted to 
Lincoln's Inn Fields. These arrangements completed, they give the women 
good night, and come out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone's.
By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they 
gradually emerge from it; the crowd flitting, and whistling, and skulking 
about them, until they come to the verge, where restoration of the bull's-
eyes is made to Darby. Here, the crowd like a concourse of imprisoned 
demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more. Through the clearer and 
fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to Mr Snagsby's mind as now, they 
walk and ride, until they come to Mr Tulkinghorn's gate.
As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr Tulkinghorn's chambers being on the first 
floor), Mr Bucket mentions that he has the key of the outer door in his 
pocket, and that there is no need to ring. For a man so expert in most 
things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the door, and makes some 
noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of preparation.
Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning, and so 
into Mr Tulkinghorn's usual room - the room where he drank his old wine 
tonight. He is not there; but his two old-fashioned candlesticks are; and 
the room is tolerably light.
Mr Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo, and appearing to Mr 
Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little way into 
this room, when Jo starts and stops.
"What's the matter?" says Bucket in a whisper.
"There she is!" cries Jo.
"Who!"
"The lady!"
A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room, where 
the light falls upon it. It is quite still, and silent. The front of the 
figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their entrance, and 
remains like a statue.
"Now, tell me," says Bucket aloud, "how you know that to be the lady."
"I know the wale," replies Jo, staring, "and the bonnet, and the gownd."
"Be quite sure of what you say, Tough," returns Bucket, narrowly observant 
of him. "Look again."
"I am looking as hard as ever I can look," says Jo, with starting eyes, 
"and that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd."
"What about those rings you told me of?" asks Bucket.
"A sparkling all over here," says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left hand 
on the knuckles of his right, without taking his eyes from the figure.
The figure removes the right hand glove, and shows the hand.
"Now, what do you say to that?" asks Bucket.
Jo shakes his head. "Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like that."
"What are you talking of?" says Bucket; evidently pleased though, and well 
pleased too.
"Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater and a deal smaller," returns Jo.
"Why, you'll tell me I'm my own mother next," says Mr Bucket. "Do you 
recollect the lady's voice?"
"I think I does," says Jo.
The figure speaks. "Was it at all like this. I will speak as long as you 
like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this voice?"
Jo looks aghast at Mr Bucket. "Not a bit!"
"Then, what," retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, "did you say it 
was the lady for?"
"Cos," says Jo, with a perplexed stare, but without being at all shaken in 
his certainty, "Cos that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd. It is 
her and it an't her. It an't her hand, nor yet her rings, nor yet her 
woice. But that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd, and they're 
wore the same way wot she wore 'em, and it's her height what she was, and 
she give me a sov'ring and hooked it."
"Well!" says Mr Bucket, slightly, "we haven't got much good out of you. 
But, however, here's five shillings for you. Take care how you spend it, 
and don't get yourself into trouble." Bucket stealthily tells the coins 
from one hand into the other like counters - which is a way he has, his 
principal use of them being in these games of skill - and then puts them, 
in a little pile, into the boy's hand, and takes him out to the door; 
leaving Mr Snagsby, not by any means comfortable under these mysterious 
circumstances, alone with the veiled figure. But, on Mr Tulkinghorn's 
coming into the room, the veil is raised, and a sufficiently good-looking 
French-woman is revealed, though her expression is something of the 
intensest.
"Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense," says Mr Tulkinghorn, with his usual 
equanimity. "I will give you no further trouble about this little wager."
"You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at present 
placed?" says Mademoiselle.
"Certainly, certainly!"
"And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished recommendation?"
"By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense."
"A word from Mr Tulkinghorn is so powerful." - "It shall not be wanting, 
Mademoiselle." - "Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir." 
- "Good night." Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and 
Mr Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the 
ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not without 
gallantry.
"Well, Bucket?" quoth Mr Tulkinghorn on his return.
"It's all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an't a doubt 
that it was the other one with this one's dress on. The boy was exact 
respecting colours and everything. Mr Snagsby, I promised you as a man that 
he should be sent away all right. Don't say it wasn't done!"
"You have kept your word, sir," returns the stationer; "and if I can be of 
no further use, Mr Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman will be getting 
anxious - "
"Thank you, Snagsby, no further use," says Mr Tulkinghorn. "I am quite 
indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already."
"Not at all, sir. I wish you good night."
"You see, Mr Snagsby," says Mr Bucket, accompanying him to the door and 
shaking hands with him over and over again, "what I like in you, is, that 
you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what you are. When you know you 
have done a right thing, you put it away, and it's done with and gone, and 
there's an end of it. That's what you do."
"That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir," returns Mr Snagsby.
"No, you don't do yourself justice. It an't what you endeavour to do," says 
Mr Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the tenderest manner, 
"it's what you do. That's what I estimate in a man in your way of 
business."
Mr Snagsby makes a suitable response; and goes homeward so confused by the 
events of the evening, that he is doubtful of his being awake and out - 
doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he goes - doubtful of 
the reality of the moon that shines above him. He is presently reassured on 
these subjects, by the unchallengeable reality of Mrs Snagsby, sitting up 
with her head in a perfect beehive of curl-papers and nightcap: who has 
dispatched Guster to the police station with official intelligence of her 
husband's being made away with, and who, within the last two hours, has 
passed through every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But, as 
the little woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!


Chapter 23

Esther's Narrative

We came home from Mr Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were often in 
the park, and in the woods, and seldom passed the Lodge where we had taken 
shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper's wife; but we saw no 
more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on Sundays. There was company at 
Chesney Wold; and although several beautiful faces surrounded her, her face 
retained the same influence on me as at first. I do not quite know, even 
now, whether it was painful or pleasurable; whether it drew me towards her, 
or made me shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear; and 
I know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they had 
done at first, to that old time of my life.
I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady so 
curiously was to me, I was to her - I mean that I disturbed her thoughts as 
she influenced mine, though in some different way. But when I stole a 
glance at her, and saw her so composed and distant and unapproachable, I 
felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt the whole state of my 
mind in reference to her to be weak and unreasonable; and I remonstrated 
with myself about it as much as I could.
One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr Boythorn's house, I had 
better mention in this place.
I was walking in the garden with Ada, when I was told that some one wished 
to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was waiting, I 
found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes and walked 
through the wet grass, on the day when it thundered and lightened.
"Mademoiselle," she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager eyes, 
though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance, and speaking neither 
with boldness nor servility, "I have taken a great liberty in coming here, 
but you know how to excuse it, being so amiable, mademoiselle."
"No excuse is necessary," I returned, "if you wish to speak to me."
"That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the permission. I 
have your leave to speak. Is it not?" she said, in a quick, natural way.
"Certainly," said I.
"Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have left 
my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high; so very high. Pardon! 
Mademoiselle, you are right!" Her quickness anticipated what I might have 
said presently, but as yet had only thought. "It is not for me to come here 
to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high, so very high. I will say 
not a word more. All the world knows that."
"Go on, if you please," said I.
"Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness. Mademoiselle, 
I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a young lady who is 
good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good, accomplished, and beautiful as 
an angel. Ah, could I have the honour of being your domestic!"
"I am sorry - " I began.
"Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!" she said, with an involuntary 
contraction of her fine black eyebrows. "Let me hope a moment! 
Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired than that which I 
have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service would be less 
distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know 
that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I am content."
"I assure you," said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having such 
an attendant, "that I keep no maid - "
"Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so devoted 
to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so true, so 
zealous, and so faithful, every day! Mademoiselle, I wish with all my heart 
to serve you. Do not speak of money at present. Take me as I am. For 
nothing!"
She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her. 
Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour, she still pressed herself 
upon me; speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always with a certain 
grace and propriety.
"Mademoiselle, I come from the South country, where we are quick, and where 
we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for me; I was too 
high for her. It is done - past - finished! Receive me as your domestic, 
and I will serve you well. I will do more for you, than you figure to 
yourself now. Chut! mademoiselle, I will - no matter, I will do my utmost 
possible, in all things. If you accept my service, you will not repent it. 
Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will serve you well. You don't 
know how well!"
There was a lowering energy in her face, as she stood looking at me while I 
explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without thinking it 
necessary to say how very little I desired to do so), which seemed to bring 
visibly before me some woman from the streets of Paris in the reign of 
terror. She heard me out without interruption; and then said, with her 
pretty accent, and in her mildest voice:
"Hey, mademoiselle, I have received my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must 
go elsewhere, and seek what I have not found here. Will you graciously let 
me kiss your hand?"
She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take note, 
with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. "I fear I surprised you, 
mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?" she said, with a parting curtsey.
I confessed that she had surprised us all.
"I took an oath, mademoiselle," she said smiling, "and I wanted to stamp it 
on my mind, so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will! Adieu, 
mademoiselle!"
So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I 
suppose she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and nothing 
else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures, until six weeks 
were out, and we returned home as I began just now by saying.
At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard was 
constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday, and 
remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on horseback 
unexpectedly, and passed the evening with us, and rode back again early 
next day. He was as vivacious as ever, and told us he was very industrious; 
but I was not easy in my mind about him. It appeared to me that his 
industry was all misdirected. I could not find that it led to anything, but 
the formation of delusive hopes in connection with the suit already the 
pernicious cause of so much sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that 
mystery now, he told us; and nothing could be plainer than that the will 
under which he and Ada were to take, I don't know how many thousands of 
pounds, must be finally established, if there were any sense or justice in 
the Court of Chancery - but O what a great if that sounded in my ears - and 
that this happy conclusion could not be much longer delayed. He proved this 
to himself by all the weary arguments on that side he had read, and every 
one of them sunk him deeper in the infatuation. He had even begun to haunt 
the Court. He told us how he saw Miss Flite there daily; how they talked 
together, and he did her little kindnesses; and how, while he laughed at 
her, he pitied her from his heart. But he never thought - never, my poor 
dear, sanguine Richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such 
better things before him! - what a fatal link was riveting between his 
fresh youth and her faded age; between his free hopes and her caged birds, 
and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.
Ada loved him too well, to mistrust him much in anything he said or did; 
and my Guardian, though he frequently complained of the east wind and read 
more than usual in the Growllery, preserved a strict silence on the 
subject. So, I thought, one day when I went to London to meet Caddy 
Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in waiting for me 
at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk together. I found him 
there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in arm.
"Well, Richard," said I, as soon as I could begin to be grave with him, 
"are you beginning to feel more settled now?"
"O yes, my dear!" returned Richard. "I am all right enough."
"But settled?" said I.
"How do you mean, settled?" returned Richard, with his gay laugh.
"Settled in the law," said I.
"O aye," replied Richard, "I'm all right enough."
"You said that before, my dear Richard."
"And you don't think it's an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it's not. Settled? 
You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?"
"Yes."
"Why, no, I can't say I'm settling down," said Richard, strongly 
emphasising 'down,' as if that expressed the difficulty; "because one can't 
settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled state. When I 
say this business, of course I mean the - forbidden subject."
"Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?" said I.
"Not the least doubt of it," answered Richard.
We walked a little way without speaking; and presently Richard addressed me 
in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus:
"My dear Esther, I understand you, and I wish to Heaven I were a more 
constant sort of fellow. I don't mean constant to Ada, for I love her 
dearly - better and better every day - but constant to myself. (Somehow, I 
mean something that I can't very well express, but you'll make it out.) If 
I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have held on, either to 
Badger, or to Kenge and Carboy, like grim death; and should have begun to 
be steady and systematic by this time, and shouldn't be in debt - "
"Are you in debt, Richard?"
"Yes," said Richard, "I am a little so, my dear. Also I have taken too 
rather much to billiards, and that sort of thing. Now the murder's out; you 
despise me, Esther, don't you?"
"You know I don't," said I.
"You are kinder to me than I often am to myself," he returned. "My dear 
Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but how can I 
be more settled? If you live in an unfinished house, you couldn't settle 
down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything you undertook, 
unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to anything; and yet 
that's my unhappy case. I was born into this unfinished contention with all 
its chances and changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew 
the difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone 
on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I 
am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada."
We were in a solitary place, and he put his hand before his eyes and sobbed 
as he said the words.
"O Richard!" said I, "do not be so moved. You have a noble nature, and 
Ada's love may make you worthier every day."
"I know, my dear," he replied pressing my arm, "I know all that. You musn't 
mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon my mind for a 
long time; and have often meant to speak to you, and have sometimes wanted 
opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what the thought of Ada ought to 
do for me, but it doesn't do it. I am too unsettled even for that. I love 
her most devotedly; and yet I do her wrong, in doing myself wrong, every 
day and hour. But it can't last for ever. We shall come on for a final 
hearing, and get judgment in our favour; and then you and Ada shall see 
what I can really be!"
It had given me a pang to hear him sob, and see the tears start out between 
his fingers; but that was infinitely less affecting to me, than the hopeful 
animation with which he said these words.
"I have looked well into the papers, Esther - I have been deep in them for 
months," he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment, "and you 
may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to years of delay, 
there has been no want of them, Heaven knows! and there is the greater 
probability of our bringing the matter to a speedy close; in fact, it's on 
the paper now. It will be all right at last, and then you shall see!"
Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in the same 
category with Mr Badger, I asked him when he intended to be articled in 
Lincoln's Inn?
"There again! I think not at all, Esther," he returned with an effort. "I 
fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Jarndyce and Jarndyce like 
a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law, and satisfied myself 
that I shouldn't like it. Besides, I find it unsettles me more and more to 
be so constantly upon the scene of action. So what," continued Richard, 
confident again by this time, "do I naturally turn my thoughts to?"
"I can't imagine," said I.
"Don't look so serious," returned Richard, "because it's the best thing I 
can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It's not as if I wanted a profession 
for life. These proceedings will come to a termination, and then I am 
provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is in its nature more 
or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my temporary condition - I may 
say, precisely suited. What is it that I naturally turn my thoughts to?"
I looked at him, and shook my head.
"What," said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, "but the army!"
"The army?" said I.
"The army, of course. What I have to do, is, to get a commission; and - 
there I am, you know!" said Richard.
And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his pocket-book, 
that supposing he had contracted, say two hundred pounds of debt in six 
months, out of the army; and that he contracted no debt at all within a 
corresponding period, in the army - as to which he had quite made up his 
mind; this step must involve a saving of four hundred pounds in a year, or 
two thousand pounds in five years - which was a considerable sum. And then 
he spoke so ingenuously and sincerely, of the sacrifice he made in 
withdrawing himself for a time from Ada, and of the earnestness with which 
he aspired - as in thought he always did, I know full well - to repay her 
love, and to ensure her happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in 
himself, and to acquire the very soul of decision, that he made my heart 
ache keenly, sorely. For, I thought how would this end, how could this end, 
when so soon and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the 
fatal blight that ruined everything it rested on!
I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope I 
could not quite feel then; and implored him, for Ada's sake, not to put any 
trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assented; riding over the 
Court and everything else in his easy way, and drawing the brightest 
pictures of the character he was to settle into - alas, when the grievous 
suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long talk, but it always came 
back to that, in substance.
At last, we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed to wait 
for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman-street. Caddy was 
in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I appeared. After a 
few cheerful words, Richard left us together.
"Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther," said Caddy, "and got the key for 
us. So, if you will walk round and round here with me, we can lock 
ourselves in, and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see your dear 
good face about."
"Very well, my dear," said I. "Nothing could be better." So Caddy, after 
affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it, locked the 
gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the garden very cosily.
"You see, Esther," said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little confidence, 
"after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry without Ma's 
knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark respecting our engagement - 
though I don't believe Ma cares much for me, I must say - I thought it 
right to mention your opinions to Prince. In the first place, because I 
want to profit by everything you tell me; and in the second place, because 
I have no secrets from Prince."
"I hope he approved, Caddy?"
"O, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could say. You 
have no idea what an opinion he has of you!"
"Indeed?"
"Esther, it's enough to make anybody but me jealous," said Caddy, laughing 
and shaking her head; "but it only makes me joyful, for you are the first 
friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have, and nobody can 
respect and love you too much to please me."
"Upon my word, Caddy," said I, "you are in the general conspiracy to keep 
me in a good humour. Well, my dear?"
"Well! I am going to tell you," replied Caddy, crossing her hands 
confidentially upon my arm. "So we talked a good deal about it, and so I 
said to Prince, 'Prince, as Miss Summerson - '"
"I hope you didn't say 'Miss Summerson?'"
"No. I didn't!" cried Caddy, greatly pleased, and with the brightest of 
faces. "I said, 'Esther.' I said to Prince, 'As Esther is decidedly of that 
opinion, Prince, and has expressed it to me, and always hints it when she 
writes those kind notes, which you are so fond of hearing me read to you, I 
am prepared to disclose the truth to Ma whenever you think proper. And I 
think, Prince,' said I, 'that Esther thinks that I should be in a better, 
and truer, and more honourable position altogether, if you did the same to 
your Papa.'"
"Yes, my dear," said I. "Esther certainly does think so."
"So I was right, you see!" exclaimed Caddy. "Well! this troubled Prince a 
good deal; not because he had the least doubt about it, but he is so 
considerate of the feelings of old Mr Turveydrop; and he had his 
apprehensions that old Mr Turveydrop might break his heart, or faint away, 
or be very much overcome in some affecting manner or other, if he made such 
an announcement. He feared old Mr Turveydrop might consider it undutiful, 
and might receive too great a shock. For, old Mr Turveydrop's deportment is 
very beautiful you know, Esther," added Caddy; "and his feelings are 
extremely sensitive."
"Are they, my dear?"
"O, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my darling 
child - I didn't mean to use the expression to you, Esther," Caddy 
apologised, her face suffused with blushes, "but I generally call Prince my 
darling child."
I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on.
"This has caused him, Esther - "
"Caused whom, my dear?"
"O you tiresome thing!" said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face on fire. 
"My darling child, if you insist upon it! - This has, caused him weeks of 
uneasiness, and has made him delay, from day to day, in a very anxious 
manner. At last he said to me, 'Caddy, if Miss Summerson, who is a great 
favourite with my father, could be prevailed upon to be present when I 
broke the subject, I think I could do it.' So I promised I would ask you. 
And I made up my mind, besides," said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but 
timidly, "that if you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me 
to Ma. This is what I meant, when I said in my note that I had a great 
favour and a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could 
grant it, Esther, we should both be very grateful."
"Let me see, Caddy," said I, pretending to consider. "Really I think I 
could do a greater thing than that, if the need were pressing. I am at your 
service and the darling child's, my dear, whenever you like."
Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine; being, I believe, as 
susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender heart that 
ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two round the garden, 
during which she put on an entirely new pair of gloves, and made herself as 
resplendent as possible that she might do no avoidable discredit to the 
Master of Deportment, we went to Newman Street direct.
Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very 
hopeful pupil - a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep voice, 
and an inanimate dissatisfied mamma - whose case was certainly not rendered 
more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her preceptor. The lesson 
at last came to an end, after proceeding as discordantly as possible; and 
when the little girl had changed her shoes, and had had her white muslin 
extinguished in shawls, she was taken away. After a few words of 
preparation, we then went in search of Mr Turveydrop; whom we found, 
grouped with his hat and gloves, as a model of Deportment, on the sofa in 
his private apartment - the only comfortable room in the house. He appeared 
to have dressed at his leisure, in the intervals of a light collation; and 
his dressing-case, brushes, and so forth, all of quiet and elegant kind, 
lay about.
"Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby."
"Charmed! Enchanted!" said Mr Turveydrop, rising with his high-shouldered 
bow. "Permit me!" handing chairs. "Be seated!" kissing the tips of his left 
fingers. "Overjoyed!" shutting his eyes and rolling. "My little retreat is 
made a Paradise." Recomposing himself on the sofa, like the second 
gentleman in Europe.
"Again you find us, Miss Summerson," said he, "using our little arts to 
polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us, and rewards us, by the 
condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and we 
have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of His 
Royal Highness the Prince Regent - my patron, if I may presume to say so) 
to experience that Deportment is not wholly trodden under foot by 
mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of Beauty, my dear madam."
I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch of 
snuff.
"My dear son," said Mr Turveydrop, "you have four schools this afternoon. I 
would recommend a hasty sandwich."
"Thank you, father," returned Prince, "I will be sure to be punctual. My 
dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am going to 
say?"
"Good Heaven!" exclaimed the model, pale and aghast, as Prince and Caddy, 
hand in hand, bent down before him.
"What is this? Is this lunacy! Or what is this?"
"Father," returned Prince, with great submission, "I love this young lady, 
and we are engaged."
"Engaged!" cried Mr Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa, and shutting out the 
sight with his hand. "An arrow launched at my brain, by my own child!"
"We have been engaged for some time, father," faltered Prince; "and Miss 
Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the fact to you, 
and was so very kind as to attend on the present occasion. Miss Jellyby is 
a young lady who deeply respects you, father."
Mr Turveydrop uttered a groan.
"No, pray don't! Pray don't, father," urged his son. "Miss Jellyby is a 
young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to consider 
your comfort."
Mr Turveydrop sobbed.
"No, pray don't, father!" cried his son.
"Boy," said Mr Turveydrop, "it is well that your sainted mother is spared 
this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir, strike home!"
"Pray, don't say so, father," implored Prince, in tears. "It goes to my 
heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention is to 
consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our duty - what is my 
duty is Caroline's, as we have often said together - and, with your 
approval and consent, father, we will devote ourselves to making your life 
agreeable."
"Strike home," murmured Mr Turveydrop. "Strike home!"
But he seemed to listen, I thought, too.
"My dear father," returned Prince, "we well know what little comforts you 
are accustomed to, and have a right to; and it will always be our study, 
and our pride, to provide those before anything. If you will bless us with 
your approval and consent, father, we shall not think of being married 
until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we are married, we shall 
always make you - of course - our first consideration. You must ever be the 
Head and Master here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be 
in us, if we failed to know it, or if we failed to exert ourselves in every 
possible way to please you."
Mr Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle, and came upright on the 
sofa again, with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat: a perfect model 
of parental deportment.
"My son!" said Mr Turveydrop. "My children! I cannot resist your prayer. Be 
happy!"
His benignity, as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched out 
his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and 
gratitude), was the most confusing sight I ever saw.
"My children," said Mr Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with his 
left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand gracefully on 
his hip. "My son and daughter, your happiness shall be my care. I will 
watch over you. You shall always live with me;" meaning, of course, I will 
always live with you; "this house is henceforth as much yours as mine; 
consider it your home. May you long live to share it with me!"
The power of his Deportment was such, that they really were as much 
overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon them 
for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent sacrifice in their 
favour.
"For myself, my children," said Mr Turveydrop, "I am falling into the sear 
and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the last feeble 
traces of gentlemanly Deportment may linger in this weaving and spinning 
age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society, and will show myself, as 
usual, about town. My wants are few and simple. My little apartment here, 
my few essentials for the toilet, my frugal morning meal, and my little 
dinner, will suffice. I charge your dutiful affection with the supply of 
these requirements, and I charge myself with all the rest."
They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.
"My son," said Mr Turveydrop, "for those little points in which you are 
deficient - points of Deportment which are born with a man - which may be 
improved by cultivation, but can never be originated - you may still rely 
on me. I have been faithful to my post, since the days of His Royal 
Highness the Prince Regent; and I will not desert it now. No, my son. If 
you have ever contemplated your father's poor position with a feeling of 
pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing to tarnish it. For 
yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we cannot be all alike, nor 
is it advisable that we should), work, be industrious, earn money, and 
extend the connection as much as possible."
"That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart," replied 
Prince.
"I have no doubt of it," said Mr Turveydrop. "Your qualities are not 
shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both of you, 
my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a sainted Wooman on 
whose path I had the happiness of casting, I believe, some ray of light, - 
take care of the establishment, take care of my simple wants, and bless you 
both!"
Old Mr Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the occasion, 
that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once if we were to go 
at all that day. So we took our departure, after a very loving farewell 
between Caddy and her betrothed: and during our walk she was so happy, and 
so full of old Mr Turveydrop's praises, that I would not have said a word 
in his disparagement for any consideration.
The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it was to 
let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than ever. The name 
of poor Mr Jellyby had appeared in the list of Bankrupts, but a day or two 
before; and he was shut up in the dining-room with two gentlemen, and a 
heap of blue bags, account-books, and papers, making the most desperate 
endeavours to understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite 
beyond his comprehension; for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by 
mistake, and we came upon Mr Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced 
into a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed to 
have given up the whole thing, and to be speechless and insensible.
Going upstairs to Mrs Jellyby's room (the children were all screaming in 
the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we found that lady in 
the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, reading, and sorting 
letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor. She was so 
preoccupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat looking at me 
with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.
"Ah! Miss Summerson?" she said at last. "I was thinking of something so 
different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr Jarndyce and Miss 
Clare quite well?"
I hoped in return that Mr Jellyby was quite well.
"Why, not quite, my dear," said Mrs Jellyby, in the calmest manner. "He has 
been unfortunate in his affairs, and is a little out of spirits. Happily 
for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to think about it. We 
have, at the present moment, one hundred and seventy families, Miss 
Summerson, averaging five persons in each, either gone or going to the left 
bank of the Niger."
I thought of the one family so near us, who were neither gone nor going to 
the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so placid.
"You have brought Caddy back, I see," observed Mrs Jellyby, with a glance 
at her daughter. "It has become quite a novelty to see her here. She has 
almost deserted her old employment, and in fact obliges me to employ a 
boy."
"I am sure, Ma, - " began Caddy.
"Now you know, Caddy," her mother mildly interposed, "that I do employ a 
boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your contradicting?"
"I was not going to contradict, Ma," returned Caddy. "I was only going to 
say, that surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all my life."
"I believe, my dear," said Mrs Jellyby, still opening her letters, casting 
her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she spoke, "that 
you have a business example before you in your mother. Besides. A mere 
drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of the human race, it 
would raise you high above any such idea. But you have none. I have often 
told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy."
"Not if it's Africa, Ma, I have not."
"Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged, Miss 
Summerson," said Mrs Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a moment on me, 
and considering where to put the particular letter she had just opened, 
"this would distress and disappoint me. But I have so much to think of, in 
connection with Borrioboola Gha, and it is so necessary I should 
concentrate myself, that there is my remedy, you see."
As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs Jellyby was looking far 
away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I thought it a good 
opportunity to come to the subject of my visit, and to attract Mrs 
Jellyby's attention.
"Perhaps," I began, "you will wonder what has brought me here to interrupt 
you."
"I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson," said Mrs Jellyby, pursuing 
her employment with a placid smile. "Though I wish," and she shook her 
head, "she was more interested in the Borrioboolan project."
"I have come with Caddy," said I, "because Caddy justly thinks she ought 
not to have a secret from her mother; and fancies I shall encourage and aid 
her (though I am sure I don't know how) in imparting one."
"Caddy," said Mrs Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation, and then 
serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, "you are going to tell me some 
nonsense."
Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and letting it 
dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily, said, "Ma, I am 
engaged."
"O, you ridiculous child!" observed Mrs Jellyby, with an abstracted air, as 
she looked over the despatch last opened; "what a goose you are!"
"I am engaged, Ma," sobbed Caddy, "to young Mr Turveydrop, at the Academy; 
and old Mr Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man indeed) has given his 
consent, and I beg and pray you'll give us yours, Ma, because I never could 
be happy without it. I never, never could;" sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful 
of her general complainings, and of everything but her natural affection.
"You see again, Miss Summerson," observed Mrs Jellyby, serenely, "what a 
happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am, and to have this necessity 
for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy engaged to a dancing-
master's son - mixed up with people who have no more sympathy with the 
destinies of the human race than she has herself! This, too, when Mr Quale, 
one of the first philanthropists of our time, has mentioned to me that he 
was really disposed to be interested in her!"
"Ma, I always hated and detested Mr Quale!" sobbed Caddy.
"Caddy, Caddy!" returned Mrs Jellyby, opening another letter with the 
greatest complacency. "I have no doubt you did. How could you do otherwise, 
being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he overflows! Now, if 
my public duties were not a favourite child to me, if I were not occupied 
with large measures on a vast scale, these petty details might grieve me 
very much, Miss Summerson. But can I permit the film of a silly proceeding 
on the part of Caddy (from whom I expect nothing else), to interpose 
between me and the great African continent? No. No," repeated Mrs Jellyby, 
in a calm clear voice, and with an agreeable smile as she opened more 
letters and sorted them. "No, indeed."
I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception, though I 
might have expected it, that I did not know what to say. Caddy seemed 
equally at a loss. Mrs Jellyby continued to open and sort letters; and to 
repeat occasionally, in quite a charming tone of voice, and with a smile of 
perfect composure, "No, indeed."
"I hope, Ma," sobbed poor Caddy at last, "you are not angry?"
"Oh Caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned Mrs Jellyby, "to ask 
such questions, after what I have said of the preoccupation of my mind."
"And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent, and wish us well?" said Caddy.
"You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind," said Mrs 
Jellyby; "and a degenerate child, when you might have devoted yourself to 
the great public measure. But the step is taken, and I have engaged a boy, 
and there is no more to be said. Now, pray, Caddy," said Mrs Jellyby - for 
Caddy was kissing her, "don't delay me in my work, but let me clear off 
this heavy batch of papers before the afternoon post comes in!"
I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained for a 
moment by Caddy's saying -
"You won't object to my bringing him to see you, Ma?"
"O dear me, Caddy," cried Mrs Jellyby, who had relapsed into that distant 
contemplation, "have you begun again? Bring whom?"
"Him, Ma."
"Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs Jellyby, quite weary of such little matters. "Then 
you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent Society night, or a 
Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must accommodate the visit to 
the demands upon my time. My dear Miss Summerson, it was very kind of you 
to come here to help out this silly chit. Good bye! When I tell you that I 
have fifty-eight new letters from manufacturing families anxious to 
understand the details of the Native and Coffee Cultivation question, this 
morning, I need not apologise for having very little leisure."
I was not surprised by Caddy's being in low spirits, when we went 
downstairs; or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she would 
far rather have been scolded than treated with such indifference, or by her 
confiding to me that she was so poor in clothes, that how she was ever to 
be married creditably she didn't know. I gradually cheered her up, by 
dwelling on the many things she would do for her unfortunate father, and 
for Peepy, when she had a home of her own: and finally we went downstairs 
into the damp dark kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters 
were grovelling on the stone floor, and where we had such a game of play 
with them, that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I was 
obliged to fall back on my fairy tales. From time to time, I heard loud 
voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent tumbling about 
of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was caused by poor Mr 
Jellyby's breaking away from the dining-table, and making rushes at the 
window with the intention of throwing himself into the area, whenever he 
made any new attempt to understand his affairs.
As I rode quietly home at night after the day's bustle, I thought a good 
deal of Caddy's engagement, and felt confirmed in my hopes (in spite of the 
elder Mr Turveydrop), that she would be the happier and better for it. And 
if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her and her husband ever 
finding out what the model of Deportment really was, why that was all for 
the best too, and who would wish them to be wiser? I did not wish them to 
be any wiser, and indeed was half ashamed of not entirely believing in him 
myself. And I looked up at the stars, and thought about travellers in 
distant countries and the stars they saw, and hoped I might always be so 
blest and happy as to be useful to some one in my small way.
They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were, that I 
could have sat down and cried for joy, if that had not been a method of 
making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from the lowest to the 
highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome, and spoke so cheerily, 
and was so happy to do anything for me, that I suppose there never was such 
a fortunate little creature in the world.
We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my Guardian 
drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on prose, prose, 
prosing, for a length of time. At last I got up to my own room, quite red 
to think how I had been holding forth; and then I heard a soft tap at my 
door. So I said, "Come in!" and there came in a pretty little girl, neatly 
dressed in mourning, who dropped a curtsey.
"If you please, miss," said the little girl, in a soft voice, "I am 
Charley."
"Why, so you are," said I, stooping down in astonishment, and giving her a 
kiss. "How glad am I to see you, Charley!"
"If you please, miss," pursued Charley, in the same soft voice, "I'm your 
maid."
"Charley?"
"If you please, miss, I'm a present to you, with Mr Jarndyce's love."
I sat down with my hand on Charley's neck, and looked at Charley.
"And O, miss," says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears starting 
down her dimpled cheeks, "Tom's at school, if you please, and learning so 
good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs Blinder, miss, a being took such care 
of! And Tom, he would have been at school - and Emma, she would have been 
left with Mrs Blinder - and me, I should have been here - all a deal 
sooner, miss; only Mr Jarndyce thought that Tom and Emma and me had better 
get a little used to parting first, we was so small. Don't cry, if you 
please, miss!"
"I can't help it, Charley."
"No, miss, nor I can't help it," says Charley. "And if you please, miss, Mr 
Jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me now and then. And if 
you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other once a month. And I'm 
so happy and so thankful, miss," cried Charley with a heaving heart, "and 
I'll try to be such a good maid!"
"O Charley dear, never forget who did all this!"
"No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. Nor yet Emma. It was all you, 
miss."
"I have known nothing of it. It was Mr Jarndyce, Charley."
"Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you, and that you might be 
my mistress. If you please, miss. I am a little present with his love, and 
it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to be sure to remember 
it."
Charley dried her eyes, and entered on her functions; going in her matronly 
little way about and about the room, and folding up everything she could 
lay her hands upon. Presently, Charley came creeping back to my side, and 
said:
"O don't cry, if you please, miss."
And I said again, "I can't help it, Charley."
And Charley said again, "No, miss, nor I can't help it." And so, after all, 
I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.


Chapter 24

An Appeal Case

As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have given an 
account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr Jarndyce. I doubt 
if my Guardian were altogether taken by surprise, when he received the 
representation; though it caused him much uneasiness and disappointment. He 
and Richard were often closeted together, late at night and early in the 
morning, and passed whole days in London, and had innumerable appointments 
with Mr Kenge, and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. 
While they were thus employed, my Guardian, though he underwent 
considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind, and rubbed his head 
so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right 
place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but maintained a 
steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost endeavours could only 
elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances that everything was going 
on capitally, and that it really was all right at last, our anxiety was not 
much relieved by him.
We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was made to 
the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf, as an Infant and a Ward, and I 
don't know what; and that there was a quantity of talking; and that the 
Lord Chancellor described him, in open court, as a vexatious and capricious 
infant; and that the matter was adjourned and readjourned, and referred, 
and reported on, and petitioned about, until Richard began to doubt (as he 
told us) whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a 
veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment was made 
for him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private room, and there the 
Lord Chancellor very seriously reproved him for trifling with time, and not 
knowing his mind - "a pretty good joke, I think," said Richard, "from that 
quarter!" - and at last it was settled that his application should be 
granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards, as an applicant for an 
Ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an Agent's; and 
Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent course of 
military study, and got up at five o'clock every morning to practise the 
broadsword exercise.
Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We sometimes 
heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, as being in the paper or out of the paper, 
or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken to, and it came on, 
and it went off. Richard, who was now in a Professor's house in London, was 
able to be with us less frequently than before; my Guardian still 
maintained the same reserve; and so time passed until the commission was 
obtained, and Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in 
Ireland.
He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a long 
conference with my Guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before my Guardian 
put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting, and said, "Come 
in, my dears!" We went in, and found Richard, whom we had last seen in high 
spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece, looking mortified and angry.
"Rick and I, Ada," said Mr Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind. Come, 
come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"
"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder, because you 
have been so considerate to me in all other respects, and have done me 
kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have been set right 
without you, sir."
"Well, well!" said Mr Jarndyce, "I want to set you more right with 
yourself."
"I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a fiery way, 
but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge about myself."
"I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr Jarndyce with 
the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that it's quite natural in you 
to think so, but I don't think so. I must do my duty, Rick, or you could 
never care for me in cool blood; and I hope you will always care for me, 
cool and hot."
Ada had turned so pale, that he made her sit down in his reading-chair, and 
sat beside her.
"It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have only had a 
friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are the theme. Now 
you are afraid of what's coming."
"I am not, indeed, cousin John," replied Ada, with a smile, "if it is to 
come from you."
"Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention, without 
looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear girl," putting 
his hand on hers, as it lay on the side of the easy-chair, "you recollect 
the talk we had, we four, when the little woman told me of a little love-
affair?"
"It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your kindness, 
that day, cousin John."
"I can never forget it," said Richard.
"And I can never forget it," said Ada.
"So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us to 
agree," returned my Guardian, his face irradiated by the gentleness and 
honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know that Rick has now 
chosen his profession for the last time. All that he has of certainty will 
be expended when he is fully equipped. He has exhausted his resources, and 
is bound henceforward to the tree he has planted."
"Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am quite 
content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said Richard, "is 
not all I have."
"Rick, Rick!" cried my Guardian, with a sudden terror in his manner, and in 
an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have stopped his 
ears, "for the love of God, don't found a hope or expectation on the family 
curse! Whatever you do on this side the grave, never give one lingering 
glance towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us so many years. 
Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!"
We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his lip 
and held his breath, and glanced at me, as if he felt, and knew that I felt 
too, how much he needed it.
"Ada, my dear," said Mr Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness, "these are 
strong words of advice; but I live in Bleak House, and have seen a sight 
here. Enough of that. All Richard had, to start him in the race of life, is 
ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his sake and your own, that he 
should depart from us with the understanding that there is no sort of 
contract between you. I must go further. I will be plain with you both. You 
were to confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you 
wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship."
"Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce all 
confidence in me, and that you advise Ada to do the same."
"Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."
"You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I have, I know."
"How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke of 
these things last," said Mr Jarndyce, in a cordial and encouraging manner. 
"You have not made that beginning yet; but there is a time for all things, 
and yours is not gone by - rather, it is just now fully come. Make a clear 
beginning altogether. You two (very young, my dears), are cousins. As yet, 
you are nothing more. What more may come, must come of being worked out, 
Rick; and no sooner."
"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I could have 
supposed you would be."
"My dear boy," said Mr Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I do 
anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands. Ada, 
it is better for him that he should be free, and that there should be no 
youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for her, much better; 
you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what is best for the other, if 
not what is best for yourselves."
"Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard, hastily. "It was not, when we 
opened our hearts to you. You did not say so, then."
"I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick - but I have had 
experience since."
"You mean of me, sir."
"Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr Jarndyce, kindly. "The time is not 
come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right, and I must 
not recognise it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin afresh! Bygones shall 
be bygones, and a new page turned for you to write your lives in."
Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada, but said nothing.
"I have avoided saying one word to either of you, or to Esther," said Mr 
Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as the day, and all on 
equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most earnestly entreat, you 
two, to part as you came here. Leave all else to time, truth, and 
steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do wrong; and you will have 
made me do wrong, in ever bringing you together."
A long silence succeeded.
"Cousin Richard," said Ada, then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to his 
face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is left us. 
Your mind may be quite at ease about me; for you will leave me here under 
his care, and will be sure that I can have nothing to wish for; quite sure, 
if I guide myself by his advice. I - I don't doubt, cousin Richard," said 
Ada, a little confused, "that you were very fond of me, and I - I don't 
think you will fall in love with anybody else. But I should like you to 
consider well about it, too; as I should like you to be in all things very 
happy. You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but 
I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be 
sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know 
it's for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately, and 
often talk of you with Esther, and - and perhaps you will sometimes think a 
little of me, cousin Richard. So now," said Ada, going up to him and giving 
him her trembling hand, "we are only cousins again, Richard - for the time 
perhaps - and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin whereever he goes!"
It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my 
Guardian, for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he himself 
had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But, it was 
certainly the case. I observed, with great regret, that from this hour he 
never was as free and open with Mr Jarndyce as he had been before. He had 
every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and, solely on his side, 
an estrangement began to arise between them.
In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself, and even 
his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire, while he, Mr 
Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He remembered her by fits and 
starts, even with bursts of tears; and at such times would confide to me 
the heaviest self-reproaches. But, in a few minutes he would recklessly 
conjure up some undefinable means by which they were both to be made rich 
and happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible.
It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying a 
variety of things, of which he stood in need. Of the things he would have 
bought, if he had been left to his own ways, I say nothing. He was 
perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and feelingly 
about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so much upon the 
encouragement he derived from these conversations, that I could never have 
been tired if I had tried.
There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging, to 
fence with Richard, a person who had formerly been a cavalry soldier; he 
was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing, with whom Richard 
had practised for some months. I heard so much about him, not only from 
Richard, but from my Guardian too, that I was purposely in the room, with 
my work, one morning after breakfast when he came.
"Good morning, Mr George," said my Guardian, who happened to be alone with 
me. "Mr Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss Summerson is very 
happy to see you, I know. Sit down."
He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought; and, without 
looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across his upper 
lip.
"You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr Jarndyce.
"Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit in me, sir. 
I am not at all business-like."
"Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr Jarndyce.
"Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a one."
"And what kind of a shot, and what kind of a swordsman, do you make of Mr 
Carstone?" said my Guardian.
"Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest, and 
looking very large. "If Mr Carstone was to give his full mind to it, he 
would come out very good."
"But he don't, I suppose?" said my Guardian.
"He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps he 
has something else upon it - some young lady, perhaps." His bright dark 
eyes glanced at me for the first time.
"He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr George," said I, laughing, 
"though you seem to suspect me."
He reddened a little through his brown, and made me a trooper's bow. "No 
offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the Roughs."
"Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."
If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now, in three or four 
quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said to my Guardian, 
with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the honour to mention the 
young lady's name - "
"Miss Summerson."
"Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.
"Do you know the name?" I asked.
"No, miss. To my knowledge, I never heard it. I thought I had seen you 
somewhere."
"I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at him; and 
there was something so genuine in his speech and manner, that I was glad of 
the opportunity. "I remember faces very well."
"So do I, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fulness of his dark 
eyes and broad forehead. "Humph! What set me off, now, upon that!"
His once more reddening through his brown, and being disconcerted by his 
efforts to remember the association, brought my Guardian to his relief.
"Have you many pupils, Mr George?"
"They vary in their number, sir. Mostly, they're but a small lot to live 
by."
"And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?"
"All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to 'prentices. I 
have had French women come, before now, and show themselves dabs at pistol-
shooting. Mad people out of number, of course - but they go everywhere, 
where the doors stand open."
"People don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their practice 
with live targets, I hope?" said my Guardian, smiling.
"Not much of that, sir, though that has happened. Mostly they come for 
skill - or idleness. Six of one, and half a dozen of the other. I beg your 
pardon," said Mr George, sitting stiffly upright, and squaring an elbow on 
each knee, "but I believe you're a Chancery suitor, if I have heard 
correct?"
"I am sorry to say I am."
"I have had one of your compatriots in my time, sir."
"A Chancery suitor?" returned my Guardian. "How was that?"
"Why, the man was so badgered, and worried, and tortured, by being knocked 
about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said Mr George, "that 
he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of taking aim at 
anybody; but he was in that condition of resentment and violence, that he 
would come and pay for fifty shots, and fire away till he was red hot. One 
day I said to him when there was nobody by, and he had been talking to me 
angrily about his wrongs, 'If this practice is a safety-valve, comrade, 
well and good; but I don't altogether like your being so bent upon it, in 
your present state of mind; I'd rather you took to something else.' I was 
on my guard for a blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very 
good part, and left off directly. We shook hands, and struck up a sort of 
friendship."
"What was that man?" asked my Guardian, in a new tone of interest.
"Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer, before they made a 
baited bull of him," said Mr George.
"Was his name Gridley?"
"It was, sir."
Mr George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me, as my 
Guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the coincidence; and 
I therefore explained to him how we knew the name. He made me another of 
his soldierly bows, in acknowledgment of what he called my condescension.
"I don't know," he said, as he looked at me, "what it is that sets me off 
again - but - bosh, what's my head running against!" He passed one of his 
heavy hands over his crisp dark hair, as if to sweep the broken thoughts 
out of his mind; and sat a little forward, with one arm akimbo and the 
other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at the ground.
"I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley into 
new troubles, and that he is hiding," said my guardian.
"So I am told, sir," returned Mr George, still musing and looking on the 
ground. "So I am told."
"You don't know where?"
"No, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out of his 
reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out soon, I 
expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good many years, but 
it will tell all of a sudden at last."
Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr George rose, made me 
another of his soldierly bows, wished my Guardian a good day, and strode 
heavily out of the room.
This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure. We had 
no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing early in the 
afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when he was to go to 
Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being again expected to come 
on that day, Richard proposed to me that we should go down to the Court and 
hear what passed. As it was his last day, and he was eager to go, and I had 
never been there, I gave my consent, and we walked down to Westminster, 
where the Court was then sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements 
concerning the letters that Richard was to write to me, and the letters 
that I was to write to him; and with a great many hopeful projects. My 
Guardian knew where we were going, and therefore was not with us.
When we came to the Court, there was the Lord Chancellor - the same whom I 
had seen in his private room in Lincoln's Inn - sitting in great state and 
gravity, on the bench; with the mace and seals on a red table below him, 
and an immense flat nosegay, like a little garden, which scented the whole 
Court. Below the table, again, was a long row of solicitors, with bundles 
of papers on the matting at their feet; and then there were the gentlemen 
of the bar in wigs and gowns - some awake and some asleep, and one talking, 
and nobody paying much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor 
leaned back in his very easy chair, with his elbow on the cushioned arm, 
and his forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present, 
dozed; some read the newspapers; some walked about, or whispered in groups: 
all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very 
unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.
To see everything going on so smoothly, and to think of the roughness of 
the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and ceremony, and 
to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it represented; to 
consider that, while the sickness of hope deferred was raging in so many 
hearts, this polite show went calmly on from day to day, and year to year, 
in such good order and composure; to behold the Lord Chancellor, and the 
whole array of practitioners under him, looking at one another and at the 
spectators, as if nobody had ever heard that all over England the name in 
which they were assembled was a bitter jest: was held in universal horror, 
contempt, and indignation; was known for something so flagrant and bad, 
that little short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one: 
this was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of 
it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I sat 
where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me; but there 
seemed to be no reality in the whole scene, except poor little Miss Flite, 
the mad-woman, standing on a bench, and nodding at it.
Miss Flite soon espied us, and came to where we sat. She gave me a gracious 
welcome to her domain, and indicated, with much gratification and pride, 
its principal attractions. Mr Kenge also came to speak to us, and did the 
honours of the place in much the same way; with the bland modesty of a 
proprietor. It was not a very good day for a visit, he said; he would have 
preferred the first day of term; but it was imposing, it was imposing.
When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress - if I may 
use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connection - seemed to die out of its 
own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to come, to any 
result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of papers from his 
desk to the gentleman below him, and somebody said "Jarndyce and Jarndyce." 
Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the 
bystanders, and a bringing in of great heaps, and piles, and bags and bags-
ful of papers.
I think it came on "for further directions," - about some bill of costs, to 
the best of my understanding, which was confused enough. But I counted 
twenty-three gentlemen in wigs, who said they were "in it;" and none of 
them appeared to understand it much better than I. They chatted about it 
with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and explained among themselves, 
and some of them said it was this way, and some of them said it was that 
way, and some of them jocosely proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, 
and there was more buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a 
state of idle entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. 
After an hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut 
short, it was "referred back for the present," as Mr Kenge said, and the 
papers were bundled up again, before the clerks had finished bringing them 
in.
I glanced at Richard, on the termination of these hopeless proceedings, and 
was shocked so see the worn look of his handsome young face. "It can't last 
for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!" was all he said.
I had seen Mr Guppy bringing in papers, and arranging them for Mr Kenge; 
and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered me desirous to 
get out of the Court. Richard had given me his arm and was taking me away, 
when Mr Guppy came up.
"I beg your pardon, Mr Carstone," said he in a whisper, "and Miss 
Summerson's also; but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who knows her, 
and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." As he spoke, I saw 
before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from my remembrance, Mrs 
Rachael of my godmother's house.
"How do you do, Esther?" said she. "Do you recollect me?"
I gave her my hand, and told her yes, and that she was very little altered.
"I wonder you remember those times, Esther," she returned with her old 
asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and glad you 
are not too proud to know me." But, indeed she seemed disappointed that I 
was not.
"Proud, Mrs Rachael!" I remonstrated.
"I am married, Esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am Mrs 
Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you'll do well."
Mr Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a sigh in 
my ear, and elbowed his own and Mrs Rachael's way through the confused 
little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we were in the midst 
of, and which the change in the business had brought together. Richard and 
I were making our way through it, and I was yet in the first chill of the 
late unexpected recognition, when I saw, coming towards us, but not seeing 
us, no less a person than Mr George. He made nothing of the people about 
him as he tramped on, staring over their heads into the body of the Court.
"George!" said Richard, as I called his attention to him.
"You are well met, sir," he returned. "And you, miss. Could you point a 
person out for me, I want? I don't understand these places."
Turning as he spoke, and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we were 
out of the press, in a corner behind a great red curtain.
"There's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that - "
I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me; having kept beside me 
all the time, and having called the attention of several of her legal 
acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion), by whispering in 
their ears, "Hush! Fitz-Jarndyce on my left!"
"Hem!" said Mr George. "You remember, miss, that we passed some 
conversation on a certain man this morning? - Gridley," in a low whisper 
behind his hand.
"Yes," said I.
"He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his authority. He 
is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her. He says they can 
feel for one another, and she has been almost as good as a friend to him 
here. I came down to look for her; for when I sat by Gridley this 
afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the muffled drums."
"Shall I tell her?" said I.
"Would you be so good?" he returned, with a glance of something like 
apprehension at Miss Flite. "It's a Providence I met you, miss; I doubt if 
I should have known how to get on with that lady." And he put one hand in 
his breast, and stood upright in a martial attitude, as I informed little 
Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind errand.
"My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!" she 
exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the greatest 
pleasure."
"He is living concealed at Mr George's," said I. "Hush! This is Mr George."
"In - deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour! A 
military man, my dear. You know, a perfect General!" she whispered to me.
Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a mark 
of her respect for the army, and to courtesy so very often, that it was no 
easy matter to get her out of the Court. When this was at last done, and 
addressing Mr George, as "General," she gave him her arm to the great 
entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was so discomposed, 
and begged me so respectfully "not to desert him," that I could not make up 
my mind to do it; especially as Miss Flite was always tractable with me, 
and as she too said, "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear, you will accompany us, of 
course." As Richard seemed quite willing, and even anxious, that we should 
see them safely to their destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr George 
informed us that Gridley's mind had run on Mr Jarndyce all the afternoon, 
after hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in 
pencil to my Guardian to say where we were gone, and why. Mr George sealed 
it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and we sent it 
off by a ticket-porter.
We then took a hackney coach, and drove away to the neighbourhood of 
Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr George 
apologised, and soon came to the Shooting Gallery, the door of which was 
closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to the door-post, 
a very respectable old gentleman, with grey hair, wearing spectacles, and 
dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a broad-brimmed hat, and 
carrying a large gold-headed cane, addressed him.
"I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he; but is this George's Shooting 
Gallery?"
"It is, sir," returned Mr George, glancing up at the great letters in which 
that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.
"Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes. "Thank you. 
Have you rung the bell?"
"My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."
"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then I am here 
as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"
"No, sir. You have the advantage of me."
"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man who came 
for me. I am a physician, and was requested - five minutes ago - to come 
and visit a sick man, at George's Shooting Gallery."
"The muffled drums," said Mr George, turning to Richard and me, and gravely 
shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you please to walk in."
The door being at that moment opened, by a very singular-looking little man 
in a green baize cap and apron, whose face, and hands, and dress, were 
blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into a large building 
with bare brick walls; where there were targets, and guns, and swords, and 
other things of that kind. When we had all arrived here, the physician 
stopped, and, taking off his hat, appeared to vanish by magic, and to leave 
another and quite a different man in his place.
"Now look'ee here, George," said the man turning quickly round upon him, 
and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You know me, and I 
know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man of the world. My name's 
Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a peace-warrant against Gridley. 
You have kept him out of the way a long time, and you have been artful in 
it, and it does you credit."
Mr George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.
"Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a sensible 
man, and a well-conducted man; that's what you are, beyond a doubt. And 
mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character, because you have 
served your country, and you know that when duty calls we must obey. 
Consequently, you're very far from wanting to give trouble. If I required 
assistance, you'd assist me; that's what you'd do. Phil Squod, don't you go 
a-sidling round the gallery like that;" the dirty little man was shuffling 
about with his shoulder against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in 
a manner that looked threatening; "because I know you, and I won't have 
it."
"Phil!" said Mr George.
"Yes, Guv'ner."
"Be quiet."
The little man, with a low growl, stood still.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr Bucket, "you'll excuse anything that may 
appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector Bucket of the 
Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where my man is, 
because I was on the roof last night, and saw him through the skylight, and 
you along with him. He is in there, you know," pointing; "that's where he 
is - on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and I must tell my man to consider 
himself in custody; but, you know me, and you know I don't want to take any 
uncomfortable measures. You give me your word, as from one man to another 
(and an old soldier, mind you, likewise!), that it's honourable between us 
two, and I'll accommodate you to the utmost of my power."
"I give it," was the reply. "But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr Bucket."
"Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr Bucket, tapping him on his broad 
breast again, and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it wasn't handsome 
in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally good-tempered to me, old 
boy! Old William Tell! Old Shaw, the Life Guardsman! Why, he's a model of 
the whole British Army in himself, ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-
pun' note to be such a figure of a man."
The affair being brought to this head, Mr George, after a little 
consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called him), 
taking Miss Flite with him. Mr Bucket agreeing, they went away to the 
further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by a table 
covered with guns. Mr Bucket took this opportunity of entering into a light 
conversation: asking me if I were afraid of firearms, as most young ladies 
were; asking Richard if he were a good shot; asking Phil Squod which he 
considered the best of those rifles, and what it might be worth first-hand; 
telling him, in return, that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, 
for he was naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman; and 
making himself generally agreeable.
After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and Richard 
and I were going quietly away, when Mr George came after us. He said that 
if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take a visit from us 
very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips, when the bell was rung, 
and my Guardian appeared; "on the chance," he slightly observed, "of being 
able to do any little thing for a poor fellow involved in the same 
misfortune as himself." We all four went back together, and went into the 
place where Gridley was.
It was a bare room partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted wood. As 
the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high, and only enclosed 
the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery roof were overhead, 
and the skylight, through which Mr Bucket had looked down. The sun was low -
 near setting - and its light came redly in above, without descending to 
the ground. Upon a plain canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire - 
dressed much as we had seen him last, but so changed, that at first I 
recognised no likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.
He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on his 
grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were covered with 
manuscript papers, and with worn pens, and a medley of such tokens. 
Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little mad woman were 
side by side, and, as it were, alone. She sat on a chair holding his hand, 
and none of us went close to them.
His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his 
strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had at 
last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form and colour, 
is such a picture of it, as he was of the man from Shropshire whom we had 
spoken with before.
He inclined his head to Richard and me, and spoke to my Guardian.
"Mr Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not long to be 
seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You are a good man, 
superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you."
They shook hands earnestly, and my Guardian said some words of comfort to 
him.
"It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not have 
liked to see you, if this had been the first time of our meeting. But, you 
know, I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my single hand 
against them all, you know I told them the truth to the last, and told them 
what they were, and what they had done to me; so I don't mind your seeing 
me, this wreck."
"You have been courageous with them, many and many a time," returned my 
Guardian.
"Sir, I have been;" with a faint smile. "I told you what would come of it, 
when I ceased to be so; and, see here! Look at us! - look at us!" He drew 
the hand Miss Flite held, through her arm, and brought her something nearer 
to him.
"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and 
hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes 
natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years, 
between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery 
has not broken."
"Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite, in tears. "Accept my 
blessing!"
"I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr Jarndyce. 
I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I could, and would, 
charge them with being the mockery they were, until I died of some bodily 
disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have been wearing out, I don't 
know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I hope they may never come to hear 
of it. I hope everybody here will lead them to believe that I died defying 
them, consistently and perseveringly, as I did through so many years."
Here Mr Bucket, who was sitting in a corner, by the door, good-naturedly 
offered such consolation as he could administer.
"Come, come!" he said, from his corner. "Don't go on in that way, Mr 
Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low, 
sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper with the whole 
round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score of warrants 
yet, if I have luck."
He only shook his head.
"Don't shake your head," said Mr Bucket. "Nod it; that't what I want to see 
you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had together! Haven't 
I seen you in the Fleet over and over again, for contempt? Haven't I came 
into Court twentwenty afternoons, for no other purpose than to see you pin 
the Chancellor like a bulldog? Don't you remember, when you first began to 
threaten the lawyers, and the peace was sworn against you two or three 
times a week? Ask the little old lady there; she has been always present. 
Hold up, Mr Gridley, hold up, sir!"
"What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.
"I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his 
encouragement, he pursued aloud:
"Worn out, Mr Gridley? After dodging me for all these weeks, and forcing me 
to climb the roof here like a Tom Cat, and to come to see you as a Doctor? 
That ain't like being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you 
want. You want excitement, you know, to keep you up; that's what you want. 
You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I couldn't myself. Very 
well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr Tulkinghorn of Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since. What do you say to 
coming along with me, upon this warrant, and having a good angry argument 
before the magistrates? It'll do you good; it'll freshen you up, and get 
you into training for another turn at the Chancellor. Give in? Why I am 
surprised to hear a man of your energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do 
that. You're half the fun of the fair, in the Court of Chancery. George, 
you lend Mr Gridley a hand, and let's see now whether he won't be better up 
than down."
"He is very weak," said the trooper, in a low voice.
"Is he?" returned Bucket, anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I don't 
like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would cheer him up 
more than anything if I could make him a little waxy with me. He's welcome 
to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I shall never take advantage 
of it."
The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my ears.
"O no, Gridley!" she cried, as he fell heavily and calmly back from before 
her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"
Then the sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and 
the shadow had crept upward. But, to me, the shadow of that pair, one 
living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure, than the darkness 
of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell words I heard it 
echoed.
"Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the 
living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me, 
and I am fit for. There is a tie of many suffering years between us two, 
and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken!"


Chapter 25

Mrs Snagsby Sees It All

There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black suspicion 
hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's Courtiers are in their 
usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but, Mr Snagsby is changed, 
and his little woman knows it.

For, Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing 
themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr Snagsby's 
imagination; and Mr Bucket drives; and the passengers are Jo and Mr 
Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls through the Law Stationery 
business at wild speed, all round the clock. Even in the little front 
kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles away at a smoking pace 
from the dinner table, when Mr Snagsby pauses in carving the first slice of 
the leg of mutton baked with potatoes, and stares at the kitchen wall.
Mr Snagsby can not make out what it is that he has had to do with. 
Something is wrong, somewhere; but what something, what may come of it, to 
whom, when, and from which unthought-of and unheard-of quarter, is the 
puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the 
stars and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr 
Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by 
that best and closest of his customers, whom all the Inns of Court, and 
Chancery Lane, and all the legal neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his 
remembrance of Detective Mr Bucket with his forefinger, and his 
confidential manner impossible to be evaded or declined; persuade him that 
he is a party to some dangerous secret, without knowing what it is. And it 
is the fearful peculiarity of this condition, that, at any hour of his 
daily life, at any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at 
any entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may 
take air and fire, explode, and blow up - Mr Bucket only knows whom.
For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many men 
unknown do), and says, "Is Mr Snagsby in?" or words to that innocent 
effect, Mr Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty breast. He undergoes 
so much from such inquiries, that when they are made by boys he revenges 
himself by flipping at their ears over the counter, and asking the young 
dogs what they meant by it, and why they can't speak out at once? More 
impracticable men and boys persist in walking into Mr Snagsby's sleep, and 
terrifying him with unaccountable questions; so that often, when the cock 
at the little dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way 
about the morning, Mr Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with 
his little woman shaking him, and saying, "What's the matter with the man!"
The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To know 
that he is always keeping a secret from her; that he has, under all 
circumstances, to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth, which her 
sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head; gives Mr Snagsby, in her 
dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who has a reservation from 
his master, and will look anywhere rather than meet his eye.
These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not lost 
upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on his mind!" And 
thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. From suspicion to 
jealousy, Mrs Snagsby finds the road as natural and short as from Cook's 
Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor 
Street. Once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very 
active and nimble in Mrs Snagsby's breast - prompting her to nocturnal 
examinations of Mr Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr Snagsby's 
letters; to private researches in the Day Book and Ledger, till, cash-box, 
and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a 
general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.
Mrs Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert, that the house becomes ghostly 
with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices think somebody 
may have been murdered there, in bygone times. Guster holds certain loose 
atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where they were found floating 
among the orphans), that there is buried money underneath the cellar, 
guarded by an old man with a white beard, who cannot get out for seven 
thousand years, because he said the Lord's Prayer backwards.
"Who was Nimrod?" Mrs Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. "Who was that 
lady - that creature? And who is that boy?" Now, Nimrod being as dead as 
the mighty hunter whose name Mrs Snagsby has appropriated, and the lady 
being unproducible, she directs her mental eye, for the present, with 
redoubled vigilance, to the boy. "And who," quoth Mrs Snagsby, for the 
thousand and first time, "is that boy? Who is that -!" And there Mrs 
Snagsby is seized with an inspiration.
He has no respect for Mr Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn't have, of 
course. Naturally he wouldn't under those contagious circumstances. He was 
invited and appointed by Mr Chadband - why, Mrs Snagsby heard it herself 
with her own ears! - to come back, and be told where he was to go, to be 
addressed by Mr Chadband; and he never came! Why did he never come? Because 
he was told not to come. Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs Snagsby 
sees it all.
But happily (and Mrs Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly smiles), 
that boy was met by Mr Chadband yesterday in the streets; and that boy, as 
affording a subject which Mr Chadband desires to improve for the spiritual 
delight of a select congregation, was seized by Mr Chadband and threatened 
with being delivered over to the police, unless he showed the reverend 
gentleman where he lived, and unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an 
undertaking to appear in Cook's Court tomorrow night - "to - mor - row - 
night," Mrs Snagsby repeats for mere emphasis, with another tight smile, 
and another tight shake of her head; and tomorrow night that boy will be 
here, and tomorrow night Mrs Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon 
some one else; and O you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says 
Mrs Snagsby, with haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind me!
Mrs Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her purpose 
quietly, and keeps her counsel. Tomorrow comes, the savoury preparations 
for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes, Mr Snagsby in his black 
coat; come, the Chadbands; come (when the gorging vessel is replete), the 
'prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes, at last, with his slouching 
head, and his shuffle backward, and his shuffle forward, and his shuffle to 
the right, and his shuffle to the left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy 
hand, which he picks as if it were some mangy bird he had caught, and was 
plucking before eating raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr Chadband is 
to improve.
Mrs Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo, as he is brought into the 
little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr Snagsby the moment he comes 
in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr Snagsby? Mr Snagsby looks at him. Why 
should he do that, but that Mrs Snagsby sees it all? Why else should that 
look pass between them, why else should Mr Snagsby be confused, and cough a 
signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear as crystal that Mr Snagsby is 
that boy's father.
"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily exudations 
from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My friends, why with us? 
Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us, because it must be 
for us; because it is not hardening, because it is softening; because it 
does not make war like the hawk, but comes home untoe us like the dove. 
Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My human boy, come forward!"
Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr Chadband lays the same on Jo's arm, and 
considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his reverend friend's 
intentions, and not at all clear but that something practical and painful 
is going to be done to him, mutters, "You let me alone. I never said 
nothink to you. You let me alone."
"No, my young friend," says Chadband, smoothly, "I will not let you alone. 
And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a toiler and a 
moiler, because you are delivered over untoe me, and are become as a 
precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so employ this 
instrument as to use it toe your advantage, toe your profit, toe your gain, 
toe your welfare, toe your enrichment! My young friend, sit upon this 
stool."
Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman wants 
to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms, and is got into the 
required position with great difficulty, and every possible manifestation 
of reluctance.
When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr Chadband, retiring behind 
the table, holds up his bear's-paw, and says, "My friends!" This is the 
signal for a general settlement of the audience. The 'prentices giggle 
internally, and nudge each other. Guster falls into a staring and vacant 
state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr Chadband and pity for the 
friendless outcast whose condition touches her nearly. Mrs Snagsby silently 
lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire, 
and warms her knees: finding that sensation favourable to the reception of 
eloquence.
It happens that Mr Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member of his 
congregation with his eye, and fatly arguing his points with that 
particular person; who is understood to be expected to be moved to an 
occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of inward 
working; which expression of inward working, being echoed by some elderly 
lady in the next pew, and so communicated, like a game of forfeits, through 
a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of 
parliamentary cheering, and gets Mr Chadband's steam up. From mere force of 
habit, Mr Chadband in saying "my friends!" has rested his eye on Mr 
Snagsby; and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer, already 
sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of his discourse.
"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and a 
Heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's, and a mover-on upon the 
surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends," and Mr Chadband, 
untwisting the point with his dirty thumbnail, bestows an oily smile on Mr 
Snagsby, signifying that he will throw him an argumentative back-fall 
presently if he be not already down, "a brother and a boy. Devoid of 
parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold 
and silver, and of precious stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is 
devoid of these possessions? Why? Why is he?" Mr Chadband states the 
question as if he were propounding an entirely new riddle, of much 
ingenuity and merit, to Mr Snagsby, and entreating him not to give it up.
Mr Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received just now 
from his little woman - at about the period when Mr Chadband mentioned the 
word parents - is tempted into modestly remarking, "I don't know, I'm sure, 
sir." On which interruption, Mrs Chadband glares, and Mrs Snagsby says, 
"For shame!"
"I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my friends? I 
fear not, though I fain would hope so - "
("Ah - h!" from Mrs Snagsby.)
"Which says, I don't know. Then I will tell you why. I say this brother, 
present here among us, is devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of 
flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and of precious stones, 
because he is devoid of the light that shines in upon some of us. What is 
that light? What is it? I ask you what is that light?"
Mr Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr Snagsby is not to be 
lured on to his destruction again. Mr Chadband, leaning forward over the 
table, pierces what he has got to follow, directly into Mr Snagsby, with 
the thumbnail already mentioned.
"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon of 
moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth."
Mr Chadband draws himself up again, and looks triumphantly at Mr Snagsby, 
as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.
"Of Terewth," says Mr Chadband, hitting him again. "Say not to me that it 
is not the lamp of lamps. I say to you, it is. I say to you, a million of 
times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will proclaim it to you, 
whether you like it or not; nay, that the less you like it, the more I will 
proclaim it to you. With a speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear 
yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be 
battered, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed."
The present effect of this flight of oratory - much admired for its general 
power by Mr Chadband's followers - being not only to make Mr Chadband 
unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr Snagsby in the light of 
a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of brass and a heart of 
adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet more disconcerted; and is 
in a very advanced state of low spirits and false position, when Mr 
Chadband accidentally finishes him.
"My friends," he resumes, after dabbing his fat head for some time - and it 
smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket-handkerchief at 
it, which smokes, too, after every dab - "to pursue the subject we are 
endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love 
inquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. For, my young 
friends," suddenly addressing the 'prentices and Guster, to their 
consternation, "if I am told by the doctor that calomel or castor-oil is 
good for me, I may naturally ask what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I 
may wish to be informed of that, before I dose myself with either or with 
both. Now, my young friends, what is this Terewth, then? Firstly (in a 
spirit of love), what is the common sort of Terewth - the working clothes - 
the every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?"
("Ah - h!" from Mrs Snagsby.)
"Is it suppression?"
(A shiver in the negative from Mrs Snagsby.)
"Is it reservation?"
(A shake of the head from Mrs Snagsby - very long and very tight.)
"No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names belongs to 
it. When this young Heathen now among us - who is now - , my friends, 
asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set upon his eyelids; 
but do not wake him, for it is right that I should have to wrestle, and to 
combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for his sake - when this young 
hardened Heathen told us a story of a Cock, and of a Bull, and of a lady, 
and of a sovereign, was that the Terewth? No. Or, if it was partly, was it 
wholly, and entirely? No, my friends, no!"
If Mr Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look, as it enters at his 
eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole tenement, he were 
other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.
"Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level of their 
comprehension, with a very obtrusive demonstration, in his greasily meek 
smile, of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose, "if the master of 
this house was to go forth into the city and there see an eel, and was to 
come back, and was to call untoe him the mistress of this house, and was to 
say, 'Sarah, rejoice with me, for I have seen an elephant!' would that be 
Terewth?"
Mrs Snagsby in tears.
"Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and returning 
said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,' would that be 
Terewth?"
Mrs Snagsby sobbing loudly.
"Or put it, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, stimulated by the sound, 
"that the unnatural parents of this slumbering Heathen - for parents he 
had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt - after casting him forth to the 
wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the young gazelles, and the 
serpents, went back to their dwellings and had their pipes, and their pots, 
and their flutings and their dancings, and their malt liquors, and their 
butcher's meat and poultry, would that be Terewth!"
Mrs Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms; not an 
unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's Court re-
echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she has to be 
carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After unspeakable 
suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced, by 
expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though much exhausted; in which 
state of affairs Mr Snagsby, trampled and crushed in the piano-forte 
removal, and extremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind 
the door in the drawing-room.
All this time, Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever 
picking his cap, and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them out 
with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to be an 
unimprovable reprobate, and that it's no good his trying to keep awake, for 
he won't never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that there is a history 
so interesting and affecting even to minds as near the brutes as thine, 
recording deeds done on this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, 
removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple 
reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being 
eloquent enough without their modest aid - it might hold thee awake, and 
thou might learn from it yet!
Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers, and the Reverend Chadband, 
are all one to him - except that he knows the Reverend Chadband, and would 
rather run away from him for an hour than hear him talk for five minutes. 
"It an't no good my waiting here no longer," thinks Jo. "Mr Snagsby an't a 
going to say nothink to me tonight." And downstairs he shuffles.
But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the hand-rail of the 
kitchen stairs, and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same having 
been induced by Mrs Snagsby's screaming. She has her own supper of bread 
and cheese to hand to Jo; with whom she ventures to interchange a word or 
so, for the first time.
"Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster.
"Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.
"Are you hungry?"
"Jist!" says Jo.
"What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"
Jo stops in the middle of a bite, and looks petrified. For this orphan 
charge of the Christian Saint whose shrine was at Tooting, has patted him 
on the shoulder; and it is the first time in his life that any decent hand 
has been so laid upon him.
"I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo.
"No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms 
favourable to the fit, when she seems to take alarm at something, and 
vanishes down the stairs.
"Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly, as the boy lingers on the step.
"Here I am, Mr Snagsby."
"I didn't know you were gone - there's another half-crown, Jo. It was quite 
right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when we were out 
together. It would breed trouble. You can't be too quiet, Jo."
"I am fly, master!"
And so, good night.
A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer to the 
room he came from, and glides higher up. And henceforth he begins, go where 
he will, to be attended by another shadow than his own, hardly less 
constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his own. And into whatsoever 
atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may pass, let all concerned in the 
secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs Snagsby is there too - bone of his 
bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of his shadow.


Chapter 26

Sharpshooters

Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the 
neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get 
out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, 
being birds of night who roost when the sun is high, and are wide awake and 
keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and curtain, in 
upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false 
hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of 
brigands lie in their first sleep. Gentlemen of the green baize road who 
could discourse, from personal experience, of foreign galleys, and home 
treadmills; spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness 
and miserable fear, broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, 
shufflers, swindlers, and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the 
branding-iron, beneath their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them 
than was in Nero, and more crime than is in Newgate. For, howsoever bad the 
devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both) he 
is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in 
his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a 
game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory 
notes, than in any other form he wears. And in such form Mr Bucket shall 
find him, when he will, pervading the tributary channels of Leicester 
Square.
But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr George 
of the Shooting Gallery, and his Familiar. They arise, roll up and stow 
away their mattresses. Mr George, having shaved himself before a looking-
glass of minute proportions, then marches out, bare-headed and bare-
chested, to the Pump, in the little yard, and anon comes back shining with 
yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and exceedingly cold water. As he 
rubs himself upon a large jack-towel, blowing like a military sort of diver 
just come up: his crisp hair curling tighter and tighter on his sunburnt 
temples, the more he rubs it, so that it looks as if it never could be 
loosened by any less coercive instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb -
 as he rubs, and puffs, and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side 
to side, the more conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with 
his body well bent forward, to keep the wet from his martial legs - Phil, 
on his knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for 
him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation, for one day, to take 
in the superfluous health his master throws off.
When Mr George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two hard 
brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil, shouldering his way 
round the gallery in the act of sweeping it, winks with sympathy. This 
chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr George's toilette is soon 
performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and marches up and down smoking, 
as his custom is, while Phil, raising a powerful odour of hot rolls and 
coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes gravely, and marches in slow time. 
Perhaps this morning's pipe is devoted to the memory of Gridley in his 
grave.
"And so, Phil," says George of the Shooting Gallery, after several turns in 
silence; "you were dreaming of the country last night?"
Phil, by the bye, said as much in a tone of surprise, as he scrambled out 
of bed.
"Yes, guv'ner."
"What was it like?"
"I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," says Phil, considering.
"How did you know it was the country?"
"On accounts of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil, 
after further consideration.
"What were the swans doing on the grass?"
"They was a eating of it, I expect," says Phil.
The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of 
breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being limited to 
the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for two, and the 
broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty grate; but as Phil 
has to sidle round a considerable part of the gallery for every object he 
wants, and never brings two objects at once, it takes time under the 
circumstances. At length the breakfast is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr 
George knocks the ashes out of his pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself 
in the chimney corner, and sits down to the meal. When he has helped 
himself, Phil follows suit; sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong 
table, and taking his plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide 
his blackened hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.
"The country," says Mr George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I suppose 
you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"
"I see the marshes once," says Phil, contentedly eating his breakfast.
"What marshes?"
"The marshes, commander," returns Phil.
"Where are they?"
"I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner. They was 
flat. And miste."
Governor and Commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of 
the same respect and deference, and applicable to nobody but Mr George.
"I was born in the country, Phil."
"Was you indeed, commander?"
"Yes. And bred there."
Phil elevated his one eyebrow, and, after respectfully staring at his 
master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring 
at him.
"There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr George. "Not many an 
English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many a tree that I couldn't 
climb yet, if I was put to it. I was a real country boy once. My good 
mother lived in the country."
"She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.
"Ay! and not so old either, five-and-thirty years ago," says Mr George. 
"But I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright as me, and near 
as broad across the shoulders."
"Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.
"No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the trooper. "What 
set me on about country boys, and runaways and good for nothings? You, to 
be sure! So you never clapped your eyes upon the country - marshes and 
dreams excepted. Eh?"
Phil shakes his head.
"Do you want to see it?"
"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.
"The town's enough for you, eh?"
"Why you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with anythink 
else, and I doubt if I ain't a getting too old to take to novelties."
"How old are you, Phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his 
smoking saucer to his lips.
"I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be eighty. Nor yet 
eighteen. It's betwixt 'em somewheres."
Mr George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting the contents, is 
laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil" - when he stops, seeing 
that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.
"I was just eight," says Phil, "agreeable to the parish calculation, when I 
went with the tinker. I was sent on an errand, and I see him a sitting 
under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery comfortable, and he 
says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my man?' I says 'Yes,' and him 
and me and the fire goes home to Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool 
Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day come round 
again, I says to myself, 'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' 
April Fool Day after that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight 
in it.' In course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a 
eight in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me; but this is 
how I always know there's a eight in it."
"Ah;" says Mr George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the tinker?"
"Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him - in a 
glass case, I have heerd," Phil replies mysteriously.
"By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?"
"Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn't much of a 
beat - round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld, and there -
 poor neighbourhood, where they use up the kettles till they're past 
mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and lodge at our place; 
that was the best part of my master's earnings. But they didn't come to me. 
I warn't like him. He could sing 'em a good song. I couldn't! He could play 
'em a tune on any sort of pot you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I 
never could do nothing with a pot but mend it or bile it - never had a note 
of music in me. Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained 
of me."
"They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd, Phil!" says 
the trooper, with a pleasant smile.
"No, guv'ner," returns Phil, shaking his head. "No, I shouldn't. I was 
passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to boast of 
then: but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I was young, and 
spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and swallering the smoke; 
and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in the way of running against hot 
metal, and marking myself by sich means; and what with having turn-ups with 
the tinker as I got older, almost whenever he was too far gone in drink - 
which was almost always - my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that 
time. As to since; what with a dozen years in a dark forge, where the men 
was given to larking; and what with being scorched in a accident at a 
gasworks; and what with being blowed out of winder, case-filling at the 
firework business; I am ugly enough to be made a show on!"
Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied manner, 
Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking it, he says:
"It was after the case-filling blow-up, when I first see you, commander. 
You remember?"
"I remember, Phil. You were walking in the sun."
"Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall - "
"True, Phil - shouldering your way on - "
"In a nightcap!" exclaimed Phil, excited.
"In a nightcap - "
"And hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries Phil, still more excited.
"With a couple of sticks. When - "
"When you stops, you know," cries Phil, putting down his cup and saucer, 
and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to me, 'What, 
comrade! You have been in the wars!' I didn't say much to you, commander, 
then, for I was took by surprise, that a person so strong and healthy and 
bold as you was, should stop to speak to such a limping bag of bones as I 
was. But you says to me, says you, delivering it out of your chest as 
hearty as possible, so that it was like a glass of something hot, 'What 
accident have you met with? You have been badly hurt. What's amiss, old 
boy? Cheer up, and tell us about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I 
says as much to you, you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more 
to me, and here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!" cries Phil, who has 
started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. "If a mark's 
wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at 
me. They can't spoil my beauty. I'm all right. Come on! If they want a man 
to box at, let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me well about the head. I don't 
mind! If they want a light-weight, to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, 
Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em throw me. They won't hurt me. I have 
been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!"
With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered, and accompanied by 
action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil Squod 
shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking 
off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to 
express devotion to his service. He then begins to clear away the 
breakfast.
Mr George, after laughing cheerfully, and clapping him on the shoulder, 
assists in these arrangements, and helps to get the gallery into business 
order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumbbells; and afterwards weighing 
himself, and opining that he is getting "too fleshy," engages with great 
gravity in solitary broadsword practice. Meanwhile, Phil has fallen to work 
at his usual table, where he screws and unscrews, and cleans, and files, 
and whistles into small apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and 
seems to do and undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.
Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage, where 
they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual company. These 
steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery, bring into it a group, 
at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any day in the year but the fifth 
of November.
It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two bearers, 
and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched mask, who might be 
expected immediately to recite the popular verses, commemorative of the 
time when they did contrive to blow Old England up alive, but for keeping 
her lips tightly and defiantly closed as the chair is put down. At which 
point, the figure in it gasping, "O Lord! O dear me! I am shaken!" adds, 
"How de do, my dear friend, how de do?" Mr George then descries, in the 
procession, the venerable Mr Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his 
grand-daughter Judy as bodyguard.
"Mr George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Swallweed, removing his right 
arm from the neck of one his bearers, whom he has nearly throttled coming 
along, "how de do? You're surprised to see me, my dear friend."
"I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in the 
city," returns Mr George.
"I am very seldom out," pants Mr Smallweed. "I haven't been out for many 
months. It's inconvenient - and it comes expensive. But I longed so much to 
see you, my dear Mr George. How de do, sir?"
"I am well enough," says Mr George. "I hope you are the same."
"You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr Smallweed takes him by both 
hands. "I have brought my grand-daughter Judy. I couldn't keep her away. 
She longed so much to see you."
"Humph! She bears it calmly!" mutters Mr George.
"So we got a hackney cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the corner 
they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried me here, that 
I might see my dear friend in his own establishment! This," says 
Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has been in danger of 
strangulation, and who withdraws adjusting his windpipe, "is the driver of 
the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by agreement included in his fare. 
This person," the other bearer, "we engaged in the street outside for a 
pint of beer. Which is twopence. Judy, give the person twopence. I was not 
sure you had a workman of your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have 
employed this person."
Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil, with a glance of considerable terror, 
and a half-subdued "O Lord! O dear me!" Nor is his apprehension, on the 
surface of things, without some reason; for Phil, who has never beheld the 
apparition in the black velvet cap before, has stopped short with a gun in 
his hand, with much of the air of a dead shot, intent on picking Mr 
Smallweed off as an ugly old bird of the crow species.
"Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his 
twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."
The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens, of human fungus 
that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London, ready 
dressed in an old red jacket, with a "Mission" for holding horses and 
calling coaches, receives his twopence with anything but transport, tosses 
the money into the air, catches it overhanded, and retires.
"My dear Mr George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so kind as 
to help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and I am an old 
man, and I soon chill. O dear me!"
His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by the 
suddenness with which Mr Squod, like a genie, catches him up, chair and 
all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
"O Lord!" says Mr Smallweed, panting. "O dear me! O my stars! My dear 
friend, your workman is very strong - and very prompt. O Lord, he is very 
prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I'm being scorched in the legs;" which 
indeed is testified to the noses of all present by the smell of his worsted 
stockings.
The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the fire, 
and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his overshadowed eye 
from its black velvet extinguisher, Mr Smallweed again says, "O dear me! O 
Lord!" and looking about, and meeting Mr George's glance, again stretches 
out both hands.
"My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your establishment? 
It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You never find that anything goes 
off here, accidentally; do you, my dear friend?" adds Grandfather 
Smallweed, very ill at ease.
"No, no. No fear of that."
"And your workman. He - O dear me! - he never lets anything off without 
meaning it; does he, my dear friend?"
"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr George, smiling.
"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal, and he 
might hurt somebody else," the good old gentleman returns. "He mightn't 
mean it - or he even might. Mr George, will you order him to leave his 
infernal firearms alone, and go away?"
Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to the 
other end of the gallery. Mr Smallweed, reassured, falls to rubbing his 
legs.
"And you're doing well, Mr George?" he says to the trooper, squarely 
standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand. "You are 
prospering, please the Powers?"
Mr George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not come to say 
that, I know."
"You are so sprightly, Mr George," returns the venerable grandfather. "You 
are such good company."
"Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr George.
"My dear friend! - but that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It might 
cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr George - Curse him!" says 
the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy, as the trooper takes a step or 
two away to lay it aside. "He owes me money, and might think of paying off 
all scores in this murdering place. I wish your brimstone grandmother was 
here, and he'd shave her head off."
Mr George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old man, 
sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly, "Now for 
it!"
"Ho!" cries Mr Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle. "Yes. 
Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"
"For a pipe," says Mr George; who with great composure sets his chair in 
the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it and lights it, 
and falls to smoking peacefully.
This tends to the discomfiture of Mr Smallweed, who finds it so difficult 
to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes exasperated, and 
secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiveness expressive of an 
intense desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr George. As the excellent 
old gentleman's nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, 
and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, 
while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless 
bundle; he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of 
Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than the 
ardour of affection, and so shakes him up, and pats and pokes him in divers 
parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of self-
defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters 
enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a white 
face and frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out her weazen 
forefinger, and gives Mr George one poke in the back. The trooper raising 
his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed grandfather; and, having 
thus brought them together, stares rigidly at the fire.
"Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U - u - u - ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed, 
swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!" (still clawing).
"I tell you what," says Mr George. "If you want to converse with me, you 
must speak out. I am one of the Roughs, and I can't go about and about. I 
haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don't suit me. When 
you go winding round and round me," says the trooper, putting his pipe 
between his lips again, "damme, if I don't feel as if I was being 
smothered!"
And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent, as if to assure 
himself that he is not smothered yet.
"If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr George, "I am 
obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether there's any 
property on the premises, look about you; you are welcome. If you want to 
out with something, out with it!"
The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her 
grandfather one ghostly poke.
"You see! It's her opinion, too. And why the devil that young woman won't 
sit down like a Christian," says Mr George, with his eyes musingly fixed on 
Judy, "I can't comprehend."
"She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather Smallweed. "I 
am an old man, my dear Mr George, and I need some attention. I can carry my 
years; I am not a Brimstone poll-parrot;" (snarling and looking 
unconsciously for the cushion;) "but I need attention, my dear friend."
"Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man. "Now 
then?"
"My friend in the city, Mr George, has done a little business with a pupil 
of yours."
"Has he?" says Mr George. "I am sorry to hear it."
"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine young 
soldier now, Mr George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came forward, and 
paid it all up, honourable."
"Did they?" returns Mr George. "Do you think your friend in the city would 
like a piece of advice?"
"I think he would, my dear friend. From you."
"I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There's no 
more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is brought to a 
dead halt."
"No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr George. No, no, no, sir," remonstrates 
Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs. "Not quite a dead 
halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good for his pay, and he is 
good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance 
in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife, and - oh, do you 
know, Mr George, I think my friend would consider the young gentleman good 
for something yet?" says Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap, 
and scratching his ear like a monkey.
Mr George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his chair-
back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot, as if he were not 
particularly pleased with the turn the conversation had taken.
"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr Smallweed. "To 
promote the conversation, as a joker might say. To pass, Mr George, from 
the ensign to the captain."
"What are you up to, now?" asked Mr George, pausing with a frown in 
stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"
"Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."
"O! that's it, is it?" says Mr George, with a low whistle, as he sees both 
grandfather and grand-daughter looking hard at him; you are there! Well? 
what about it? Come, I won't be smothered any more. Speak!"
"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied - Judy, shake me up a 
little! - I was applied to, yesterday, about the captain; and my opinion 
still is, that the captain is not dead."
"Bosh!" observes Mr George.
"What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with his hand 
to his ear.
"Bosh!"
"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr George, of my opinion you can judge 
for yourself according to questions asked of me, and the reasons given for 
asking 'em. Now, what do you think the lawyer making the inquiries wants?"
"A job," says Mr George.
"Nothing of the kind!"
"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr George, folding his arms with an air of 
confirmed resolution.
"My dear friend, he is a lawyer and a famous one. He wants to see some 
fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep it. He only 
wants to see it, and compare it with a writing in his possession."
"Well?"
"Well, Mr George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning 
Captain Hawdon, and any information that could be given respecting him, he 
looked it up and came to me - just as you did, my dear friend. Will you 
shake hands? So glad you came, that day. I should have missed forming such 
a friendship, if you hadn't come!"
"Well, Mr Smallweed?" says Mr George again, after going through the 
ceremony with some stiffness.
"I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague pestilence 
and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him," says the old man, 
making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a prayer, and 
squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, "I have half a million 
of his signatures, I think! But you," breathlessly recovering his mildness 
of speech, as Judy readjusts the cap on his skittle-ball of a head; "You, 
my dear Mr George, are likely to have some letter or paper that would suit 
the purpose. Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand."
"Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering, "may be, I have."
"My dearest friend!"
"May be, I have not."
"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed, crestfallen.
"But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a 
cartridge, without knowing why."
"Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr George, I have told you why."
"Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know more, and 
approve it."
"Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and see 
the gentleman?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean old silver 
watch, with hands like the legs of a skeleton. "I told him it was probable 
I might call upon him, between ten and eleven this forenoon; and it's now 
half after ten. "Will you come and see the gentleman, Mr George?"
"Hum!" says he, gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this should concern 
you so much, I don't know."
"Everything concerns me, that has a chance in it of bringing anything to 
light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn't he owe us immense sums, 
all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him concern, more than me? 
Not, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, lowering his tone, "that 
I want you to betray anything. Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear 
friend?"
"Ay! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know."
"No, my dear Mr George; no."
"And you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place, wherever 
it is, without charging for it?" Mr George inquires, getting his hat, and 
thick wash-leather gloves.
This pleasantry so tickles Mr Smallweed, that he laughs long and low, 
before the fire. But even while he laughs, he glances over his paralytic 
shoulder at Mr George, and eagerly watches him as he unlocks the padlock of 
a homely cupboard at the distant end of the gallery, looks here and there 
upon the higher shelves, and ultimately takes something out with a rustling 
of paper, folds it, and puts it in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr Smallweed 
once, and Mr Smallweed pokes Judy once.
"I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry this old 
gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him."
"O dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr Smallweed. "He's so very 
prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?"
Phil makes no reply; but, seizing the chair and its load, sidles away, 
tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr Smallweed, and bolts along the 
passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old gentleman to 
the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however, terminating at the cab, he 
deposits him there; and the fair Judy takes her place beside him, and the 
chair embellishes the roof, and Mr George takes the vacant place on the 
box.
Mr George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time to time 
as he peeps into the cab, through the window behind him; where the grim 
Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his cap over one eye 
is always sliding off the seat into the straw, and looking upward at him, 
out of his other eye, with a helpless expression of being jolted in the 
back.


Chapter 27

More Old Soldiers Than One

Mr George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for the 
destination is Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the driver stops his horses, Mr 
George alights, and looking in at the window, says:
"What, Mr Tulkinghorn's your man, is he?"
"Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr George?"
"Why, I have heard of him - seen him too, I think. But I don't know him, 
and he don't know me."
There ensues the carrying of Mr Smallweed upstairs; which is done to 
perfection with the trooper's help. He is borne into Mr Tulkinghorn's great 
room, and deposited on the Turkey rug before the fire. Mr Tulkinghorn is 
not within at the present moment, but will be back directly. The occupant 
of the pew in the hall, having said thus much, stirs the fire, and leaves 
the triumvirate to warm themselves.
Mr George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at the 
painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates the 
portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the boxes.
"'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,'" Mr George reads thoughtfully. "Ha! 
'Manor of Chesney Wold.' Humph!" Mr George stands looking at these boxes a 
long while - as if they were pictures - and comes back to the fire 
repeating, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of Chesney Wold, 
hey?"
"Worth a mint of money, Mr George!" whispers Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing 
his legs. "Powerfully rich!"
"Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?"
"This gentleman, this gentleman."
"So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I'll hold a wager. Not bad 
quarters, either," says Mr George, looking round again. "See the strong 
box, yonder!"
This reply is cut short by Mr Tulkinghorn's arrival. There is no change in 
him, of course. Rustily dressed, with his spectacles in his hand, and the 
very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and 
low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually not uncensorious and 
contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have warmer worshippers and 
faithfuller believers than Mr Tulkinghorn, after all, if everything were 
known.
"Good morning, Mr Smallweed, good morning!" he says as he comes in. "You 
have brought the serjeant, I see. Sit down, serjeant."
As Mr Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he looks 
with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper stands, and says 
within himself perchance, "You'll do, my friend!"
"Sit down, serjeant," he repeats as he comes to his table, which is set on 
one side of the fire, and takes his easy chair. "Cold and raw this morning, 
cold and raw!" Mr Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms 
and knuckles of his hands, and looks (from behind that blind which is 
always down) at the trio sitting in a little semicircle before him.
"Now, I can feel what I am about!" (as perhaps he can in two senses) "Mr 
Smallweed." The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy, to bear his part 
in the conversation. "You have brought our good friend the serjeant, I 
see."
"Yes, sir," returns Mr Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer's wealth and 
influence.
"And what does the serjeant say about this business?"
"Mr George," says Grandfather Smallweed, with a tremulous wave of his 
shrivelled hand, "this is the gentleman, sir."
Mr George salutes the gentleman; but otherwise sits bolt upright and 
profoundly silent - very forward in his chair, as if the full complement of 
regulation appendages for a field day hung about him.
Mr Tulkinghorn proceeds: "Well, George? - I believe your name is George?"
"It is so, sir."
"What do you say, George?"
"I ask your pardon, sir," returns the trooper, "but I should wish to know 
what you say?"
"Do you mean in point of reward?"
"I mean in point of everything, sir."
This is so very trying to Mr Smallweed's temper, that he suddenly breaks 
out with "You're a brimstone beast!" and as suddenly asks pardon of Mr 
Tulkinghorn; excusing himself for this slip of the tongue, by saying to 
Judy, "I was thinking of your grandmother, my dear."
"I supposed, serjeant," Mr Tulkinghorn resumes, as he leans on one side of 
his chair and crosses his legs, "that Mr Smallweed might have sufficiently 
explained the matter. It lies in the smallest compass, however. You served 
under Captain Hawdon at one time, and were his attendant in illness, and 
rendered him many little services, and were rather in his confidence, I am 
told. That is so, is it not?"
"Yes, sir, that is so," says Mr George, with military brevity.
"Therefore you may happen to have in your possession something - anything, 
no matter what - accounts, instructions, orders, a letter, anything - in 
Captain Hawdon's writing. I wish to compare his writing with some that I 
have. If you can give me the opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your 
trouble. Three, four, five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare 
say."
"Noble, my dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his eyes.
"If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can 
demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing against your 
inclination - though I should prefer to have it."
Mr George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the ground, 
looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr 
Smallweed scratches the air.
"The question is," says Mr Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued, 
uninteresting way, "first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon's 
writing?"
"First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon's writing, sir," repeats Mr 
George.
"Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it."
"Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it, sir," 
repeats Mr George.
"Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that," says 
Mr Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written paper tied 
together.
"Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so," repeats Mr George.
All three repetitions Mr George pronounces in a mechanical manner, looking 
straight at Mr Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at the affidavit 
in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him for his inspection 
(though he still holds it in his hand), but continues to look at the lawyer 
with an air of troubled meditation.
"Well?" says Mr Tulkinghorn. "What do you say?"
"Well, sir," replies Mr George, rising erect and looking immense, "I would 
rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this."
Mr Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands "Why not?"
"Why, sir," returns the trooper. "Except on military compulsion, I am not a 
man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in Scotland a ne'er-do-
weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand any fire better than a 
fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr Smallweed, only an hour or so 
ago, that when I come into things of this kind I feel as if I was being 
smothered. And this is my sensation," says Mr George, looking around upon 
the company, "at the present moment."
With that, he takes three strides forward, to replace the papers on the 
lawyer's table, and three strides backward to resume his former station: 
where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground, and now at 
the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to prevent himself 
from accepting any other document whatever.
Under this provocation, Mr Smallweed's favourite adjective of disparagement 
is so close to his tongue, that he begins the word "my dear friend" with 
the monosyllable "Brim;" thus converting the possessive pronoun into 
Brimmy, and appearing to have an impediment in his speech. Once past this 
difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear friend in the tenderest manner not 
to be rash, but to do what so eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it 
with a good grace: confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as 
profitable. Mr Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as "You 
are the best judge of your own interest, serjeant."
"Take care you do no harm by this."
"Please yourself, please yourself."
"If you know what you mean, that's quite enough." These he utters with an 
appearance of perfect indifference, as he looks over the papers on his 
table, and prepares to write a letter.
Mr George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the ground, from 
the ground to Mr Smallweed, from Mr Smallweed to Mr Tulkinghorn, and from 
Mr Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again; often in his perplexity 
changing the leg on which he rests.
"I do assure you, sir," says Mr George, "not to say it offensively, that 
between you and Mr Smallweed here, I really am being smothered fifty times 
over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you gentlemen. Will you allow 
me to ask, why you want to see the captain's hand, in the case that I could 
find any specimen of it?"
Mr Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. "No. If you were a man of business, 
serjeant, you would not need to be informed that there are confidential 
reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such wants, in the 
profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of doing any injury to 
Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that."
"Ay! he is dead, sir."
"Is he?" Mr Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.
"Well, sir," says the trooper, looking into his hat after another 
disconcerted pause; "I am sorry not to have given you more satisfaction. If 
it would be any satisfaction to any one, that I should be confirmed in my 
judgment that I would rather have nothing to do with this, by a friend of 
mine, who has a better head for business than I have, and who is an old 
soldier, I am willing to consult with him. I - I really am so completely 
smothered myself at present," says Mr George, passing his hand hopelessly 
across his brow, "that I don't know but what it might be a satisfaction to 
me."
Mr Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so strongly 
inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking counsel with him, and 
particularly informing him of its being a question of five guineas or more, 
that Mr George engages to go and see him. Mr Tulkinghorn says nothing 
either way.
"I'll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir," says the trooper, "and 
I'll take the liberty of looking in again with a final answer in the course 
of the day. Mr Smallweed, if you wish to be carried upstairs - "
"In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me speak half 
a word with this gentleman, in private?"
"Certainly, sir. Don't hurry yourself on my account." The trooper retires 
to a distant part of the room, and resumes his curious inspection of the 
boxes; strong and otherwise.
"If I wasn't as weak as a Brimstone Baby, sir," whispers Grandfather 
Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lappel of his coat, 
and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry eyes, "I'd tear 
the writing away from him. He's got it buttoned in his breast. I saw him 
put it there. Judy saw him put it there. Speak up, you crabbed image for 
the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!"
This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a thrust 
at his grand-daughter, that it is too much for his strength, and he slips 
away out of his chair, drawing Mr Tulkinghorn with him, until he is 
arrested by Judy, and well shaken.
"Violence will not do for me, my friend," Mr Tulkinghorn then remarks 
coolly.
"No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it's chafing and galling - it's - it's 
worse than your smattering chattering Magpie of a grandmother," to the 
imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire, "to know he has got what's 
wanted, and won't give it up. He, not to give it up! He! A vagabond! But 
never mind, sir, never mind. At the most he has only his own way for a 
little while. I have him periodically in a vice. I'll twist him, sir. I'll 
screw him, sir. If he won't do it with a good grace, I'll make him do it 
with a bad one, sir! - Now, my dear Mr George," says Grandfather Smallweed, 
winking at the lawyer hideously, as he releases him, "I am ready for your 
kind assistance, my excellent friend!"
Mr Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting itself 
through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his back to the 
fire, watching the disappearance of Mr Smallweed, and acknowledging the 
trooper's parting salute with one slight nod.
It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr George finds, than 
to bear a hand in carrying him upstairs; for, when he is replaced in his 
conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the guineas, and retains 
such an affectionate hold of his button - having, in truth, a secret 
longing to rip his coat open, and rob him - that some degree of force is 
necessary on the trooper's part to effect a separation. It is accomplished 
at last, and he proceeds alone in quest of his adviser.
By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a glance 
at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in his way), and 
by Blackfriars bridge, and Blackfriars road, Mr George sedately marches to 
a street of little shops lying somewhere in that ganglion of roads from 
Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the bridges of London, centering in 
the farfamed Elephant who has lost his castle formed of a thousand four-
horse coaches, to a stronger iron monster than he, ready to chop him into 
mince-meat any day he dares. To one of the little shops in this street, 
which is a musician's shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some 
Pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps 
of music, Mr George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces 
from it, as he sees a soldierly-looking woman, with her outer skirts tucked 
up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub commence a whisking 
and a splashing on the margin of the pavement, Mr George says to himself 
"She's as usual, washing greens. I never saw her, except upon a baggage-
waggon, when she wasn't washing greens!"
The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in washing 
greens at present, that she remains unsuspicious of Mr George's approach; 
until, lifting up herself and her tub together, when she has poured the 
water off into the gutter, she finds him standing near her. Her reception 
of him is not flattering.
"George, I never see you, but I wish you was a hundred mile away!"
The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the musical 
instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon the counter, 
and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon it.
"I never," she says, "George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute when 
you're near him. You are that restless and that roving - "
"Yes! I know I am, Mrs Bagnet. I know I am."
"You know you are!" says Mrs Bagnet. "What's the use of that? Why are you?"
"The nature of the animal, I suppose," returns the trooper good-humouredly.
"Ah!" cries Mrs Bagnet, something shrilly, "but what satisfaction will the 
nature of the animal be to me, when the animal shall have tempted my Mat 
away from the musical business to New Zealand or Australey?"
Mrs Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a little 
coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which have tanned her 
hair upon the forehead; but healthy, wholesome, and bright-eyed. A strong, 
busy, active, honest-faced woman, of from forty-five to fifty. Clean, 
hardy, and so economically dressed (though substantially), that the only 
article of ornament of which she stands possessed appears to be her wedding-
ring; around which her finger has grown to be so large since it was put on, 
that it will never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs Bagnet's 
dust.
"Mrs Bagnet," says the trooper, "I am on my parole with you. Mat will get 
no harm from me. You may trust me so far."
"Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling," Mrs Bagnet 
rejoins. "Ah, George, George! If you had only settled down, and married Joe 
Pouch's widow when he died in North America, she'd have combed your hair 
for you."
"It was a chance for me, certainly," returns the trooper, half-laughingly, 
half-seriously, "but I shall never settle down into a respectable man now. 
Joe Pouch's widow might have done me good - there was something in her - 
and something of her - but I couldn't make up my mind to it. If I had had 
the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat found!"
Mrs Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve with a 
good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow herself for that 
matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr George in the face with a 
head of greens, and taking her tub into the little room behind the shop.
"Why, Quebec, my poppet," says George, following, on invitation, into that 
apartment. "And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!"
These young ladies - not supposed to have been actually christened by the 
names applied to them, though always so called in the family, from the 
places of their birth in barracks - are respectively employed on three-
legged stools: the younger (some five or six years old), in learning her 
letters out of a penny primer: the elder (eight or nine perhaps), in 
teaching her, and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail Mr George with 
acclamations as an old friend, and after some kissing and romping plant 
their stools beside him.
"And how's young Woolwich?" says Mr George.
"Ah! There now!" cries Mrs Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans (for 
she is cooking dinner), with a bright flush on her face. Would you believe 
it? Got an engagement at the Theayter, with his father, to play the fife in 
a military piece."
"Well done, my godson!" cries Mr George, slapping his thigh.
"I believe you!" says Mrs Bagnet. "He's a Briton. That's what Woolwich is. 
A Briton."
"And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians one 
and all," says Mr George. Family people. Children growing up. Mat's old 
mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else, corresponded with; 
and helped a little; and - well, well! To be sure, I don't know why I 
shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for I have not much to do with all 
this!"
Mr George is becoming thoughtful; sitting before the fire in the 
whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor, and a barrack smell, and 
contains nothing superfluous, and has not a visible speck of dirt or dust 
in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots and 
pannikins upon the dresser-shelves; - Mr George is becoming thoughtful, 
sitting here while Mrs Bagnet is busy, when Mr Bagnet and young Woolwich 
opportunely come home. Mr Bagnet is an ex-artillery man, tall and upright, 
with shaggy eyebrows, and whiskers like the fibres of a cocoa-nut, not a 
hair upon his head, and a torrid complexion. His voice, short, deep, and 
resonant, is not at all unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is 
devoted. Indeed there may be generally observed in him an unbending, 
unyielding, brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human 
orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer.
Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due season, 
that he has come to advise with Mr Bagnet, Mr Bagnet hospitably declares 
that he will hear of no business until after dinner; and that his friend 
shall not partake of his counsel, without first partaking of boiled pork 
and greens. The trooper yielding to this invitation, he and Mr Bagnet, not 
to embarrass the domestic preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down 
the little street, which they promenade with measured tread and folded 
arms, as if it were a rampart.
"George," says Mr Bagnet. "You know me. It's my old girl that advises. She 
has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be 
maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then, we'll consult. 
Whatever the old girl says, do - do it!"
"I intend to, Mat," replies the other. "I would sooner take her opinion 
than that of a college."
"College," returns Mr Bagnet, in short sentences, bassoon-like. "What 
college could you leave - in another quarter of the world - with nothing 
but a grey cloak and an umbrella - to make its way home to Europe? The old 
girl would do it tomorrow. Did it once!"
"You are right," says Mr George.
"What college," pursues Bagnet, "could you set up in life - with two 
penn'orth of white lime - a penn'orth of fuller's earth - ha'porth of sand -
 and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That's what the old 
girl started on. In the present business."
"I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Mat."
"The old girl," says Mr Bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. Has a stocking 
somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she's got it. Wait 
till the greens is off her mind. Then she'll set you up."
"She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr George.
"She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be 
maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical abilities. I 
should have been in the artillery now, but for the old girl. Six years I 
hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old girl said it wouldn't do; 
intention good, but want of flexibility; try the bassoon. The old girl 
borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster of the Rifle Regiment. I practised 
in the trenches. Got on, got another, got a living by it!"
George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose, and as sound as an apple.
"The old girl," says Mr Bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine woman. 
Consequently, she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as she gets on. 
I never saw the old girl's equal. But I never own to it before her. 
Discipline must be maintained!"
Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down the 
little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec and Malta to 
do justice to the pork and greens; over which Mrs Bagnet, like a military 
chaplain, says a short grace. In the distribution of these comestibles, as 
in every other household duty, Mrs Bagnet developes an exact system; 
sitting with every dish before her; allotting to every portion of pork its 
own portion of pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard; and serving 
it out complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can, and thus 
supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs Bagnet proceeds to satisfy 
her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the mess, if the 
table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly composed of utensils of 
horn and tin, that have done duty in several parts of the world. Young 
Woolwich's knife, in particular, which is of the oyster kind, with the 
additional feature of a strong shutting-up movement which frequently balks 
the appetite of that young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various 
hands the complete round of foreign service.
The dinner done, Mrs Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who polish 
their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the dinner 
garniture shine as brightly as before, and puts it all away; first sweeping 
the hearth to the end that Mr Bagnet and the visitor may not be retarded in 
the smoking of their pipes. These household cares involve much pattening 
and counter-pattening in the back yard, and considerable use of a pail, 
which is finally so happy as to assist in the ablutions of Mrs Bagnet 
herself. That old girl reappearing by-and-by, quite fresh, and sitting down 
to her needlework, then and only then - the greens being only then to be 
considered as entirely off her mind - Mr Bagnet requests the trooper to 
state his case.
This Mr George does with great discretion; appearing to address himself to 
Mr Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all the time, as Bagnet 
has himself. She, equally discreet, busies herself with her needlework. The 
case fully stated, Mr Bagnet resorts to his standard artifice for the 
maintenance of discipline.
"That's the whole of it, is it, George?" says he.
"That's the whole of it."
"You act according to my opinion?"
"I shall be guided," replies George, "entirely by it."
"Old girl," says Mr Bagnet, "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell him 
what it is."
It is, that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too deep 
for him, and cannot be too careful of interference with matters he does not 
understand; that the plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party 
to nothing under-handed or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he 
cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is Mr Bagnet's opinion, as 
delivered through the old girl; and it so relieves Mr George's mind, by 
confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts, that he composes 
himself to smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion, and to have a 
talk over old times with the whole Bagnet family, according to their 
various ranges of experience.
Through these means it comes to pass that Mr George does not again rise to 
his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on when the 
bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the theatre; and as it 
takes time even then for Mr George, in his domestic character of Bluffy, to 
take leave to Quebec and Malta, and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into 
the pocket of his godson, with felicitations on his success in life, it is 
dark when Mr George again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields.
"A family home," he ruminates, as he marches along, "however small it is, 
makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that evolution 
of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I'm such a vagabond still, 
even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold to the gallery a 
month together, if it was a regular pursuit, or if I didn't camp there, 
gypsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber nobody: that's something. 
I have not done that, for many a long year!"
So he whistles it off, and marches on.
Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and mounting Mr Tulkinghorn's stair, he 
finds the outer door closed, and the chambers shut; but the trooper not 
knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark besides, he is 
yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a bell handle or to open 
the door for himself, when Mr Tulkinghorn comes up the stairs (quietly, of 
course), and angrily asks:
"Who is that? What are you doing there?"
"I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The serjeant."
"And couldn't George, the serjeant, see that my door was locked?"
"Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I didn't," says the trooper, rather 
nettled.
"Have you changed your mind? or are you in the same mind?" Mr Tulkinghorn 
demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.
"In the same mind, sir."
"I thought so. That's sufficient. You can go. So, you are the man," says Mr 
Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in whose hiding-place Mr 
Gridley was found?"
"Yes, I am the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs down. 
"What then, sir?"
"What then? I don't like your associates. You should not have seen the 
inside of my door this morning, if I had thought of your being that man. 
Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow."
With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the lawyer goes 
into his rooms, and shuts the door with a thundering noise.
Mr George takes this dismissal in great dudgeon; the greater, because a 
clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all, and evidently 
applies them to him. "A pretty character to bear," the trooper growls with 
a hasty oath, as he strides upstairs. "A threatening, murderous, dangerous 
fellow!" and looking up, he sees the clerk looking down at him, and marking 
him as he passes a lamp. This so intensifies his dudgeon, that for five 
minutes he is in an ill-humour. But he whistles that off, like the rest of 
it; and marches home to the Shooting Gallery.


Chapter 28

The Ironmaster

Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better for the time being, of the family 
gout; and is once more, in a literal no less than in a figurative point of 
view, upon his legs. He is at his place in Lincolnshire; but the waters are 
out again on the low-lying grounds, and the cold and damp steal into 
Chesney Wold, though well defended, and eke into Sir Leicester's bones. The 
blazing fires of faggot and coal - Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest - 
that blaze upon the broad wide hearths, and wink in the twilight on the 
frowning woods, sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the 
enemy. The hot water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the 
cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains, fail to supply 
the fires' deficiencies, and to satisfy Sir Leicester's need. Hence the 
fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the listening earth, that 
Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to town for a few weeks.
It is a melancholy truth, that even great men have their poor relations. 
Indeed, great men have often more than their fair share of poor relations; 
inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality, like inferior blood 
unlawfully shed, will cry aloud, and will be heard. Sir Leicester's 
cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many Murders, in the respect that 
they "will out." Among whom there are cousins who are so poor, that one 
might almost dare to think it would have been the happier for them never to 
have been plated links upon the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been 
made of common iron at first, and done base service.
Service, however (with a few limited reservations: genteel but not 
profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they visit 
their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live but 
shabbily when they can't, and find - the women no husbands, and the men no 
wives - and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts that are never of 
their own making, and so go through high life. The rich family sum has been 
divided by so many figures, and they are the something over that nobody 
knows what to do with.
Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock's side of the question, and of his way 
of thinking, would appear to be his cousin more or less. From my Lord 
Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir Leicester, like a 
glorious spider, stretches his threads of relationship. But while he is 
stately in the cousinship of the Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, 
according to his dignified way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at 
the present time, in despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several 
such cousins at Chesney Wold, with the constancy of a martyr.
Of these, foremost in the first rank stands Volumnia Dedlock, a young lady 
(of sixty), who is doubly highly related; having the honour to be a poor 
relation, by the mother's side, to another great family. Miss Volumnia, 
displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of 
coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar in the Spanish tongue, 
and propounding French conundrums in country houses, passed the twenty 
years of her existence between twenty and forty in a sufficiently agreeable 
manner. Lapsing then out of date, and being considered to bore mankind by 
her vocal performances in the Spanish language, she retired to Bath; where 
she lives slenderly on an annual present from Sir Liecester, and whence she 
makes occasional resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She 
has an extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with 
thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that dreary 
city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere, in consequence of an 
indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge, and persistency in an 
obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird's-eggs.
In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case for the 
pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and when William 
Buffy came in it was fully expected that her name would be put down for a 
couple of hundred a-year. But William Buffy somehow discovered, contrary to 
all expectation, that these were not times when it could be done; and this 
was the first clear indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him, 
that the country was going to pieces.
There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, who can make warm mashes with 
the skill of a veterinary surgeon, and is a better shot than most 
gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly desirous to serve his 
country in a post of good emoluments, unaccompanied by any trouble or 
responsibility. In a well regulated body politic, this natural desire on 
the part of a spirited young gentleman so highly connected, would be 
speedily recognised; but somehow William Buffy found when he came in, that 
these were not times in which he could manage that little matter, either; 
and this was the second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to 
him, that the country was going to pieces.
The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentleman of various ages and 
capacities; the major part, amiable and sensible, and likely to have done 
well enough in life if they could have overcome their cousinship; as it is, 
they are almost all a little worsted by it, and lounge in purposeless and 
listless paths, and seem to be quite as much at a loss how to dispose of 
themselves, as anybody else can be how to dispose of them.
In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme. Beautiful, 
elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world (for the world of 
fashion does not stretch all the way from pole to pole), her influence in 
Sir Leicester's house, however haughty and indifferent her manner, is 
greatly to improve it and refine it. The cousins, even those older cousins 
who were paralysed when Sir Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; 
and the Honourable Bob Stables daily repeats to some chosen person, between 
breakfast and lunch, his favourite original remark that she is the best-
groomed woman in the whole stud.
Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal night, 
when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however), might be the 
step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is near bedtime. Brestfa 
fires blaze brightly all over the house, raising ghosts of grim furniture 
on wall and ceiling. Brestfa candlesticks bristle on the distant table by 
the door, and cousins yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at 
the soda-water tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered 
round the fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there 
are two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of the broad hearth, my Lady 
at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins, in a 
luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester glancing, with magnificent 
displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.
"I occasionally meet on my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts 
perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of a very 
desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think, that I ever saw in my 
life."
"A protegee of my Lady's," observes Sir Leicester.
"I thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked that 
girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty perhaps," says 
Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, "but in its way, perfect; such bloom 
I never saw!"
Sir Leicester with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the rouge, 
appears to say so too.
"Indeed," remarks my Lady, languidly, "if there is any uncommon eye in the 
case, it is Mrs Rouncewell's, and not mine. Rosa is her discovery."
"Your maid, I suppose?"
"No. My anything; pet - secretary - messenger - I don't know what."
"You like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower, or a 
bird, or a picture, or a poodle - no, not a poodle, though - or anything 
else that was equally pretty?" says Volumnia, sympathising. "Yes, how 
charming now! and how well that delightful old soul Mrs Rouncewell is 
looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as active and handsome! 
- She is the dearest friend I have, positively!"
Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper of 
Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he has a real 
regard for Mrs Rouncewell, and likes to hear her praised. So he says, "You 
are right, Volumnia;" which Volumnia is extremely glad to hear.
"She has no daughter of her own, has she?"
"Mrs Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two."
My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by 
Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and heaves 
a noiseless sigh.
"And it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the present age 
has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening of floodgates, 
and the uprooting of distinctions," says Sir Leicester with stately gloom; 
"that I have been informed, by Mr Tulkinghorn, that Mrs Rouncewell's son 
has been invited to go into Parliament."
Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.
"Yes, indeed," repeats Sir Leicester. "Into Parliament."
"I never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?" exclaims 
Volumnia.
"He is called, I believe - an - Ironmaster." Sir Leicester says it slowly, 
and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is called a Lead-
mistress; or that the right word may be some other word expressive of some 
other relationship to some other metal.
Volumnia utters another little scream.
"He has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr Tulkinghorn be 
correct, as I have no doubt it is, Mr Tulkinghorn being always correct and 
exact; still that does not," says Sir Leicester, "that does not lessen the 
anomaly; which is fraught with strange considerations - startling 
considerations, as it appears to me."
Miss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester politely 
performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and lights it at 
my Lady's shaded lamp.
"I must beg you, my Lady," he says while doing so, "to remain a few 
moments; for this individual of whom I speak, arrived this evening shortly 
before dinner, and requested - in a very becoming note;" Sir Leicester, 
with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it; "I am bound to say, in a 
very becoming and well expressed note - the favour of a short interview 
with yourself and myself, on the subject of this young girl. As it appeared 
that he wished to depart tonight, I replied that we would see him before 
retiring."
Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her hosts - 
O Lud! - well rid of the - what is it? - Ironmaster!
The other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir Leicester 
rings the bell. "Make my compliments to Mr Rouncewell, in the housekeeper's 
apartments, and say I can receive him now."
My Lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly, looks 
towards Mr Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a little over fifty perhaps, of 
a good figure, like his mother; and has a clear voice, a broad forehead 
from which his dark hair has retired, and a shrewd, though open face. He is 
a responsible-looking gentleman dressed in black, portly enough, but strong 
and active. Has a perfectly natural and easy air, and is not in the least 
embarrassed by the great presence into which he comes.
"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I have already apologised for intruding 
on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you, Sir Leicester."
The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself and my 
Lady. Mr Rouncewell quietly takes his seat there.
"In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in progress, 
people like myself have so many workmen in so many places, that we are 
always on the flight."
Sir Leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that there 
is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet park, 
where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and the gnarled and 
warted elms, and the umbrageous oaks, stand deep in the fern and leaves of 
a hundred years; and where the sundial on the terrace has dumbly recorded 
for centuries that time, which was as much the property of every Dedlock - 
while he lasted - as the house and lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an 
easy chair, opposing his repose and that of Chesney Wold to the restless 
flights of ironmasters.
"Lady Dedlock has been so kind," proceeds Mr Rouncewell, with a respectful 
glance and a bow that way, "as to place near her a young beauty of the name 
of Rosa. Now, my son has fallen in love with Rosa; and has asked my consent 
to his proposing marriage to her, and to their becoming engaged if she will 
take him - which I suppose she will. I have never seen Rosa until today, 
but I have some confidence in my son's good sense - even in love. I find 
her what he represents her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother 
speaks of her with great commendation."
"She in all respects deserves it," says my Lady.
"I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say so; and I need not comment on the 
value to me of your kind opinion of her."
"That," observes Sir Leicester, with unspeakable grandeur; for he thinks 
the ironmaster a little too glib; "must be quite unnecessary."
"Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, my son is a very young man, and 
Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make his; and 
his being married at present is out of the question. But supposing I gave 
my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty girl, if this pretty girl 
will engage herself to him, I think it a piece of candour to say at once - 
I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, you will understand and excuse 
me - I should make it a condition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. 
Therefore, before communicating further with my son, I take the liberty of 
saying, that if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or 
objectionable, I will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable 
time, and leave it precisely where it is."
Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Leicester's old 
misgivings relative to Wat Tyler, and the people in the iron districts who 
do nothing but turn out by torchlight, come in a shower upon his head: the 
fine grey hair of which, as well as of his whiskers, actually stirs with 
indignation.
"Am I to understand, sir," says Sir Leicester, "and is my Lady to 
understand;" he brings her in thus specially, first, as a point of 
gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on her 
sense; "am I to understand, Mr Rouncewell, and is my Lady to understand, 
sir, that you consider this young woman too good for Chesney Wold, or 
likely to be injured by remaining here?"
"Certainly not, Sir Leicester."
"I am glad to hear it." Sir Leicester very lofty indeed.
"Pray, Mr Rouncewell," says my Lady, warning Sir Leicester off with the 
slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly, "explain to me 
what you mean."
"Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothing I could desire more."
Addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too quick and 
active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness, however habitual, to 
the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture of resolution and 
perseverance, my Lady listens with attention, occasionally slightly bending 
her head.
"I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my childhood 
about this house. My mother has lived here half a century, and will die 
here I have no doubt. She is one of those examples - perhaps as good a one 
as there is - of love, and attachment, and fidelity in such a station, 
which England may well be proud of; but of which no order can appropriate 
the whole pride or the whole merit, because such an instance bespeaks high 
worth on two sides; on the great side assuredly; on the small one, no less 
assuredly."
Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way; but in 
his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently, admits the 
justice of the ironmaster's proposition.
"Pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn't have it hastily 
supposed," with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir Leicester, "that I 
am ashamed of my mother's position here, or wanting in all just respect for 
Chesney Wold and the family. I certainly may have desired - I certainly 
have desired, Lady Dedlock - that my mother should retire after so many 
years, and end her days with me. But, as I have found that to sever this 
strong bond would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea."
Sir Leicester very magnificent again, at the notion of Mrs Rouncewell being 
spirited off from her natural home, to end her days with an ironmaster.
"I have been," proceeds the visitor, in a modest clear way, "an apprentice, 
and a workman. I have lived on workman's wages, years and years, and beyond 
a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife was a foreman's 
daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three daughters, besides this son 
of whom I have spoken; and being fortunately able to give them greater 
advantages than we had ourselves, we have educated them well; very well. It 
has been one of our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any 
station."
A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in his 
heart, "even of the Chesney Wold station." Not a little more magnificence, 
therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester.
"All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the class 
to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal marriages 
are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son will sometimes 
make it known to his father that he has fallen in love, say with a young 
woman in the factory. The father, who once worked in a factory himself, 
will be a little disappointed at first, very possibly. It may be that he 
had other views for his son. However, the chances are, that having 
ascertained the young woman to be of unblemished character, he will say to 
his son, 'I must be quite sure that you are in earnest here. This is a 
serious matter for both of you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated 
for two years' - or, it may be - 'I shall place this girl at the same 
school with your sisters for such a time, during which you will give me 
your word and honour to see her only so often. If, at the expiration of 
that time, when she has so far profited by her advantages as that you may 
be upon a fair equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part 
to make you happy.' I know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, 
and I think they indicate to me my own course now."
Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.
"Mr Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester, with his right hand in the breast of 
his blue coat - the attitude of state in which he is painted in the 
gallery: "do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold, and a - " here he 
resists a disposition to choke - "a factory?"
"I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very different; 
but, for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may be justly drawn 
between them."
Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long drawing-
room, and up the other, before he can believe that he is awake.
"Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady - my Lady - has 
placed near her person, was brought up at the village school outside the 
gates?"
"Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and 
handsomely supported by this family."
"Then, Mr Rouncewell," returns Sir Leicester, "the application of what you 
have said, is, to me, incomprehensible."
"Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say," the ironmaster 
is reddening a little, "that I do not regard the village-school as teaching 
everything desirable to be known by my son's wife?"
From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute, to 
the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of society, to the 
aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in consequence of people 
(ironmasters, lead-mistresses, and what not) not minding their catechism, 
and getting out of the station unto which they are called - necessarily and 
for ever, according to Sir Leicester's rapid logic, the first station in 
which they happen to find themselves; and from that, to their educating 
other people out of their stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and 
opening the floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress 
of the Dedlock mind.
"My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me for one moment!" She has given a 
faint indication of intending to speak. "Mr Rouncewell, our views of duty, 
and our views of station, and our views of education, and our views of - in 
short, all our views - are so diametrically opposed, that to prolong this 
discussion must be repellant to your feelings, and repellant to my own. 
This young woman is honoured with my Lady's notice and favour. If she 
wishes to withdraw herself from that notice and favour, or if she chooses 
to place herself under the influence of any one who may, in his peculiar 
opinions - you will allow me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I 
readily admit that he is not accountable for them to me - who may, in his 
peculiar opinions, withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any 
time at liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with 
which you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other, 
on the young woman's position here. Beyond this, we can make no terms; and 
here we beg - if you will be so good - to leave the subject."
The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an opportunity, but she says 
nothing. He then rises and replies:
"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention, 
and only to observe that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer 
his present inclinations. Good night!"
"Mr Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester, with all the nature of a gentleman 
shining in him, "it is late, and the roads are dark. I hope your time is 
not so precious but that you will allow my Lady and myself to offer you the 
hospitality of Chesney Wold, for tonight at least."
"I hope so," adds my Lady.
"I am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night, in order to 
reach a distant part of the country, punctually at an appointed time in the 
morning."
Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure; Sir Leicester ringing the 
bell, and my Lady rising as he leaves the room.
When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the fire; 
and, inattentive to the Ghost's Walk, looks at Rosa, writing in an inner 
room. Presently my Lady calls her.
"Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?"
"O! My lady!"
My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling:
"Who is it? Is it Mrs Rouncewell's grandson?"
"Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don't know that I am in love with him - 
yet."
"Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves you, yet?"
"I think he likes me a little, my Lady." And Rosa bursts into tears.
Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing her dark 
hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so full of musing 
interest? Aye, indeed it is!
"Listen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are 
attached to me."
"Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is nothing in the world I wouldn't do, 
to show how much."
"And I don't think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even for a 
lover."
"No, my Lady! O no!" Rosa looks up for the first time, quite frightened at 
the thought.
"Confide in me, my child. Don't fear me. I wish you to be happy, and will 
make you so - if I can make anybody happy on this earth."
Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My Lady 
takes the hand with which she has caught it, and, standing with her eyes 
fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own two hands, and 
gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa softly withdraws; but 
still my Lady's eyes are on the fire.
In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that never was, 
of any touch that might have magically changed her life? Or does she listen 
to the Ghost's Walk, and think what step does it most resemble? A man's? A 
woman's? The pattering of a little child's feet, ever coming on - on - on? 
Some melancholy influence is upon her; or why should so proud a lady close 
the doors, and sit alone upon the hearth so desolate?
Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before dinner. 
Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir Leicester, at 
breakfast time, of the obliteration of landmarks, and opening of 
floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society, manifested through 
Mrs Rouncewell's son. Not a cousin of the batch but is really indignant, 
and connects it with the feebleness of William Buffy when in office, and 
really does feel deprived of a stake in the country - or the pension list - 
or something - by fraud and wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the 
great staircase by Sir Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme, as if there 
were a general rising in the North of England to obtain her rouge-pot and 
pearl necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets - for it is 
one appurtenance of their cousinship, that however difficult they may find 
it to keep themselves, they must keep maids and valets - the cousins 
disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that blows 
today shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house, as if all the 
cousins had been changed into leaves.


Chapter 29

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 the 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, excepting 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 scimeter 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 eyeglass, 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 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 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 Carboy, 
of Lincoln's Inn; which may not be altogether unknown to your ladyship in 
connection 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 you ladyship." Mr Guppy does so. "Now, your ladyship;" Mr Guppy 
refers to a 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 - O yes! - I place myself entirely in your ladyship's 
hands. If your ladyship were 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 a slip of paper now close to eyes, now a long way off. "C. S. 
What's C. S. for? O! 'E. S!' O, 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 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," said 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 art - 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. O! '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? O 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 art. 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 decided 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 hands 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. "O! 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 tremour 
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 seemed 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 cross-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 tomorrow 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 those 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 of 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!"


Chapter 30

Esther's Narrative

Richard had been gone away some time, when a visitor came to pass a few 
days with 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 though 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 
Mewlinwillinwodd (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 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 Mac Coorts of Mac Coort. 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?"
"O, 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."
"O!" 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 quite 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 storyteller, 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-bye, and it is a 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 to 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 look for it, and hardly ever found it.
As soon as her papa had tranquillised his mind by becoming this shorn lamb, 
and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden (where I found 
the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting the horsehair out of 
the seats of the chairs, and choking themselves with it), Caddy had brought 
about a meeting between him and old Mr Turveydrop; and poor Mr Jellyby, 
being very humble and meek, had deferred to Mr Turveydrop's Deportment so 
submissively, that they had become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr 
Turveydrop, thus familiarised with the idea of his son's marriage, had 
worked up his parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event 
as being near at hand; and had given his gracious consent to the young 
couple commencing housekeeping at the Academy in Newman Street, when they 
would.
"And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?"
"O! poor Pa," said Caddy, "only cried, and said he hoped we might get on 
better than he and Ma had got on. He didn't say so before Prince; he only 
said so to me. And he said, 'My poor girl, you have not been very well 
taught how to make a home for your husband; but unless you mean with all 
your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder him than marry him - 
if you really love him.'"
"And how did you reassure him, Caddy?"
"Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low, and hear 
him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying myself. But I told 
him that I did mean it with all my heart; and that I hoped our house would 
be a place for him to come and find some comfort in, of an evening; and 
that I hoped and thought I could be a better daughter to him there, than at 
home. Then I mentioned Peepy's coming to stay with me; and then Pa began to 
cry again, and said the children were Indians."
"Indians, Caddy?"
"Yes," said Caddy. "Wild Indians. And Pa said," - (here she began to sob, 
poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world) - "that he was 
sensible the best thing that could happen to them was, their being all 
Tomahawked together."
Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr Jellyby did not mean 
these destructive sentiments.
"No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering in their 
blood," said Caddy; "but he means that they are very unfortunate in being 
Ma's children, and that he is very unfortunate in being Ma's husband; I am 
sure that's true, though it seems unnatural to say so."
I asked Caddy if Mrs Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.
"O! you know what Ma is, Esther," she returned. "It's impossible to say 
whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough: and when 
she is told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was I don't know 
what - a steeple in the distance," said Caddy, with a sudden idea; "and 
then she shakes her head, and says 'O Caddy, Caddy, what a teaze you are!' 
and goes on with the Borrioboola letters."
"And about your wardrobe, Caddy?" said I. For she was under no restraint 
with us.
"Well, my dear Esther," she returned, drying her eyes, "I must do the best 
I can, and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind remembrance of 
my coming so shabbily to him. If the question concerned an outfit for 
Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it, and would be quite excited. Being 
what it is, she neither knows nor cares."
Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother, but 
mentioned this with tears, as an undeniable fact: which I am afraid it was. 
We were so sorry for the poor dear girl, and found so much to admire in the 
good disposition which had survived under such discouragement, that we both 
at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a little scheme, that made her 
perfectly joyful. This was, her staying with us for three weeks; my staying 
with her for one; and our all three contriving and cutting out, and 
repairing, and sewing, and saving, and doing the very best we could think 
of, to make the most of her stock. My Guardian being as pleased with the 
idea as Caddy was, we took her home next day to arrange the matter; and 
brought her out again in triumph, with her boxes, and all the purchases 
that could be squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr Jellyby had found 
in the Docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my 
Guardian would not have given her, if we had encouraged him, it would be 
difficult to say; but we thought it right to compound for no more than her 
wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise; and if Caddy had 
ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat down to work.
She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her fingers 
as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help reddening a 
little, now and then; partly with the smart, and partly with vexation at 
being able to do no better: but she soon got over that, and began to 
improve rapidly. So, day after day, she, and my darling, and my little maid 
Charley, and a milliner out of the town, and I, sat hard at work, as 
pleasantly as possible.
Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious "to learn housekeeping," as she 
said. Now, Mercy upon us! the idea of her learning housekeeping of a person 
of my vast experience was such a joke, that I laughed, and coloured up, and 
fell into a comical confusion when she proposed it. However, I said, 
"Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome to learn anything that you can learn 
of me, my dear;" and I showed her all my books and methods, and all my 
fidgety ways. You would have supposed that I was showing her some wonderful 
inventions by her study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I 
jingled my housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might 
have thought that there never was a greater impostor than I, with a blinder 
follower than Caddy Jellyby.
So, what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and 
backgammon in the evening with my Guardian, and duets with Ada, the three 
weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy, to see what could be 
done there; and Ada and Charley remained behind, to take care of my 
Guardian.
When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in 
Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where 
preparations were in progress too; a good many, I observed, for enchancing 
the comforts of old Mr Turveydrop, and a few for putting the newly married 
couple away cheaply at the top of the house; but our great point was to 
make the furnished lodging decent for the wedding breakfast, and to imbue 
Mrs Jellyby beforehand with some faint sense of the occasion.
The latter was the more difficult thing of the two, because Mrs Jellyby and 
an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the back one was a mere 
closet), and it was littered down with waste paper and Borrioboolan 
documents, as an untidy stable might be littered with straw. Mrs Jellyby 
sat there all day, drinking strong coffee, dictating and holding 
Borrioboolan interviews by appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to 
me to be going into a decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr 
Jellyby came home, he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There 
he got something to eat, if the servant would give him anything; and then 
feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton Garden in 
the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down the house, as they 
had always been accustomed to do.
The production of these devoted little sacrifices, in any presentable 
condition, being quite out of the question at a week's notice, I proposed 
to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could, on her marriage 
morning, in the attic where they all slept; and should confine our greatest 
efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a clean breakfast. In truth, 
Mrs Jellyby required a good deal of attention, the lattice-work up her back 
having widened considerably since I first knew her, and her hair looking 
like the mane of a dustman's horse.
Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe would be the best means of 
approaching the subject, I invited Mrs Jellyby to come and look at it 
spread out on Caddy's bed, in the evening, after the unwholesome boy was 
gone.
"My dear Miss Summerson," said she, rising from her desk, with her usual 
sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous preparations, though your 
assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is something so 
inexpressibly absurd to me, in the idea of Caddy being married! O Caddy, 
you silly, silly, silly puss!"
She came upstairs with us notwithstanding, and looked at the clothes in her 
customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to her; for she 
said, with her placid smile, and shaking her head, "My good Miss Summerson, 
at half the cost, this weak child might have been equipped for Africa!"
On our going downstairs again, Mrs Jellyby asked me whether this 
troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday? And on my 
replying yes, she said, "Will my room be required, my dear Miss Summerson? 
For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers away."
I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted, and 
that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. "Well, my dear Miss 
Summerson," said Mrs Jellyby, "you know best, I dare say. But by obliging 
me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that extent, overwhelmed as 
I am with public business, that I don't know which way to turn. We have a 
Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday afternoon, and the inconvenience is 
very serious."
"It is not likely to occur again," said I, smiling. "Caddy will be married 
but once, probably."
"That's true," Mrs Jellyby replied, "that's true, my dear. I suppose we 
must make the best of it!"
The next question was, how Mrs Jellyby should be dressed on the occasion. I 
thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely from her writing-
table, while Caddy and I discussed it; occasionally shaking her head at us 
with a half-reproachful smile, like a superior spirit who could just bear 
with our trifling.
The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion in 
which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at length we 
devised something not very unlike what a common-place mother might wear on 
such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which Mrs Jellyby would deliver 
herself up to having this attire tried on by the dressmaker, and the 
sweetness with which she would then observe to me how sorry she was that I 
had not turned my thoughts to Africa, were consistent with the rest of her 
behaviour.
The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if Mrs 
Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul's or Saint 
Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the size of the 
building would have been its affording a great deal of room to be dirty in. 
I believe that nothing belonging to the family, which it had been possible 
to break, was unbroken at the time of those preparations for Caddy's 
marriage; that nothing which it had been possible to spoil in any way, was 
unspoilt; and that no domestic object which was capable of collecting dirt, 
form a dear child's knee to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as 
could well accumulate upon it.
Poor Mr Jellyby, who very seldom spoke, and almost always sat when he was 
at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he saw that 
Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among all this waste 
and ruin, and took off his coat to help. But such wonderful things came 
tumbling out of the closets when they were opened - bits of mouldy pie, 
sour bottles, Mrs Jellyby's caps, letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes 
of children, firewood, wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends 
of paper bags, footstools, black-lead brushes, bread, Mrs Jellyby's 
bonnets, books with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle-ends 
put out by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells, 
heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds, umbrellas -
 that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came in regularly 
every evening, and sat without his coat, with his head against the wall; as 
though he would have helped us, if he had known how.
"Poor Pa;" said Caddy to me, on the night before the great day, when we 
really had got things a little to rights. "It seems unkind to leave him, 
Esther, but what could I do if I stayed! Since I first knew you, I have 
tidied and tidied over and over again; but it's useless. Ma and Africa, 
together, upset the whole house directly. We never have a servant who don't 
drink. Ma's ruinous to everything."
Mr Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low indeed, and 
shed tears, I thought.
"My heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed Caddy. "I can't help 
thinking, tonight, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince, and 
how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a disappointed 
life!"
"My dear Caddy!" said Mr Jellyby, looking slowly round from the wall. It 
was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three words together.
"Yes, Pa," cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him affectionately.
"My dear Caddy," said Mr Jellyby. "Never have - "
"Not Prince, Pa?" faltered Caddy. "Not have Prince?"
"Yes, my dear," said Mr Jellyby. "Have him, certainly. But, never have - "
I mentioned, in my account of our first visit in Thavies' Inn, that Richard 
described Mr Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after dinner without 
saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his mouth now, a great 
many times, and shook his head in a melancholy manner.
"What do you wish me not to have? Don't have what, dear Pa?" asked Caddy, 
coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.
"Never have a mission, my dear child."
Mr Jellyby groaned, and laid his head against the wall again; and this was 
the only time I ever heard him make any approach to expressing his 
sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he had been more 
talkative and lively, once; but he seemed to have been completely exhausted 
long before I knew him.
I thought Mrs Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking over her 
papers, and drinking coffee, that night. It was twelve o'clock before we 
could obtain possession of the room; and the clearance it required then, 
was so discouraging, that Caddy, who was almost tired out, sat down in the 
middle of the dust and cried. But she soon cheered up, and we did wonders 
with it before we went to bed.
In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity of 
soap and water, and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain breakfast 
made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But when my darling 
came, I thought - and I think now - that I never had seen such a dear face 
as my beautiful pet's.
We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at the 
head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress, and they 
clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think that she was 
going away from them, and hugged them over and over again, until we brought 
Prince up to fetch her away - when, I am sorry to say, Peepy bit him. Then, 
there was old Mr Turveydrop downstairs, in a state of Deportment not to be 
expressed, benignly blessing Caddy, and giving my Guardian to understand, 
that his son's happiness was his own parental work, and that he sacrificed 
personal considerations to insure it. "My dear sir," said Mr Turveydrop, 
"these young people will live with me; my house is large enough for their 
accommodation, and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have 
wished, you will understand the allusion, Mr Jarndyce, for you remember my 
illustrious patron the Prince Regent - I could have wished that my son had 
married into a family where there was more Deportment; but the will of 
Heaven be done!"
Mr and Mrs Pardiggle were of the party - Mr Pardiggle, an obstinate-looking 
man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who was always talking in a 
loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs Pardiggle's mite, or their five 
boys' mites. Mr Quale, with his hair brushed back as usual, and his knobs 
of temples shining very much, was also there; not in the character of a 
disappointed lover, but as the Accepted of a young - at least, an unmarried 
- lady, a Miss Wisk, who was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, my Guardian 
said, was to show the world that woman's mission was man's mission; and 
that the only genuine mission, of both man and woman, was to be always 
moving declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings. 
The guests were few; but were, as one might expect at Mrs Jellyby's, all 
devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned, there was 
an extremely dirty lady, with her bonnet all awry, and the ticketed price 
of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected home, Caddy told me, was 
like a filthy wilderness, but whose church was like a fancy fair. A very 
contentious gentleman, who said it was his mission to be everybody's 
brother, but who appeared to be on terms of coolness with the whole of his 
large family, completed the party.
A party having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly have been 
got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the domestic mission, 
was the very last thing to be endured among them; indeed, Miss Wisk 
informed us, with great indignation, before we sat down to breakfast, that 
the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere of home was 
an outrageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man. One other singularity 
was, that nobody with a mission - except Mr Quale, whose mission, as I 
think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission 
- cared at all for anybody's mission. Mrs Pardiggle being as clear that the 
only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and 
applying benevolence to them like a strait waistcoat; as Miss Wisk was that 
the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of Woman from 
the thraldom of her Tyrant, Man. Mrs Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at 
the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.
But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride home, 
instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr Jellyby gave 
her away. Of the air with which old Mr Turveydrop, with his hat under his 
left arm, (the inside presented at the clergyman like a cannon,) and his 
eyes creasing themselves up into his wig, stood, stiff and high-shouldered, 
behind us bridesmaids during the ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I 
could never say enough to do it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as 
prepossessing in appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the 
proceedings, as part of Woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs 
Jellyby, with her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least 
concerned of all the company.

We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs Jellyby sat at the head of the 
table, and Mr Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen upstairs, to 
hug the children again, and tell them that her name was Turveydrop. But 
this piece of information, instead of being an agreeable surprise to Peepy, 
threw him on his back in such transports of kicking grief, that I could do 
nothing on being sent for, but accede to the proposal that he should be 
admitted to the breakfast table. So he came down, and sat in my lap; and 
Mrs Jellyby, after saying, in reference to the state of his pinafore, "O 
you naughty Peepy, what a shocking little pig you are!" was not at all 
discomposed. He was very good, except that he brought down Noah with him 
(out of an ark I had given him before we went to church), and would dip him 
head first into the wine-glasses, and then put him in his mouth.
My Guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his amiable 
face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial company. None of 
them seemed able to talk about anything but his or her, own one subject, 
and none of them seemed able to talk about even that, as part of a world in 
which there was anything else; but my Guardian turned it all to the merry 
encouragement of Caddy, and the honour of the occasion, and brought us 
through the breakfast nobly. What we should have done without him, I am 
afraid to think; for, all the company despising the bride and bridegroom, 
and old Mr Turveydrop - and old Mr Turveydrop, in virtue of his Deportment, 
considering himself vastly superior to all the company - it was a very 
unpromising case.
At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go, and when all her property 
was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her and her husband 
to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging, then, to her deplorable 
home, and hanging on her mother's neck with the greatest tenderness.
"I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing from dictation, Ma," sobbed 
Caddy. "I hope you forgive me now?"
"O Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs Jellyby, "I have told you over and over again 
that I have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it."
"You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are sure 
before I go away, Ma?"
"You foolish Caddy," returned Mrs Jellyby, "do I look angry, or have I 
inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How can you?"
"Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, mama!"
Mrs Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. "You romantic child," said 
she, lightly patting Caddy's back. "Go along. I am excellent friends with 
you. Now, good bye, Caddy, and be very happy!"
Then Caddy hung upon her father, and nursed his cheek against hers as if he 
were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the hall. Her 
father released her, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and sat down on the 
stairs with his head against the walls. I hope he found some consolation in 
walls. I almost think he did.
And then Prince took her arm in his, and turned with great emotion and 
respect to his father, whose Deportment at that moment was overwhelming.
"Thank you over and over again, father!" said Prince, kissing his hand. "I 
am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration regarding our 
marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy."
"Very," sobbed Caddy. "Ve-ry!"
"My dear son," said Mr Turveydrop, "and dear daughter, I have done my duty. 
If the spirit of a sainted Wooman hovers above us, and looks down on the 
occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my recompense. You 
will not fail in your duty, my son and daughter, I believe?"
"Dear father, never!" cried Prince.
"Never, never, dear Mr Turveydrop!" said Caddy.
"This," returned Mr Turveydrop, "is as it should be. My children, my home 
is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave you; 
nothing but Death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an absence of 
a week, I think?"
"A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week."
"My dear child," said Mr Turveydrop, "let me, even under the present 
exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly 
important to keep the connection together; and schools, if at all 
neglected, are apt to take offence."
"This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner."
"Good!" said Mr Turveydrop. "You will find fires, my dear Caroline, in your 
own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes, Prince!" 
anticipating some self-denying objection on his son's part with a great 
air. "You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper part of the 
premises, and will, therefore, dine that day in my apartment. Now, bless 
ye!"
They drove away; and whether I wondered most at Mrs Jellyby, or at Mr 
Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my Guardian were in the same condition 
when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away, too, I received a 
most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr Jellyby. He came up to me 
in the hall, took both my hands, pressed them earnestly, and opened his 
mouth twice. I was so sure of his meaning, that I said, quite flurried, 
"You are very welcome, sir. Pray don't mention it!"
"I hope this marriage is for the best, Guardian?" said I, when we three 
were on our road home.
"I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see."
"Is the wind in the East today?" I ventured to ask him.
He laughed heartily, and answered "No."
"But it must have been this morning, I think," said I.
He answered "No," again; and this time my dear girl confidently answered 
"No," too, and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming flowers 
against the golden hair, was like the very Spring. "Much you know of East 
winds, my ugly darling," said I, kissing her in my admiration - I couldn't 
help it.
Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a long 
time ago. I must write it, even if I rub it out again, because it gives me 
so much pleasure. They said there could be no East winds where Somebody 
was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there was sunshine and 
summer air.


Chapter 31

Nurse And Patient

I had not been at home again many days, when one evening I went upstairs 
into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder, and see how she 
was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying business to 
Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen, but in whose hand 
every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and 
crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into corners, like a saddle-
donkey. It was very odd, to see what old letters Charley's young hand made; 
they, so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and tottering; it, so plump and round. 
Yet Charley was uncommonly expert at other things, and had as nimble little 
fingers as I ever watched.
"Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which it 
was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed in all 
kinds of ways, "we are improving. If we only get to make it round, we shall 
be perfect, Charley."
Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join Charley's 
neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.
"Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time."
Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished; opened and shut her 
cramped little hand; looked gravely at the page, half in pride and half in 
doubt; and got up, and dropped me a curtsey.
"Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of the 
name of Jenny?"
"A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes."
"She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said you 
knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the young lady's little maid - 
meaning you for the young lady, miss - and I said yes, miss."
"I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley."
"So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to live - 
she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of Liz, miss?"
"I think I do, Charley, though not by name."
"That's what she said!" returned Charley. "They have both come back, miss, 
and have been tramping high and low."
"Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?"
"Yes, miss." If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy as 
round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would have been 
excellent. "And this poor person came about the house three or four days, 
hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss - all she wanted, she said - but you 
were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me a going about, miss," said 
Charley, with a short laugh of the greatest delight and pride, "and she 
thought I looked like your maid!"
"Did she though, really, Charley?"
"Yes, miss!" said Charley, "really and truly." And Charley, with another 
short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round again, and looked 
as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of seeing Charley in the 
full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing before me with her youthful 
face and figure, and her steady manner, and her childish exultation 
breaking through it now and then in the pleasantest way.
"And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.
My little maid's countenance fell, as she replied, "By the doctor's shop, 
miss." For Charley wore her black frock yet.
I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said No. It was some 
one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to Saint Alban's, 
and was tramping he didn't know where. A poor boy, Charley said. No father, 
no mother, no any one. "Like as Tom might have been, miss, if Emma and me 
had died after father," said Charley, her round eyes filling with tears.
"And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"
"She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done as much for 
her."
My little maid's face was so eager, and her quiet hands were folded so 
closely in one another as she stood looking at me, that I had no great 
difficulty in reading her thoughts. "Well, Charley," said I, "it appears to 
me that you and I can do no better than go round to Jenny's and see what's 
the matter."
The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and, having 
dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and made herself 
look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her readiness. So 
Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went out.
It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The rain 
had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission for many 
days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had partly cleared, but 
was very gloomy - even above us, where a few stars were shining. In the 
north and northwest, where the sun had set three hours before, there was a 
pale dead light both beautiful and awful; and into it long sullen lines of 
cloud waved up, like a sea stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards 
London, a lurid glare overhung the whole dark waste; and the contrast 
between these two lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered 
of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city, and 
on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was as 
solemn as might be.
I had no thought, that night - none, I am quite sure - of what was soon to 
happen to me. But I have always remembered since, that when we had stopped 
at the garden gate to look up at the sky, and when we went upon our way, I 
had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself as being something 
different from what I then was. I know it was then, and there, that I had 
it. I have ever since connected the feeling with that spot and time, and 
with everything associated with that spot and time, to the distant voices 
in the town, the barking of a dog, and the sound of wheels coming down the 
miry hill.
It was Saturday night; and most of the people belonging to the place where 
we were going, were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than I had 
previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were burning, and 
a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale blue glare.
We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the patched 
window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the little child 
who had died, was sitting in a chair on one side of the poor fire by the 
bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported by the chimney-piece, 
was cowering on the floor. He held under his arm, like a little bundle, a 
fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried to warm himself, he shook until the 
crazy door and window shook. The place was closer than before, and had an 
unhealthy, and a very peculiar smell.
I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was at the 
moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly, and stared at me 
with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.
His action was so quick, and my being the cause of it was so evident, that 
I stood still, instead of advancing nearer.
"I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "I ain't a 
going there, so I tell you!"
I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low voice, 
"Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head;" and said to him, 
"Jo, Jo, what's the matter?"
"I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy.
"Who?"
"The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to the berryin 
ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like the name of it. She 
might go a berryin me!" His shivering came on again, and as he leaned 
against the wall, he shook the hovel.
"He has been talking off and on about such like, all day, ma'am," said 
Jenny, softly. "Why, how you stare! This is my lady, Jo."
"Is it?" returned the boy, doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm held 
out above his burning eyes. "She looks to me the t'other one. It ain't the 
bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the t'other one."
My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and trouble, 
had pulled off her bonnet and shawl, and now went quietly up to him with a 
chair, and sat him down in it, like an old sick nurse. Except that no such 
attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful face, which seemed to 
engage his confidence.
"I say!" said the boy. "You tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other lady?"
Charley shook her head, as she methodically drew his rags about him and 
made him as warm as she could.
"O!" the boy muttered. "Then I 'spose she ain't."
"I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. "What is the matter 
with you?"
"I'm a being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze 
wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and then burnt up, 
ever so many times in a hour. And my head's all sleepy, and all a going mad-
like - and I'm so dry - and my bones isn't half so much bones as pain."
"When did he come here?" I asked the woman.
"This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had known 
him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?"
"Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.
Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very little 
while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it heavily, and 
speak as if he were half awake.
"When did he come from London?" I asked.
"I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and hot. 
"I'm a going somewheres."
"Where is he going?" I asked.
"Somewheres," repeated the boy, in a louder tone. "I have been moved on, 
and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t'other one giv' me the 
sov'ring. Mrs Snagsby, she's always a watching, and a driving of me - what 
have I done to her? - and they're all a watching and a driving of me. Every 
one of 'em's doing of it, from the time when I don't get up, to the time 
when I don't go to bed. And I'm a going somewheres. That's where I'm a 
going. She told me, down in Tom-all-Alone's, as she come from Stolbuns, and 
so I took the Stolbuns Road. It's as good as another."
He always concluded by addressing Charley.
"What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside. "He could 
not travel in this state, even if he had a purpose, and knew where he was 
going!"
"I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing 
compassionately at him. "Perhaps the dead know better if they could only 
tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and I've given him 
broth and physic, and Liz is gone to try if any one will take him in 
(here's my pretty in the bed - her child, but I call it mine); but I can't 
keep him long, for if my husband was to come home and find him here, he'd 
be rough in putting him out, and might do him a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz 
back!"

The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up with a 
half obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the little child 
awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out of bed, and began to 
walk about hushing it, I don't know. There she was, doing all this, in a 
quiet motherly manner, as if she were living in Mrs Blinder's attic with 
Tom and Emma again.
The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from hand to 
hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too early for the boy 
to be received into the proper refuge, and at least it was too late. One 
official sent her to another, and the other sent her back again to the 
first, and so backward and forward; until it appeared to me as if both must 
have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties, instead of 
performing them. And now, after all, she said, breathing quickly, for she 
had been running, and was frightened too, "Jenny, your master's on the road 
home, and mine's not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do 
no more for him!" They put a few half-pence together, and hurried them into 
his hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he 
shuffled out of the house.
"Give me the child, my dear!" said its mother to Charley, "and thank you 
kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my master don't 
fall out with me, I'll look down by the kiln by-and-bye, where the boy will 
be most like, and again in the morning!" She hurried off; and presently we 
passed her hushing and singing to her child at her own door, and looking 
anxiously along the road for her drunken husband.
I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should bring 
her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave the boy to 
die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did, and whose 
quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before me, and presently 
we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.
I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under his 
arm, and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried his 
wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went bare-headed 
through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we called to him, 
and again showed a dread of me when I came up; standing with his lustrous 
eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his shivering fit.
I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some 
shelter for the night.
"I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm bricks."
"But don't you know that people die there?" returned Charley.
"They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their lodgings - she 
knows where; I showed her - and they dies down in Tom-all-Alone's in heaps. 
They dies more than they lives, according to what I see." Then he hoarsely 
whispered Charley. "If she ain't the t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. 
Is there three of 'em then?"
Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at myself 
when the boy glared on me so.
But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him; and finding that he 
acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It was not 
far; only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I doubted if we 
should have got home without assistance; the boy's steps were so uncertain 
and tremulous. He made no complaint, however, and was strangely unconcerned 
about himself, if I may say so strange a thing.
Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into a corner of the window-
seat, and staring with an indifference that could scarcely be called 
wonder, at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into the drawing-
room to speak to my Guardian. There I found Mr Skimpole, who had come down 
by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, and never bringing any 
clothes with him, but always borrowing everything he wanted.
They came out with me directly, to look at the boy. The servants had 
gathered in the hall, too; and he shivered in the window-seat with Charley 
standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found in a ditch.
"This is a sorrowful case," said my Guardian, after asking him a question 
or two, and touching him, and examining his eyes. "What do you say, 
Harold?"
"You had better turn him out," said Mr Skimpole.
"What do you mean?" inquired my Guardian, almost sternly.
"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr Skimpole, "you know what I am: I am a child. Be 
cross to me, if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional objection to this 
sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical man. He's not safe, you 
know. There's a very bad sort of fever about him."
Mr Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again, and said 
this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood by.
"You'll say it's childish," observed Mr Skimpole, looking gaily at us. 
"Well, I dare say it may be; but I am a child, and I never pretend to be 
anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only put him where he 
was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you know. Even make him 
better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or five shillings, or five 
pound ten - you are arithmeticians, and I am not - and get rid of him!"
"And what is he to do then?" asked my Guardian.
"Upon my life," said Mr Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his engaging 
smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But I have no 
doubt he'll do it."
"Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my Guardian, to whom I had 
hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is it not a 
horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his hair, "that if 
this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his hospital would be 
wide open to him, and he would be as well taken care of as any sick boy in 
the kingdom."
"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr Skimpole, "you'll pardon the simplicity of 
the question, coming as it does from a creature who is perfectly simple in 
worldly matters - but, why isn't he a prisoner then?"
My Guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of amusement 
and indignation in his face.
"Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should 
imagine," said Mr Skimpole, unabashed and candid. "It seems to me that it 
would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more respectable, if he 
showed some misdirected energy that got him into prison. There would be 
more of an adventurous spirit in it, and consequently more of a certain 
sort of poetry."
"I believe," returned my Guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that there is 
not such another child on earth as yourself."
"Do you really?" said Mr Skimpole; "I dare say! But, I confess I don't see 
why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to invest himself with 
such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt born with an appetite - 
probably, when he is in a safer state of health, he has an excellent 
appetite. Very well. At our young friend's natural dinner hour, most likely 
about noon, our young friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will 
you have the goodness to produce your spoon, and feed me? Society, which 
has taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of 
spoons, and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does not 
produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You really must 
excuse me if I seize it.' Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected 
energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it, and a certain amount of 
romance; and I don't know but what I should be more interested in our young 
friend, as an illustration of such a case, than merely as a poor vagabond - 
which any one can be."
"In the meantime," I ventured to observe, "he is getting worse."
"In the meantime," said Mr Skimpole cheerfully, "as Miss Summerson, with 
her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse. Therefore I 
recommend your turning him out before he gets still worse."
The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.
"Of course, little woman," observed my Guardian, turning to me, "I can 
ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there to enforce 
it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his condition, that is 
necessary. But it's growing late, and is a very bad night, and the boy is 
worn out already. There is a bed in the wholesome loft-room by the stable; 
we had better keep him there till morning, when he can be wrapped up and 
removed. We'll do that."
"O!" said Mr Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano, as we 
moved away. "Are you going back to our young friend?"
"Yes," said my Guardian.
"How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!" returned Mr Skimpole, with 
playful admiration. "You don't mind these things, neither does Miss 
Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do anything. Such 
is Will! I have no Will at all - and no Won't - simply Can't."
"You can't recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?" said my Guardian, 
looking back over his shoulder, half angrily; only half angrily, for he 
never seemed to consider Mr Skimpole an accountable being.
"My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his pocket, 
and it's impossible for him to do better than take it. You can tell them to 
sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he sleeps, and to keep it 
moderately cool, and him moderately warm. But it's mere impertinence in me 
to offer any recommendation. Miss Summerson has such a knowledge of detail 
and such a capacity for the administration of detail, that she knows all 
about it."
We went back into the hall, and explained to Jo what we proposed to do, 
which Charley explained to him again, and which he received with the 
languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at what was 
done, as if it were for somebody else. The servants compassionating his 
miserable state, and being very anxious to help, we soon got the loft-room 
ready; and some of the men about the house carried him across the wet yard, 
well wrapped up. It was pleasant to observe how kind they were to him, and 
how there appeared to be a general impression among them that frequently 
calling him "Old Chap," was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed 
the operations, and went to and fro between the loft-room and the house 
with such little stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. 
My Guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night, and reported 
to me, when he returned to the Growlery to write a letter on the boy's 
behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at daylight in the 
morning, that he seemed easier, and inclined to sleep. They had fastened 
his door on the outside, he said, in case of his being delirious; but had 
so arranged that he could not make any noise without being heard.
Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr Skimpole was left alone all this 
time, and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic airs, and 
sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with great expression 
and feeling. When we rejoined him in the drawing-room he said he would give 
us a little ballad, which had come into his head, "apropos of our young 
friend;" and he sang one about a Peasant boy,
"Thrown on the wide world, doom'd to wander and roam, Bereft of his 
parents, bereft of a home,"
- quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told us.
He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening: "for he absolutely 
chirped," those were his delighted words; "when he thought by what a happy 
talent for business he was surrounded." He gave us, in his glass of negus, 
"Better health to our young friend!" and supposed, and gaily pursued, the 
case of his being reserved like Whittington to become Lord Mayor of London. 
In that event, no doubt, he would establish the Jarndyce Institution and 
the Summerson Alm-houses, and a little annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. 
Alban's. He had no doubt, he said, that our young friend was an excellent 
boy in his way, but his way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold 
Skimpole was, Harold Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable 
surprise, when he first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself 
with all his failings, and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best 
of the bargain; and he hoped we would do the same.
Charley's last report was, that the boy was quiet. I could see, from my 
window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went to bed 
very happy to think that he was sheltered.
There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before 
daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my window, 
and asked one of our men who had been among the active sympathisers last 
night, whether there was anything wrong about the house. The lantern was 
still burning in the loft-window.
"It's the boy, miss," said he.
"Is he worse?" I inquired.
"Gone, miss."
"Dead!"
"Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off."
At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed hopeless 
ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and the lantern 
standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he had got out by a 
trap in the floor which communicated with an empty cart-house below. But he 
had shut it down again, if that were so; and it looked as if it had not 
been raised. Nothing of any kind was missing. On this fact being clearly 
ascertained, we all yielded to the painful belief that delirium had come 
upon him in the night, and that, allured by some imaginary object, or 
pursued by some imaginary horror, he had strayed away in that worse than 
helpless state; - all of us, that is to say, but Mr Skimpole, who 
repeatedly suggested, in his usual easy light style, that it had occurred 
to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of 
fever upon him; and that he had, with great natural politeness, taken 
himself off.
Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The brick 
kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women were 
particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and nobody could 
doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for some time been too 
wet, and the night itself had been too wet, to admit of any tracing by 
footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and stack, were examined by 
our men for a long distance round, lest the boy should be lying in such a 
place insensible or dead; but nothing was seen to indicate that he had ever 
been near. From the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.
The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased, even 
then; but that my attention was then diverted into a current very memorable 
to me.
As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as I sat 
opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up I saw my 
little maid shivering from head to foot.
"Charley," said I "are you so cold?"
"I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I can't hold 
myself still. I felt so yesterday; at about this same time, miss. Don't be 
uneasy, I think I'm ill."
I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of communication 
between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked it. Just in time, 
for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the key.
Ada called to me to let her in; but I said, "Not now, my dearest. Go away. 
There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently." Ah! it was a 
long, long time, before my darling girl and I were companions again.
Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my room, 
and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I told my 
Guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I should 
seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above all. At first 
she came very often to the door, and called to me, and even reproached me 
with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter, saying that she made me 
anxious and unhappy, and imploring her, as she loved me, and wished my mind 
to be at peace, to come no nearer than the garden. After that, she came 
beneath the window, even oftener than she had come to the door; and, if I 
had learnt to love her dear sweet voice before when we were hardly ever 
apart, how did I learn to love it then, when I stood behind the window-
curtain listening and replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I 
learn to love it afterwards, when the harder time came!
They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door wide 
open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated that part 
of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There was not a servant, 
in or about the house, but was so good that they would all most gladly have 
come to me at any hour of the day or night, without the least fear or 
unwillingness; but I thought it best to choose one worthy woman who was 
never to see Ada, and whom I could trust to come and go with all 
precaution. Through her means, I got out to take the air with my Guardian, 
when there was no fear of meeting Ada; and wanted for nothing in the way of 
attendance, any more than in any other respect.
And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy danger 
of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day and night. So 
patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such a gentle fortitude, 
that very often as I sat by Charley, holding her head in my arms - repose 
would come to her, so, when it would come to her in no other attitude - I 
silently prayed to our Father in heaven that I might not forget the lesson 
which this little sister taught me.
I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would change and 
be disfigured, even if she recovered - she was such a child with her 
dimpled face - but that thought was, for the greater part, lost in her 
greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind rambled again to the 
cares of her father's sick bed, and the little children, she still knew me 
so far as that she would be quiet in my arms when she could lie quiet 
nowhere else, and murmur out the wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At 
those times I used to think how should I ever tell the two remaining babies 
that the baby who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them 
in their need, was dead!
There were other times when Charley knew me well, and talked to me: telling 
me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma, and that she was sure Tom would 
grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would speak to me of what 
she had read to her father as well as she could, to comfort him; of that 
young man carried out to be buried, who was the only son of his mother and 
she was a widow; of the ruler's daughter raised up by the gracious hand 
upon her bed of death. And Charley told me that when her father died, she 
had kneeled down and prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be 
raised up, and given back to his poor children; and that if she should 
never get better, and should die too, she thought it likely that it might 
come into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show 
Tom how those people of old days had been brought back to life on earth, 
only that we might know our hope to be restored in Heaven!
But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there was not 
one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And there were 
many, many, when I thought in the night of the last high belief in the 
watching Angel, and the last higher trust in God, on the part of her poor 
despised father.
And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the dangerous 
point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend. The hope that 
never had been given, from the first, of Charley being in outward 
appearance Charley any more, soon began to be encouraged; and even that 
prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish likeness again.
It was a great morning, when I could tell Ada all this as she stood out in 
the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at last took tea 
together in the next room. But, on that same evening, I felt that I was 
stricken cold.
Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed again and 
placidly asleep, that I began to think the contagion of her illness was 
upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I had felt at tea-time, but I 
was past that already now, and I knew that I was rapidly following in 
Charley's steps.
I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to return my 
darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk with her as long 
as usual. But I was not free from an impression that I had been walking 
about the two rooms in the night, a little beside myself, though knowing 
where I was; and I felt confused at times - with a curious sense of 
fulness, as if I were becoming too large altogether.
In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare Charley; with 
which view, I said, "You're getting quite strong, Charley, are you not?"
"O quite!" said Charley.
"Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?"
"Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley. But Charley's face 
fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in my face; and 
she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom, and said "O miss, 
it's my doing! It's my doing!" and a great deal more, out of the fulness of 
her grateful heart.
"Now, Charley," said I, after letting her go on for a little while, "if I 
am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And unless you 
are as quiet and composed for me, as you always were for yourself, you can 
never fulfil it, Charley."
"If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. "O my dear, my 
dear! if you'll only let me cry a little longer, O my dear!" - how 
affectionately and devotedly she poured this out, as she clung to my neck, 
I never can remember without tears - "I'll be good."
So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.
"Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley, quietly. "I am 
listening to everything you say."
"It is very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor tonight 
that I don't think I am well, and that you are going to nurse me."
For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart.
"And in the morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not 
be quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley, and 
say I am asleep - that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep. At all 
times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one come."
Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the doctor 
that night, and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask, relative to 
his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I have a very 
indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day, and of day melting 
into night again; but I was just able, on the first morning, to get to the 
window, and speak to my darling.
On the second morning I heard her dear voice - O how dear now! - outside; 
and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech being painful to me), to 
go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer softly, "Don't disturb her, 
Charley, for the world!"
"How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired.
"Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain.
"But I know she is very beautiful this morning."
"She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. "Still looking up at the 
window."
With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when raised like 
that!
I called Charley to me, and gave her her last charge.
"Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way into 
the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the last! 
Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for one moment as 
I lie here, I shall die."
"I never will! I never will!" she promised me.
"I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a little 
while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you, Charley; I am 
blind."


Chapter 32

The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln's Inn - perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow 
of the law, where suitors generally find but little day - and fat candles 
are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden 
stairs, and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o'clock, has ceased its 
doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are shut; and the night-porter, a 
solemn warder with a mighty power of sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From 
tiers of staircase windows, clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared 
Argus with a fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly 
blink at the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little 
patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer 
yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes of sheepskin, in 
the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over which 
bee-like industry, these benefactors of their species linger yet, though 
office-hours be past: that they may give, for every day, some good account 
at last.
In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the Rag and Bottle 
shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and supper. Mrs Piper 
and Mrs Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged with a circle of 
acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been lying in ambush about 
the byeways of Chancery Lane for some hours, and scouring the plain of the 
same thoroughfare to the confusion of passengers - Mrs Piper and Mrs 
Perkins have but now exchanged congratulations on the children being abed; 
and they still linger on a doorstep over a few parting words. Mr Krook and 
his lodger, and the fact of Mr Krook's being "continually in liquor," and 
the testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of 
their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the 
Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms; where the sound of the piano through 
the partly-opened windows jingles out into the court, and where little 
Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar like a very Yorick, 
may now be heard taking the gruff line in a concerted piece, and 
sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to Listen, listen, listen, 
Tew the wa-ter-Fall! Mrs Perkins and Mrs Piper compare opinions on the 
subject of the young lady of professional celebrity who assists at the 
Harmonic Meetings, and who has a space to herself in the manuscript 
announcement in the window; Mrs Perkins possessing information that she has 
been married a year and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, 
the noted syren, and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's 
Arms every night to receive its natural nourishment during the 
entertainments. "Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs Perkins, "I would get 
my living by selling lucifers." Mrs Piper, as in duty bound, is of the same 
opinion; holding that a private station is better than public applause, and 
thanking Heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs Perkins's) 
respectability. By this time, the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms appearing with 
her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs Piper accepts that tankard and retires 
indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs Perkins, who has had her own 
pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young 
Perkins before he was sent to bed. Now, there is a sound of putting up shop-
shutters in the court, and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting 
stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. 
Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be 
suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that 
everyone is either robbing or being robbed.
It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too; and there is a 
laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming night to 
turn the slaughterhouses, the unwholesome trades, the sewerage, bad water, 
and burial grounds to account, and give the Registrar of Deaths some extra 
business. It may be something in the air - there is plenty in it - or it 
may be something in himself, that is in fault; but Mr Weevle, otherwise 
Jobling, is very ill at ease. He comes and goes, between his own room and 
the open street door, twenty times an hour. He has been doing so, ever 
since it fell dark. Since the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did 
very early tonight, Mr Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a 
cheap tight velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of 
all proportion), oftener than before.
It is no phenomenon that Mr Snagsby should be ill at ease too; for he 
always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the secret 
that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery, of which he is a partaker, and 
yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr Snagsby haunts what seems to be its 
fountain-head - the rag and bottle shop in the court. It has an 
irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by the Sol's Arms 
with the intention of passing down the court, and out at the Chancery Lane 
end, and so terminating his unpremeditated after-supper stroll of ten 
minutes long from his own door and back again, Mr Snagsby approaches.
"What, Mr Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are you there?"
"Ay!" says Weevle. "Here I am, Mr Snagsby."
"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer 
inquires.
"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not very 
freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.
"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr Snagsby, pausing to sniff and 
taste the air a little; "don't you observe, Mr Weevle, that you're - not to 
put too fine a point upon it - that you're rather greasy here, sir?"
"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in the 
place tonight," Mr Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the Sol's 
Arms."
"Chops, do you think? Oh! - Chops, eh?" Mr Snagsby sniffs and tastes again. 
"Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at the Sol wanted 
a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir! And I don't think;" 
Mr Snagsby sniffs and tastes again, and then spits and wipes his mouth; "I 
don't think - not to put too fine a point upon it - that they were quite 
fresh, when they were shown the gridiron."
"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."
"It is a tainting sort of weather," says Mr Snagsby; "and I find it sinking 
to the spirits."
"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr Weevle.
"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room, with a 
black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr Snagsby, looking in past the 
other's shoulder along the dark passage, and then falling back a step to 
look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room alone, as you do, sir. 
I should get so fidgetty and worried of an evening, sometimes, that I 
should be driven to come to the door, and stand here, sooner than sit 
there. But then it's very true that you didn't see, in your room, what I 
saw there. That makes a difference."
"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.
"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr Snagsby, coughing his cough of mild 
persuasion behind his hand. "Mr Krook ought to consider it in the rent. I 
hope he does, I am sure."
"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it!"
"You find the rent high, do you, sir," returns the stationer. "Rents are 
high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put 
things up in price. Not," adds Mr Snagsby, with his apologetic cough, "that 
I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by."
Mr Weevle again glances up and down the court, and then looks at the 
stationer. Mr Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or 
so, and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this 
conversation.
"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands, "that he 
should have been - "
"Who's he?" interrupts Mr Weevle.
"The deceased, you know," says Mr Snagsby, twitching his head and right 
eyebrow towards the staircase, and tapping his acquaintance on the button.
"Ah to be sure!" returns the other, as if he were not overfond of the 
subject. "I thought we had done with him."
"I was only going to say, it's a curious fact, sir, that he should have 
come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that you should 
come and live here, and be one of my writers, too. Which there is nothing 
derogatory, but far from it in the appellation," says Mr Snagsby, breaking 
off with a mistrust that he may have unpolitely asserted a kind of 
proprietorship in Mr Weevle, "because I have known writers that have gone 
into Brewers' houses and done really very respectable indeed. Eminently 
respectable, sir," adds Mr Snagsby, with a misgiving that he had not 
improved the matter.
"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more 
glancing up and down the court.
"Seems a Fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.
"There does."
"Just so," observes the stationer, with his confirmatory cough. "Quite a 
Fate in it. Quite a Fate. Well, Mr Weevle, I am afraid I must bid you good 
night;" Mr Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go, though he has 
been casting about for any means of escape ever since he stopped to speak; 
"my little woman will be looking for me, else. Good night, sir!"
If Mr Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of looking 
for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His little woman has 
had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this time, and now glides 
after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over her head; honouring Mr 
Weevle and his doorway with a very searching glance as she goes past.
"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr Weevle to himself; 
"and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you are, with your 
head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow never coming!"
This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr Weevle softly holds up his finger, 
and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door. Then, they go 
upstairs; Mr Weevle heavily, and Mr Guppy (for it is he) very lightly 
indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they speak low.
"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least, instead of coming here," says 
Tony.
"Why, I said about ten."
"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten. But, 
according to my count, it's ten times ten - it's a hundred o'clock. I never 
had such a night in my life!"
"What has been the matter?"
"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But, here have I been 
stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib, till I have had the horrors 
falling on me as thick as hail. There's a blessed looking candle!" says 
Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his table with a great 
cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
"That's easily improved," Mr Guppy observes, as he takes the snuffers in 
hand.
"Is it?" returned his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been 
smouldering like that, ever since it was lighted."
"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr Guppy, looking at him, 
snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.
"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the Downs. It's this 
unbearably dull, suicidal room - and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose." Mr 
Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with his elbow, leans his 
head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr 
Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head, and sits down on the other 
side of the table in an easy attitude.
"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"
"Yes, and he - yes, it was Snagsby," says Mr Weevle, altering the 
construction of the sentence.
"On business?"
"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."
"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr Guppy, "and thought it as well that he 
shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."
"There we go again, William G.!" cries Tony, looking up for an instant. "So 
mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we 
couldn't have more mystery about it!"
Mr Guppy affects to smile; and with the view of changing the conversation, 
looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy 
gallery of British beauty; terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady 
Dedlock over the mantel-shelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, 
with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her 
shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl and her 
arm upon the piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr Guppy. "It's a speaking likeness."
"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I should have 
some fashionable conversation here, then."
Finding, by this time, that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more 
sociable humour, Mr Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack, and 
remonstrates with him.
"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man 
knows what it is when it does come upon a man, better than I do; and no man 
perhaps has a better right to know it, than a man who has an unrequited 
image printed on his art. But there are bounds to these things when an 
unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that 
I don't think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite 
gentlemanly."
"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr Weevle.
"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr William Guppy, "but I feel strongly when I use 
it."
Mr Weevle admits that he has been wrong, and begs Mr William Guppy to think 
no more about it. Mr William Guppy, however, having got the advantage, 
cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.
"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be careful 
how you wound the feelings of a man, who has an unrequited image imprinted 
on his art, and who is not altogether happy in those chords which vibrate 
to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is 
calculated to charm the eye, and allure the taste. It is not - happily for 
you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same - it is not your 
character to hover around one flower. The 'ole garden is open to you, and 
your airy pinions carry you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I 
am sure, to wound even your feelings without a cause!"
Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying 
emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr Guppy acquiesces, with the 
reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."
"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle of 
letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have appointed twelve 
o'clock tonight to hand 'em over to me?"
"Very. What did he do it for?"
"What does he do anything for? He don't know. Said, today was his birthday, 
and he'd hand 'em over tonight at twelve o'clock. He'll have drunk himself 
blind by that time. He has been at it all day."
"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"
"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him 
tonight, about eight - helped him to shut up his shop - and he had got the 
letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off, and showed 'em me. When 
the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his cap on the chair-
back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I heard him a little 
while afterwards through the floor here, humming, like the wind, the only 
song he knows - about Bibo, and old Charon, and Bibo being drunk when he 
died, or something or other. He has been as quiet, since, as an old rat 
asleep in his hole."
"And you are to go down at twelve?"
"At twelve. And, as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a hundred."
"Tony," says Mr Guppy, after considering a little with his legs crossed, 
"he can't read yet, can he?"
"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and he 
knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, 
under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to acquire the knack 
of it now - and too drunk."
"Tony," says Mr Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs; "how do you 
suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"
"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has, and 
how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye alone. He 
imitated it - evidently from the direction of a letter; and asked me what 
it meant."
"Tony," said Mr Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again; "should 
you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"
"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's - slopes a good deal, and the end of the 
letter 'n,' long and hasty."
Mr Guppy has been biting his thumbnail during this dialogue, generally 
changing the thumb when he has changed the crossed leg. As he is going to 
do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It takes his attention. 
He stares at it, aghast.
"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house tonight? Is there a 
chimney on fire?"
"Chimney on fire!"
"Ah!" returns Mr Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my arm! 
See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off - 
smears, like black fat!"
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little 
way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back, and says it's all 
right, and all quiet; and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr Snagsby, 
about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
"And it was then," resumes Mr Guppy, still glancing with remarkable 
aversion at his coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the 
fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near 
together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from 
his lodger's portmanteau?"
"That was the time, sir," answered Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. 
"Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, 
informing him of the appointment for tonight, and advising him not to call 
before: Boguey being a Slyboots."
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr 
Weevle, sits so ill upon him tonight, that he abandons that and his 
whiskers together; and, after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield 
himself up, a prey to the horrors again.
"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get 
yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's the 
arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr Guppy, anxiously biting his 
thumbnail.
"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."
"I tell you what, Tony - "
"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr Guppy nods his sagacious 
head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is, to make another packet, 
like the real one; so that, if he should ask to see the real one while it's 
in my possession, you can show him the dummy."
"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it - which with his 
biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not," 
suggests Tony.
"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never did. You 
found that; and you placed them in my hands - a legal friend of yours - for 
security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible, won't they?"
"Ye-es," is Mr Weevle's reluctant admission.
"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt 
William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"
"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returned the other, 
gravely.
"And what do you know?" urges Mr Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on 
his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't speak too low," 
he repeats his question without any sound at all; forming with his lips 
only the words, "What do you know?"
"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy; 
a pair of conspirators."
"Well!" says Mr Guppy, "and we had better be that, than the pair of 
noodles, which we should be, if we were doing anything else; for it's the 
only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"
"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable, after 
all."
Mr Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel-
shelf, and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of 
your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend, in those 
chords of the human mind which - which need not be called into agonising 
vibration on the present occasion - your friend is no fool. What's that?"
"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen, and 
you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."
Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, 
resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than their 
situations. When these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet 
than before. One disagreeable result of whispering is, that it seems to 
evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound - strange 
cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in 
them, and the tread of dreadful feet, that would leave no mark on the sea-
sand or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be, that 
the air is full of these phantoms; and the two look over their shoulders by 
one consent, to see that the door is shut.
"Yes, Tony?" says Mr Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire, and biting his 
unsteady thumbnail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"
"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room 
where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."
"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."
"Mhumb not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself, and see how you 
like it."
"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr Guppy, evading this proposal, "there 
have been dead men in most rooms."
"I know there have; but in most rooms you let them alone, and - and they 
let you alone," Tony answers.
The two look at each other again. Mr Guppy makes a hurried remark to the 
effect that they may be doing the deceased a service; that he hopes so. 
There is an oppressive blank, until Mr Weevle, by stirring the fire 
suddenly, makes Mr Guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instead.
"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let us 
open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."
He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half 
out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near, to admit of their 
seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking up; but lights in 
frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and 
the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be 
comfortable. Mr Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his 
whispering in quite a light-comedy tone.
"By-the-bye, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed;" meaning the Younger of that 
name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather of his is 
too keen by half. It runs in the family."
"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that"
"And as to Krook," resumes Mr Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really has got 
hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you 
have been such allies?"
Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't imagine. If we get through this 
business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better informed no 
doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't know himself? He 
is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table 
and the shop-wall, and asking what this is, and what that is; but his whole 
stock, from beginning to end, may easily be the waste paper he bought it 
as, for anything I can say. It's a monomania with him, to think he is 
possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last 
quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me."
"How did he first come by that idea, though? that's the question," Mr Guppy 
suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic meditation. "He may 
have found papers in some thing he bought, where papers were not supposed 
to be; and may have got it into his shrewd head, from the manner and place 
of their concealment, that they are worth something."
"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may have 
been muddled altogether, by long staring at whatever he has got, and by 
drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's court and hearing of 
documents for ever," returns Mr Weevle.
Mr Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing all 
these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap it, and 
clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand 
away.
"What, in the Devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and 
sight, and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with 
some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of window?"
"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been here!" 
cries the lodger.
And yet look here - and look here! When he brings the candle, here, from 
the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips, and creeps away down the 
bricks; here, lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
"This is a horrible house," says Mr Guppy, shutting down the window. "Give 
me some water, or I shall cut my hand off."
He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells and washes, that he has not 
long restored himself with a glass of brandy, and stood silently before the 
fire, when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve, and all those other bells 
strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the dark air, and in 
their many tones. When all is quiet again, the lodger says:
"It's the appointed time at last. Shall I go?"
Mr Guppy nods, and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back; but not with the 
washed hand, though it is his right hand.
He goes downstairs; and Mr Guppy tries to compose himself, before the fire, 
for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the stairs 
creak, and Tony comes swiftly back.
"Have you got them?"
"Got them! No. The old man's not there."
He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval, that his terror 
seizes the other, who makes a rush at him, and asks loudly, "What's the 
matter?"
"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And 
the burning smell is there - and the soot is there, and the oil is there - 
and he is not there!" - Tony ends this with a groan.
Mr Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and holding 
one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has retreated 
close to it, and stands snarling - not at them; at something on the ground, 
before the fire. There is very little fire left in the grate, but there is 
a smouldering suffocating vapour in the room, and a dark greasy coating on 
the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely 
absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back, hang the old 
man's hairy cap and coat.
"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these 
objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last, he 
took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap 
on the back of the chair - his coat was there already, for he had pulled 
that off, before he went to put the shutters up - and I left him turning 
the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing 
is upon the floor."
Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair, there lies a dirty 
bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the 
letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to 
turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall."
"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr Guppy. "Look at her!"
"Mad, I think. And no wonder, in this evil place."
They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where 
they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground, before the 
fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.
Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little 
bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in 
something; and here is - is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log 
of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he Is here! 
and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning 
one another into the street, is all that represents him.
Help, help, help! come into this house for Heaven's sake!
Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that Court, 
true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all Lord 
Chancellors in all Courts, and of all authorities in all places under all 
names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. 
Call the death by any name Your Highness will, attribute it to whom you 
will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same 
death eternally - inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of 
the vicious body itself, and that only - Spontaneous Combustion, and none 
other of all the deaths that can be died.


Chapter 33

Interlopers

Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who 
attended the last Coroner's Inquest at the Sol's Arms, reappear in the 
precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched 
by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through 
the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and write with ravenous little 
pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, 
how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, 
thrown into a state of the most intense agitation and excitement by the 
following alarming and horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it 
will doubtless be remembered, that some time back a painful sensation was 
created in the public mind, by a case of mysterious death from opium 
occurring on the first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and 
general marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate 
habits, far advanced in life, named Krook; and how by a remarkable 
coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be recollected 
was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a well-conducted tavern, 
immediately adjoining the premises in question, on the west side, and 
licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr James George Bogsby. Now do 
they show (in as many words as possible), how during some hours of 
yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of 
the court, in which the tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that 
present account transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful, 
that Mr Swills, a comic vocalist, professionally engaged by Mr J. G. 
Bogsby, has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. 
Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise 
engaged by Mr J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called Harmonic 
Assemblies or Meetings, which it would appear are held at the Sol's Arms, 
under Mr Bogsby's direction, pursuant to the Act of George the Second, that 
he (Mr Swills) found his voice seriously affected by the impure state of 
the atmosphere; his jocose expression, at the time, being, "that he was 
like an empty post-office, for he hadn't a single note in him." How this 
account of Mr Swills is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married 
females residing in the same court, and known respectively by the names of 
Mrs Piper and Mrs Perkins; both of whom observed the foetid effluvia, and 
regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of 
Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more, the two 
gentlemen, who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy 
catastrophe, write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court 
(out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's Arm's parlour, 
to behold the tops of their heads while they are about it.
The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night, and can 
do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the ill-fated house, and 
look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued from her chamber, as if it 
were in flames, and accommodated with a bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol 
neither turns off its gas nor shuts it door, all night; for any kind of 
public excitement makes good for the Sol, and causes the court to stand in 
need of comfort. The house has not done so much in the stomachic articles 
of clove, or in brandy and water warm, since the Inquest. The moment the 
potboy heard what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to the 
shoulders, and said, "There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry, 
Young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines; and returned in triumph at a 
jolting gallop, perched up aloft on the Phoenix, and holding on to that 
fabulous creature with all his might, in the midst of helmets and torches. 
One helmet remains behind, after careful investigation of all chinks and 
crannies; and slowly paces up and down before the house, in company with 
one of the two policemen who have been likewise left in charge thereof. To 
this trio, everybody in the court, possessed of sixpence, has an insatiate 
desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid form.
Mr Weevle and his friend Mr Guppy are within the bar at the Sol, and are 
worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains, if they will only stay 
there. "This is not a time," says Mr Bogsby, "to haggle about money," 
though he looks something sharply at it over the counter; "give your 
orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever you put a name 
to."
Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr Weevle especially) put names to so 
many things, that in course of time they find it difficult to put a name to 
anything quite distinctly; though they still relate, to all newcomers, some 
version of the night they have had of it, and of what they said, and what 
they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile, one or other of the policemen 
often flits about the door, and pushing it open a little way at the full 
length of his arm, looks in from outer gloom. Not that he has any 
suspicions, but that he may as well know what they are up to in there.
Thus, night pursues its leaden course; finding the court still out of bed 
through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated, still 
conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little money left it 
unexpectedly. Thus, night at length with slow-retreating steps departs, and 
the lamplighter going his rounds, like an executioner to a despotic king, 
strikes off the little heads of fire that have aspired to lessen the 
darkness. Thus, the day cometh, whether or no.
And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court has 
been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on 
tables, and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the 
brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. 
And now the neighbourhood waking up, and beginning to hear of what has 
happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two 
policemen and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the 
court) have enough to do to keep the door.
"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr Snagsby, coming up. "What's this I 
hear!"
"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is. Now 
move on here, come!"
"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr Snagsby, somewhat promptly backed 
away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven o'clock, in 
conversation with the young man who lodges here."
"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next door, 
then. Now move on here, some of you."
"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr Snagsby.
"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"
Mr Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this, or any other question, in his 
troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms, and finds Mr Weevle languishing 
over tea and toast; with a considerable expression on him of exhausted 
excitement, and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
"And Mr Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What a fate 
there seems in all this! And my lit - "
Mr Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the words "my 
little woman." For, to see that injured female walk into the Sol's Arms at 
that hour of the morning and stand before the beer-engine, with her eyes 
fixed upon him like an accusing spirit, strikes him dumb.
"My dear," says Mr Snagsby, when his tongue is loosened, "will you take 
anything? A little - not to put too fine a point upon it - drop of shrub?"
"No," says Mrs Snagsby.
"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
"Yes!" says Mrs Snagsby; and in a rigid manner acknowledges their presence, 
still fixing Mr Snagsby with her eye.
The devoted Mr Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs Snagsby by 
the hand, and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do it."
"I can't help my look," says Mrs Snagsby, "and if I could I wouldn't."
Mr Snagsby with his cough of meekness, rejoins, - "Wouldn't you really, my 
dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble, and says, "This is 
a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully disconcerted by Mrs Snagsby's 
eye.
"It is," returns Mrs Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful mystery."
"My little woman," urges Mr Snagsby, in a piteous manner, "don't for 
goodness sake, speak to me with that bitter expression, and look at me in 
that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good lord, you 
don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any person, my 
dear?"
"I can't say," returns Mrs Snagsby.
On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr Snagsby "can't say," 
either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have had 
something to do with it. He has had something - he don't know what - to do 
with so much in this connection that is mysterious, that it is possible he 
may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction. He 
faintly wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, and gasps.
"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections to 
mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your conduct, 
you come into a Wine Vaults before breakfast?"
"Why do you come here?" inquires Mrs Snagsby.
"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has 
happened to the venerable party who has been - combusted." Mr Snagsby has 
made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have related them to you, 
my love, over your French roll."
"I dare say you would. You relate everything to me, Mr Snagsby."
"Every - my lit -?"
"I should be glad," says Mrs Snagsby, after contemplating his increased 
confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "If you would come home with 
me; I think you may be safer there, Mr Snagsby, than anywhere else."
"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to go."
Mr Snagsby casts his eyes forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs. Weevle and 
Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with which he sees 
them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs Snagsby from the Sol's Arms. Before 
night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable 
part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood, is 
almost resolved into certainty by Mrs Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed 
gaze. His mental sufferings are so great, that he entertains wandering 
ideas of delivering himself up to justice, and requiring to be cleared, if 
innocent, and punished with the utmost rigour of the law, if guilty.
Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into Lincoln's 
Inn to take a little walk about the square, and clear as many of the dark 
cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.
"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says Mr 
Guppy, after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the square, 
"for a word or two between us, upon a point on which we must, with very 
little delay, come to an understanding."
"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his companion 
with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you needn't take the 
trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that, and I ain't going to have 
any more. We shall have you taking fire next, or blowing up with a bang."
This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr Guppy that his 
voice quakes, as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have thought that 
what we went through last night, would have been a lesson to you never to 
be personal any more as long as you lived." To which Mr Weevle returns, 
"William, I should have thought it would have been a lesson to you never to 
conspire any more as long as you lived." To which Mr Guppy says, "Who's 
conspiring?" To which Mr Jobling replies, "Why, you are!" To which Mr Guppy 
retorts, "No, I am not." To which Mr Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" 
To which Mr Guppy retorts, "Who says so?" To which Mr Jobling retorts, "I 
say so!" To which Mr Guppy retorts, "Oh, indeed!" To which Mr Jobling 
retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both being now in a heated state, they walk on 
silently for a while, to cool down again.
"Tony," says Mr Guppy, then, "if you heard your friend out, instead of 
flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is hasty, 
and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all that is 
calculated to charm the eye - "
"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what you have 
got to say!"
Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr Guppy only 
expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of injury in 
which he recommences:
"Tony, when I say there is a point on which we must come to an 
understanding pretty soon, I say so quite apart from any conspiring, 
however innocent. You know it is professionally arranged beforehand, in all 
cases that are tried, what facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it, or is 
it not, desirable that we should know what facts we are to prove, on the 
inquiry into the death of this unfortunate old Mo - gentleman?" (Mr Guppy 
was going to say, Mogul, but thinks gentleman better suited to the 
circumstances.)
"What facts? The facts."
"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are - " Mr Guppy tells them off 
on his fingers - "what we knew of his habits; when you saw him last; what 
his condition was then; the discovery that we made; and how we made it."
"Yes," said Mr Weevle. "Those are about the facts."
"We made the discovery, in consequence of his having, in his eccentric way, 
an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you were to 
explain some writing to him, as you had often done before, on account of 
his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with you, was called 
down - and so forth. The inquiry being only into the circumstances touching 
the death of the deceased, it's not necessary to go beyond these facts, I 
suppose you'll agree?"
"No!" returns Mr Weevle. "I suppose not."
"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I withdraw the 
observation."
"Now, Tony," says Mr Guppy, taking his arm again, and walking him slowly 
on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you have yet thought 
over the many advantages of your continuing to live at that place?"
"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.
"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing 
to live at that place?" repeats Mr Guppy, walking him on again.
"At what place? That place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and 
bottle shop.
Mr Guppy nods.
"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there, for any consideration that you 
could offer me," says Mr Weevle haggardly staring.
"Do you mean it, though, Tony?"
"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that," says 
Mr Weevle, with a very genuine shudder.
"Then the possibility or probability - for such it must be considered - of 
your never being disturbed in possession of those effects, lately belonging 
to a lone old man who seemed to have no relation in the world; and the 
certainty of your being able to find out what he really had got stored up 
there; don't weigh with you at all against last night, Tony, if I 
understand you?" says Mr Guppy, biting his thumb with the appetite of 
vexation.
"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?" cries Mr 
Weevle, indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."
"O! I, Tony!" says Mr Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived there, and 
couldn't get a lodging there now; whereas you have got one."
"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and - ugh! - you may make 
yourself at home in it."
"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr Guppy, "give up the 
whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"
"You never," returns Tony, with a most convincing steadfastness, "said a 
truer word in all your life. I do!"
While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square, on 
the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to the 
public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the 
multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach stops 
almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr Smallweed and Mrs Smallweed, 
accompanied by their granddaughter Judy. An air of haste and excitement 
pervades the party; and as the tall hat (surmounting Mr Smallweed the 
younger) alights, Mr Smallweed the elder pokes his head out of window, and 
bawls to Mr Guppy, "How de do, sir! How de do!"
"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning, I 
wonder!" says Mr Guppy, nodding to his familiar.
"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a favour? 
Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me into the 
public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring their 
grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn, sir?"
Mr Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "the public-house in 
the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable burden to the Sol's 
Arms.
"There's your fare!" says the Patriarch to the coachman with a fierce grin, 
and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more, and I'll 
have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy with me, if you 
please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't squeeze you tighter 
than I can help. O Lord! O dear me! O my bones!"
It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr Weevle presents an 
apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With no 
worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of divers 
croaking sounds, expressive of obstructive respiration, he fulfils his 
share of the porterage, and the benevolent old gentleman is deposited by 
his own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
"O Lord!" gasps Mr Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from an 
armchair. "O dear me! O my bones and back! O my aches and pains! Sit down, 
you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling poll parrot! Sit down!"
This little apostrophe to Mrs Smallweed is occasioned by a propensity on 
the part of that unlucky old lady, whenever she finds herself on her feet, 
to amble about, and "set" to inanimate objects, accompanying herself with a 
chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A nervous affection has probably as 
much to do with these demonstrations, as any imbecile intention in the poor 
old woman; but on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in 
connection with the Windsor armchair, fellow to that in which Mr Smallweed 
is seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held her 
down in it: her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with great 
volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pigheaded Jackdaw," repeated a 
surprising number of times.
"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr Guppy, 
"there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either of you?"
"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, they discovered it!"
The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the compliment.
"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his 
hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy office 
of discovering the ashes of Mrs Smallweed's brother."
"Eh?" says Mr Guppy.
"Mrs Smallweed's brother, my dear friend - her only relation. We were not 
on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never would be on terms. He 
was not fond of us. He was eccentric - he was very eccentric. Unless he has 
left a will (which is not at all likely) I shall take out letters of 
administration. I have come down to look after the property; it must be 
sealed up, it must be protected. I have come down," repeats Grandfather 
Smallweed, hooking the air towards him with all his ten fingers at once, 
"to look after the property."
"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr Guppy, "you might have mentioned 
that the old man was your uncle."
"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to be the 
same," returns that old bird, with a secretly glistening eye. "Besides, I 
wasn't proud of him."
"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or not," 
says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.
"He never saw me in his life, to know me," observed Small; "I don't know 
why I should introduce him, I am sure!"
"No, he never communicated with us - which is to be deplored," the old 
gentleman strikes in; "but I have come to look after the property - to look 
over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make good our 
title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr Tulkinghorn, of Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as my solicitor; and grass 
don't grow under his feet, I can tell ye. Krook was Mrs Smallweed's only 
brother; she had no relation but Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs 
Smallweed. I am speaking of your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that 
was seventy-six years of age."
Mrs Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head, and pipe up, "Seventy-six 
pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of money! Seventy-six 
hundred thousand million of parcels of banknotes!"
"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated husband, 
looking helplessly about him, and finding no missile within his reach. 
"Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody hand me anything 
hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone 
barker!" Here Mr Smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own 
eloquence, actually throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything 
else, by butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he 
can muster, and then dropping into his chair in a heap.
"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from within 
the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I have come to 
look after the property. Shake me up; and call in the police on duty at the 
next house, to be explained to about the property. My solicitor will be 
here presently to protect the property. Transportation or the gallows for 
anybody who shall touch the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him 
up, panting, and putting him through the usual restorative process of 
shaking and punching, he still repeats like an echo, "the - the property! 
The property! - property!"
Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy look at each other; the former as having 
relinquished the whole affair; the latter with a discomfited countenance, 
as having entertained some lingering expectations yet. But there is nothing 
to be done in opposition to the Smallweed interest. Mr Tulkinghorn's clerk 
comes down from his official pew in the chambers, to mention to the police 
that Mr Tulkinghorn is answerable for its being all correct about the next 
of kin, and that the papers and effects will be formally taken possession 
of in due time and course. Mr Smallweed is at once permitted so far to 
assert his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next 
house, and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks like a 
hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.
The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court, still 
makes good for the Sol, and keeps the court upon its mettle. Mrs Piper and 
Mrs Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there really is no will, 
and consider that a handsome present ought to be made him out of the 
estate. Young Piper and Young Perkins, as members of that restless juvenile 
circle which is the terror of the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble 
into ashes behind the pump and under the archway, all day long; where wild 
yells and hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. 
Melvilleson entered into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling 
that these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals and 
non-professionals. Mr Bogsby puts up "The popular song of King Death! with 
chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the great harmonic feature 
of the week; and announces in the bill that "J. G. B. is induced to do so 
at a considerable extra expense, in consequence of a wish which has been 
very generally expressed at the bar by a large body of respectable 
individuals and in homage to a late melancholy event which has aroused so 
much sensation." There is one point connected with the deceased, upon which 
the court is particularly anxious; namely, that the fiction of a full-sized 
coffin should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon 
the undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day, that he 
has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general solicitude is 
much relieved, and it is considered that Mr Smallweed's conduct does him 
great honour.
Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable 
excitement too; for men of science and philosophy come to look, and 
carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same intent, 
and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and phosphuretted 
hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of these authorities (of 
course the wisest) hold with indignation that the deceased had no business 
to die in the alleged manner; and being reminded by other authorities of a 
certain inquiry into the evidence for such deaths, reprinted in the sixth 
volume of the Philosophical Transactions; and also of a book not quite 
unknown, on English Medical Jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case 
of the Countess Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, 
prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so, and was 
occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and 
also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen 
who would investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative 
testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once upon 
a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case 
occurred, and even to write an account of it; - still they regard the late 
Mr Krook's obstinacy, in going out of the world by any such by-way, as 
wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the court 
understands of all this, the more the court likes it; and the greater 
enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms. Then, there comes 
the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground and figures ready 
drawn for anything, from a wreck on the Cornish coast to a review in Hyde 
Park, or a meeting at Manchester, - and in Mrs Perkins's own room, 
memorable evermore, he then and there throws in upon the block, Mr Krook's 
house, as large as life; in fact considerably larger, making a very temple 
of it. Similarly, being permitted to look in at the door of the fatal 
chamber, he depicts that apartment as three quarters of a mile long, by 
fifty yards high; at which the court is particularly charmed. All this 
time, the two gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house, and 
assist at the philosophical disputations - go everywhere, and listen to 
everybody, - and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour, and writing 
with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that the 
coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way, and tells the 
gentlemen of the Jury, in his private capacity, that "that would seem to be 
an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined house; but so we 
sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't account for!" After 
which the six-footer comes into action, and is much admired.
In all these proceedings Mr Guppy has so slight a part, except when he 
gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual, and can 
only haunt the secret house on the outside; where he has the mortification 
of seeing Mr Smallweed padlocking the door. But before these proceedings 
draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the catastrophe, 
Mr Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady Dedlock.
For which reason, with a sinking heart, and with that hang-dog sense of 
guilt upon him, which dread and watching, enfolded in the Sol's Arms, have 
produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at the town 
mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening, and requests to see her 
ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner; don't he see the 
carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage at the door; but he 
wants to see my lady too.
Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a fellow gentleman in 
waiting, "to pitch into the young man;" but his instructions are positive. 
Therefore he sulkily supposes that the young man must come up into the 
library. There he leaves the young man in a large room, not overlight, 
while he makes report of him.
Mr Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering everywhere a 
certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or wood. Presently he 
hears a rustling. Is it -? No, it's no ghost; but fair flesh and blood, 
most brilliantly dressed.
"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr Guppy stammers, very downcast. 
"This is an inconvenient time - "
"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking 
straight at him as on the last occasion.
"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."
"You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.
"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down and 
detaining you, for I - I have not got the letters that I mentioned when I 
had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."
"Have you come merely to say so?"
"Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr Guppy besides being depressed, 
disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the splendour 
and beauty of her appearance. She knows its influence perfectly; has 
studied it too well to miss a grain of its effect on any one. As she looks 
at him so steadily and coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no 
guide, in the least perception of what is really the complexion of her 
thoughts; but also that he is being every moment, as it were, removed 
further and further from her.
She will not speak it is plain. So he must.
"In short, your ladyship," says Mr Guppy, like a meanly penitent thief, 
"the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a sudden end, and 
- " He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the sentence.
"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
Mr Guppy would say no, if he could - as he is unable to hide.
"I believe so, your ladyship."
If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he could 
see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly put him away, 
and he were not looking beyond it and about it.
He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.
"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard him out -
 or as nearly out as he can stumble.
Mr Guppy thinks that's all.
"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me; this being 
the last time you will have the opportunity."
Mr Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present, by any 
means.
"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!" and 
she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy out.
But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old man of 
the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his quiet footstep 
to the library, has his hand at that moment on the handle of the door - 
comes in - and comes face to face with the young man as he is leaving the 
room.
One glance between the old man and the lady; and for an instant the blind 
that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out. 
Another instant; close again.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times, It is 
so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the room was 
empty. I beg your pardon!"
"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am going out 
to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes that 
Mr Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
"Ay, ay?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent brows; though 
he has no need to look again - not he. "From Kenge and Carboy's, surely?"
"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr Guppy, I am very well!"
"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of the 
profession."
"Thank you, Mr Guppy!"
Mr Guppy sneaks away. Mr Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his old-fashioned 
rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her down the staircase to 
her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and rubs it a good deal in the 
course of the evening.


Chapter 34

A Turn Of The Screw

"Now, what," says Mr George, "may this be? Is it blank cartridge, or ball? 
A flash in the pan, or a shot?"
An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it seems 
to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's length, brings it close to 
him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left hand, reads it with 
his head on this side, with his head on that side, contracts his eyebrows, 
elevates them; still, cannot satisfy himself. He smooths it out upon the 
table with his heavy palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the 
gallery, makes a halt before it every now and then, to come upon it with a 
fresh eye. Even that won't do. "Is it," Mr George muses, "blank cartridge 
or ball?"
Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the 
distance whitening the targets; softly whistling, in quick-march time, and 
in drum-and-fife manner, that he must and he will go back again to the girl 
he left behind him.
"Phil!" The trooper beckons as he calls him.
Phil approaches in his usual way; sidling off at first as if he were going 
anywhere else, and then bearing down upon his commander like a bayonet-
charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon his dirty face, 
and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of his brush.
"Attention, Phil! Listen to this."
"Steady, commander, steady."
"'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for my 
doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date, drawn on 
yourself by Mr Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the sum of ninety-
seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become due tomorrow, when 
you will please be prepared to take up the same on presentation. Yours, 
Joshua Smallweed.' - What do you make of that, Phil?"
"Mischief, guv'ner."
"Why?"
"I think," replies Phil, after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle in his 
forehead with the brush handle, "that mischeevious consequences is always 
meant when money's asked for."
"Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "First and last, I 
have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal, in interest and 
one thing and another."
Phil intimates, by sidling back a pace or two, with a very unaccountable 
wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the transaction as being 
made more promising by this incident.
"And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature 
conclusions with a wave of his hand. "There has always been an 
understanding that this bill was to be what they call Renewed. And it has 
been renewed, no end of times. What do you say now?"
"I say that I think the times is come to a end at last."
"You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself."
"Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?"
"The same."
"Guv'ner," says Phil, with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his 
dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his 
twistings, and a lobster in his claws."
Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr Squod, after waiting a 
little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of him, gets back, by 
his usual series of movements, to the target he has in hand; and vigorously 
signifies, through his former musical medium, that he must and he will 
return to that ideal young lady. George having folded the letter, walks in 
that direction.
"There is a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him, "of 
settling this."
"Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could."
Phil shakes his head. "No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There is a 
way," says Phil, with a highly artistic turn of his brush - "what I'm a 
doing at present."
"Whitewashing."
Phil nods.
"A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the Bagnets 
in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my old scores? 
you're a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing him in his large way 
with no small indignation, "upon my life you are, Phil!"
Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting earnestly, 
though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush, and smoothings of 
the white surface round the rim with his thumb, that he had forgotten the 
Bagnet responsibility, and would not so much as injure a hair of the head 
of any member of that worthy family, when steps are audible in the long 
passage without, and a cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is 
at home. Phil, with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the 
guv'ner, Mrs Bagnet! Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by 
Mr Bagnet, appears.
The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the year, 
without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very clean, which is, 
undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so interesting to Mr Bagnet by 
having made its way home to Europe from another quarter of the globe, in 
company with Mrs Bagnet and an umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is 
also invariably a part of the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no 
colour known in this life, and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, 
with a metallic object let into its prow or beak, resembling a little model 
of a fan-light over a street door, or one of the oval glasses out of a pair 
of spectacles: which ornamental object has not that tenacious capacity of 
sticking to its post that might be desired in an article long associated 
with the British army. The old girl's umbrella is of a flabby habit of 
waist, and seems to be in need of stays - an appearance that is possibly 
referable to its having served, through a series of years, at home as a 
cupboard, and on journeys as a carpet bag. She never puts it up, having the 
greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood; but 
generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of 
meat or bunches of greens in marketing, or to arrest the attention of 
tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a sort of 
wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad. Attended by 
these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking 
cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs Bagnet now arrives, fresh-
coloured and bright, in George's Shooting Gallery.
"Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do you do, this sunshiny 
morning?"
Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs Bagnet draws a long breath 
after her walk, and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a faculty, matured on 
the tops of baggage-wagons, and in other such positions, of resting easily 
anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, unties her bonnet strings, pushes 
back her bonnet, crosses her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable.
Mr Bagnet, in the mean time, has shaken hands with his old comrade, and 
with Phil: on whom Mrs Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod and 
smile.
"Now, George," says Mrs Bagnet, briskly, "here we are, Lignum and myself;" 
she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is 
supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they 
first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and 
toughness of his physiognomy; "just looked in, we have, to make it all 
correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, 
George, and he'll sign it like a man."
"I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper, reluctantly.
"Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out early, 
and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters, and came to you 
instead - as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so close now, and gets so 
little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what's the matter, George?" 
asks Mrs Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk. "You don't look yourself."
"I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little put 
out, Mrs Bagnet."
Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "George!" holding up her 
forefinger. "Don't tell me there's anything wrong about that security of 
Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the children!"
The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.
"George," says Mrs Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis, and 
occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "If you have 
allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's, and if you 
have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of being sold up - 
and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as print - you have done a 
shameful action, and deceived us cruelly. I tell you, cruelly, George. 
There!"
Mr Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his large 
right hand on the top of his bald head, as if to defend it from a shower-
bath, and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs Bagnet.
"George!" says that old girl. "I wonder at you! George, I am ashamed of 
you! George, I couldn't have believed you would have done it! I always knew 
you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss; but I never thought you 
would have taken away what little moss there was for Bagnet and the 
children to lie upon. You know what a hard-working steady-going chap he is. 
You know that Quebec and Malta and Woolwich are - and I never did think you 
would, or could, have had the heart to serve us so. O George!" Mrs Bagnet 
gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on, in a very genuine manner, "How 
could you do it?"
Mrs Bagnet ceasing, Mr Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if the 
shower-bath were over, and looks disconsolately at Mr George; who has 
turned quite white, and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and straw 
bonnet.
"Mat," says the trooper, in a subdued voice, addressing him, but still 
looking at his wife; "I am sorry you take it so much to heart, because I do 
hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have, this morning, 
received this letter; which he reads aloud; "but I hope it may be set right 
yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you say is true. I am a rolling 
stone; and I never rolled in anybody's way, I fully believe, that I rolled 
the least good to. But it's impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like 
your wife and family better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust you'll look 
upon me as forgivingly as you can. Don't think I've kept anything from you. 
I haven't had the letter more than a quarter of an hour."
"Old girl!" murmurs Mr Bagnet, after a short silence, "will you tell him my 
opinion?"
"O! Why didn't he marry," Mrs Bagnet answers, half laughing and half 
crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America? Then he wouldn't have got 
himself into these troubles."
"The old girl," says Mr Bagnet, "puts it correct - why didn't you?"
"Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the trooper. 
"Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, not married to Joe Pouch's widder. 
What shall I do? You see all I have got about me. It's not mine; it's 
yours. Give the word, and I'll sell off every morsel. If I could have hoped 
it would have brought in nearly the sum wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. 
Don't believe that I'll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell 
myself first. I only wish," says the trooper, giving himself a disparaging 
blow in the chest, "that I knew of anyone who'd buy such a second-hand 
piece of old stores."
Old girl," murmurs Mr Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind."
"George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on full 
consideration, except for ever taking this business without the means."
"And that was like me!" observed the penitent trooper, shaking his head. 
"Like me, I know."
"Silence! The old girl," says Mr Bagnet, "is correct - in her way of giving 
my opinions - hear me out!"
"That was when you never ought to have asked for the security, George, and 
when you never ought to have got it, all things considered. But what's done 
can't be undone. You are always an honourable and straight-forward fellow, 
as far as lays in your power, though a little flighty. On the other hand, 
you can't admit but what it's natural in us to be anxious, with such a 
thing hanging over our heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. 
Come! Forget and forgive all round!"
Mrs Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands, and giving her husband the 
other, Mr George gives each of them one of his, and holds them while he 
speaks.
"I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge this 
obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together, has gone 
every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough here, Phil 
and I. But the Gallery don't quite do what was expected of it, and it's not 
- in short, it's not the Mint. It was wrong in me to take it? Well, so it 
was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step, and I thought it might 
steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to overlook my having such 
expectations, and upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very 
much ashamed of myself." With these concluding words, Mr George gives a 
shake to each of the hands he holds, and, relinquishing them, backs a pace 
or two, in a broad-chested upright attitude, as if he had made a final 
confession, and were immediately going to be shot with all military 
honours.
"George, hear me out!" says Mr Bagnet, glancing at his wife. "Old girl, go 
on!"
Mr Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to observe 
that the letter must be attended to without any delay; that it is advisable 
that George and he should immediately wait on Mr Smallweed in person; and 
that the primary object is to save and hold harmless Mr Bagnet, who had 
none of the money. Mr George entirely assenting, puts on his hat, and 
prepares to march with Mr Bagnet to the enemy's camp.
"Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs Bagnet, patting him 
on the shoulder. "I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am sure you'll bring 
him through it."
The trooper returns, that this is kindly said, and that he will bring 
Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs Bagnet, with her cloak, basket, 
and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of her family; and 
the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of mollifying Mr Smallweed.
Whether there are two people in England less likely to come satisfactorily 
out of any negotiation with Mr Smallweed than Mr George and Mr Matthew 
Bagnet, may be very reasonably questioned. Also, notwithstanding their 
martial appearance, broad square shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there 
are, within the same limits, two more simple and unaccustomed children, in 
all the Smallweedy affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity 
through the streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr Bagnet, 
observing his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to 
refer to Mrs Bagnet's late sally.
"George, you know the old girl - she's as sweet and as mild as milk. But 
touch her on the children - or myself - and she's off like gunpowder."
"It does her credit, Mat!"
"George," says Mr Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old girl - 
can't do anything - that don't do her credit. More or less. I never say so. 
Discipline must be maintained."
"She's worth her weight in gold," returns the trooper.
"In gold?" says Mr Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's weight - is 
twelve stone six. Would I take that weight - in any metal - for the old 
girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is far more precious - than 
the preciousest metal. And she's all metal!"
"You are right, Mat!"
"When she took me - and accepted of the ring - she 'listed under me and the 
children - heart and head; for life. She's that earnest," says Mr Bagnet, 
"and true to her colours - that, touch us with a finger - and she turns out 
- and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires wide - once in a way - at 
the call of duty - look over it, George. For she's loyal!"
"Why bless her, Mat!" returns the trooper, "I think the higher of her for 
it!"
"You are right!" says Mr Bagnet, with the warmest enthusiasm, though 
without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "Think as high of the old 
girl - as the rock of Gibraltar - and still you'll be thinking low - of 
such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be 
maintained."
These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant, and to Grandfather 
Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who, having 
surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but indeed with a 
malignant sneer, leaves them standing there, while she consults the oracle 
as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred to give consent, from the 
circumstance of her returning with the words on her honey lips "that they 
can come in if they want to it." Thus privileged they come in, and find Mr 
Smallweed with his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper 
footbath, and Mrs Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is 
not to sing.
"My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, with those two lean 
affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "How de do? How de do? Who is our 
friend, my dear friend?"
"Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at first, "is 
Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours, you know."
"Oh! Mr Bagnet? Surely!" the old man looks at him under his hand. "Hope 
you're well, Mr Bagnet? Fine man, Mr George! Military air, sir!"
No chairs being offered, Mr George brings one forward for Bagnet, and one 
for himself. They sit down; Mr Bagnet as if he had no power of bending 
himself, except at the hips for that purpose.
"Judy," says Mr Smallweed, "bring the pipe."
"Why, I don't know," Mr George interposes, "that the young woman need give 
herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not inclined to smoke 
it today."
"Ain't you?" returns the old man. "Judy, bring the pipe."
"The fact is, Mr Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself in rather 
an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your friend in the 
city has been playing tricks."
"O dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "He never does that!"
"Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be his 
doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter."
Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way, in recognition of the 
letter.
"What does it mean?" asks Mr George.
"Judy," says the old man, "have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did you 
say what does it mean, my good friend?"
"Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr Smallweed," urges the trooper, 
constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he can, 
holding the open letter in one hand, and resting the broad knuckles of the 
other on his thigh; "a good lot of money has passed between us, and we are 
face to face at the present moment, and are both well aware of the 
understanding there has always been. I am prepared to do the usual thing 
which I have done regularly, and to keep this matter going. I never got a 
letter like this from you before, and I have been a little put about by it 
this morning; because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had 
none of the money - "
"I don't know it, you know," says the old man, quietly.
"Why, confound you - it, I mean - I tell you so; don't I?"
"Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. "But I don't know 
it."
"Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "I know it."
Mr Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah! that's quite another 
thing!" And adds, "but it don't matter. Mr Bagnet's situation is all one, 
whether or no."
The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair 
comfortably, and to propitiate Mr Smallweed by taking him upon his own 
terms.
"That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr Smallweed, here's Matthew Bagnet 
liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his good lady 
very uneasy in her mind, and me too; for, whereas I'm a harum-scarum sort 
of a good-for-nought, that more kicks than halfpence come natural to, why 
he's a steady family man, don't you see? Now, Mr Smallweed," says the 
trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds in this soldierly mode of doing 
business; "although you and I are good friends enough in a certain sort of 
a way, I am well aware that I can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet off 
entirely."
"O dear, you are too modest. You can ask me anything, Mr George." (There is 
an Ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed today.)
"And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as your 
friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"
"Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner, and 
with eyes so particularly green, that Mr Bagnet's natural gravity is much 
deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.
"Come!" says the sanguine George, "I am glad to find we can be pleasant, 
because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend Bagnet, and 
here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, Mr 
Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend Bagnet's mind, and 
his family's mind, a good deal, if you'll just mention to him what our 
understanding is."
Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "O good gracious! 
O!" - unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found to be silent 
when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin has received a recent 
toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr Bagnet's gravity becomes yet 
more profound.
"But I think you asked me, Mr George;" old Smallweed, who all this time had 
the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now; "I think you asked me, what did 
the letter mean?"
"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper, in his offhand way: "but I don't 
care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."
Mr Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's head, 
throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.
"That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. 
I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"
The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr Bagnet's gravity has now 
attained its profoundest point.
"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your pipe-
smoking and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon, too! Go to my 
lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before), and show your 
independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend, there's a chance for you. 
Open the street door, Judy; put these blusterers out! Call in help if they 
don't go. Put 'em out!"
He vociferates this so loudly, that Mr Bagnet, laying his hands on the 
shoulders of his comrade, before the latter can recover from his amazement, 
gets him on the outside of the street-door; which is instantly slammed by 
the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr George awhile stands looking at 
the knocker. Mr Bagnet, in a perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down 
before the little parlour window, like a sentry, and looks in every time he 
passes; apparently revolving something in his mind.
"Come, Mat!" says Mr George, when he has recovered himself, "we must try 
the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?"
Mr Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour, replies, with 
one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my old girl had been 
here - I'd have told him!" Having so discharged himself of the subject of 
his cogitations, he falls into step, and marches off with the trooper, 
shoulder to shoulder.
When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr Tulkinghorn is 
engaged, and not to be seen. He is nor at all willing to see them: for when 
they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell being rung, takes 
the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings no more encouraging 
message than that Mr Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them, they had 
better not wait. They do wait, however with the perseverance of military 
tactics; and at last the bell rings again and the client in possession 
comes out of Mr Tulkinghorn's room.
The client is a handsome old lady; no other than Mrs Rouncewell, 
housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a fair old-
fashioned curtsey, and softly shuts the door. She is treated with some 
distinction there; for the clerk steps out of his pew to show her through 
the outer office, and to let her out. The old lady is thanking him for his 
attention, when she observes the comrades in waiting.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?"
The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr George not 
turning round from the almanack over the fireplace, Mr Bagnet takes upon 
himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am. Formerly."
"I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the sight of 
you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you, gentlemen! You'll 
excuse an old woman; but I had a son once who went for a soldier. A fine 
handsome youth he was, and good in his bold way, though some people did 
disparage him to his poor mother. I ask your pardon for troubling you, sir. 
God bless you, gentlemen!"
"Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr Bagnet, with right good will.
There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady's 
voice, and in the tremble that goes through the quaint old figure. But Mr 
George is so occupied with the almanack over the fireplace (calculating the 
coming months by it, perhaps), that he does not look round until she has 
gone away, and the door is closed upon her.
"George," Mr Bagnet gruffly whispers, when he does turn from the almanack 
at last. "Don't be cast down! 'Why soldiers, why - should we be melancholy 
boys?' Cheer up, my hearty!"
The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there, and Mr 
Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility, "Let 'em come in 
then!" they pass into the great room with the painted ceiling, and find him 
standing before the fire.
"Now you men, what do you want? Serjeant, I told you the last time I saw 
you that I don't desire your company here."
Serjeant replies - dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual 
manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage - that he has received 
this letter, has been to Mr Smallweed about it, and has been referred 
there.
"I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr Tulkinghorn. "If you get into 
debt, you must pay your debts, or take the consequences. You have no 
occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?"
Serjeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.
"Very well! then the other man - this man, if this is he - must pay it for 
you."
Serjeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the money 
either.
"Very well! Then you must pay it between you, or you must both be sued for 
it, and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it. You are not 
to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and pence, and escape scot 
free."
The lawyer sits down in his easy chair and stirs the fire. Mr George hopes 
he will have the goodness to -
"I tell you, Serjeant, I have nothing to say to you. I don't like your 
associates, and don't want you here. This matter is not at all in my course 
of practice, and is not in my office. Mr Smallweed is good enough to offer 
these affairs to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to 
Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn."
"I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr George, "for pressing myself 
upon you with so little encouragement - which is almost as unpleasant to me 
as it can be to you; but would you let me say a private word to you?"
Mr Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets, and walks into one of 
the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste." In the midst of his 
perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp look at the trooper; 
taking care to stand with his own back to the light, and to have the other 
with his face towards it.
"Well, sir," says Mr George, "this man with me is the other party 
implicated in this unfortunate affair - nominally, only nominally - and my 
sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account. He is a 
most respectable man with a wife and family; formerly in the Royal 
Artillery - "
"My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal Artillery 
establishment - officers, men, tumbrils, wagons, horses, guns, and 
ammunition."
"'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and 
family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through this 
matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any other 
consideration, what you wanted of me the other day."
"Have you got it here?"
"I have got it here, sir."
"Serjeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far more 
hopeless in dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make up your mind 
while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have finished speaking I 
have closed the subject, and I won't reopen it. Understand that. You can 
leave here, for a few days, what you say you have brought here, if you 
choose; you can take it away at once, if you choose. In case you choose to 
leave it here, I can do this for you - I can replace this matter on its old 
footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking 
that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been 
proceeded against to the utmost - that your means shall be exhausted before 
the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you 
decided?"
The trooper puts his hand into his breast, and answers with a long breath, 
"I must do it, sir."
So Mr Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes the 
undertaking; which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who has all this 
time been staring at the ceiling, and who puts his hands on his bald head 
again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems exceedingly in need of 
the old girl through whom to express his sentiments. The trooper then takes 
from his breast-pocket a folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand 
at the lawyer's elbow. "'Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I 
ever had from him."
Look at a millstone, Mr George, for some change in its expression, and you 
will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr Tulkinghorn when he opens 
and reads the letter! He refolds it, and lays it in his desk, with a 
countenance as imperturbable as Death.
Nor has he anything more to say or do, but to nod once in the same frigid 
and discourteous manner, and to say briefly, "You can go. Show these men 
out, there!" Being shown out, they repair to Mr Bagnet's residence to dine.
Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former repast of 
boiled pork and greens; and Mrs Bagnet serves out the meal in the same way, 
and seasons it with the best of temper: being that rare sort of old girl 
that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better; 
and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her. The spot on 
this occasion is the darkened brow of Mr George; he is unusually thoughtful 
and depressed. At first Mrs Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of 
Quebec and Malta to restore him; but finding those young ladies sensible 
that their existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome 
acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry, and leaves him to deploy at 
leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.
But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed. During 
the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr Bagnet are 
supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at dinner. He 
forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his pipe out, fills 
the breast of Mr Bagnet with perturbation and dismay, by showing he has no 
enjoyment of tobacco.
Therefore when Mrs Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the invigorating pail, 
and sits down to her work, Mr Bagnet growls "Old girl!" and winks monitions 
to her to find out what's the matter.
"Why, George!" says Mrs Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. "How low you 
are!"
"Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not."
"He ain't at all like Bluffy, mother!" cries little Malta.
"Because he ain't well, I think, mother!" adds Quebec.
"Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the trooper, 
kissing the young damsels. "But it's true," with a sigh - "true, I am 
afraid. These little ones are always right!"
"George," says Mrs Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross enough 
to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife - who could have 
bitten her tongue off afterwards, and ought to have done it almost - said 
this morning, I don't know what I should say to you now."
"My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "Not a morsel of it."
"Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say, was that I 
trusted Lignum to you, and was sure you'd bring him through it. And you 
have brought him through it, noble!"
"Thank'ee, my dear," says George. "I am glad of your good opinion."
In giving Mrs Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly shake - for 
she took her seat beside him - the trooper's attention is attracted to her 
face. After looking at it for a little while as she plies her needle, he 
looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in the corner, and beckons 
that fifer to him.
"See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the mother's hair 
with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for you! All bright with 
love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the weather through 
following your father about and taking care of you, but as fresh and 
wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree."
Mr Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, the 
highest approbation and acquiescence.
"The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair of your 
mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and recrossed with 
wrinkles - and a fine old lady she'll be then. Take care, while you are 
young, that you can think in those days, 'I never whitened a hair of her 
dear head, I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!' For of all the 
many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have 
that by you, Woolwich!"
Mr George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy besides his 
mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him, that he'll 
smoke his pipe in the street a bit.


Chapter 35

Esther's Narrative

I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life became like 
an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of time, so much as of the 
change in all my habits, made by the helplessness and inaction of a sick 
room. Before I had been confined to it many days, everything else seemed to 
have retired into a remote distance, where there was little or no 
separation between the various stages of my life which had been really 
divided by years. In falling ill, I seemed to have crossed a dark lake, and 
to have left all my experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on 
the healthy shore.
My housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to think 
that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest of the old 
duties at Greenleaf, or the summer afternoons when I went home from school 
with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish shadow at my side, to my 
godmother's house. I had never known before how short life really was, and 
into how small a space the mind could put it.
While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became 
confused with one another, distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a child, 
an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I was not only 
oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each station, but by the 
great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile them. I suppose that few 
who have not been in such a condition can quite understand what I mean, or 
what painful unrest arose from this source.
For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my disorder -
 it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both nights and days in 
it - when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever striving to reach the 
top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in a garden path, by some 
obstruction, and labouring again. I knew perfectly at intervals, and I 
think vaguely at most times, that I was in my bed; and I talked with 
Charley, and felt her touch, and knew her very well; yet I would find 
myself complaining "O more of these neverending stairs, Charley, - more and 
more - piled up to the sky, I think!" and labouring on again.
Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in great 
black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry circle of 
some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my only prayer was to 
be taken off from the rest, and when it was such inexplicable agony and 
misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?
Perhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious and the 
more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make others unhappy, 
or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering them. It may be that 
if we knew more of such strange afflictions, we might be better able to 
alleviate their intensity.
The repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful rest, 
when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself, and could 
have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying; with no other emotion than 
with a pitying love for those I left behind - this state can be perhaps 
more widely understood. I was in this state when I first shrunk from the 
light as it twinkled on me once more, and knew with a boundless joy for 
which no words are rapturous enough, that I should see again.
I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard her 
calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had heard her 
praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me, and to leave my 
bedside no more: but I had only said, when I could speak, "Never, my sweet 
girl, never!" and I had over and over again reminded Charley that she was 
to keep my darling from the room, whether I lived or died. Charley had been 
true to me in that time of need, and with her little hand and her great 
heart had kept the door fast.
But now, my sight strengthening, and the glorious light coming every day 
more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my dear wrote 
to me every morning and evening, and could put them to my lips and lay my 
cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could see my little maid, so 
tender and so careful, going about the two rooms setting everything in 
order, and speaking cheerfully to Ada from the open window again. I could 
understand the stillness in the house, and the thoughtfulness it expressed 
on the part of all those who had always been so good to me. I could weep in 
the exquisite felicity of my heart, and be as happy in my weakness as ever 
I had been in my strength.
By-and-bye, my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with so 
strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done for 
some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a little, and so on 
to a little more, and much more, until I became useful to myself, and 
interested, and attached to life again.
How well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed with 
pillows for the first time, to enjoy a great tea-drinking with Charley! The 
little creature - sent into the world, surely, to minister to the weak and 
sick - was so happy, and so busy, and stopped so often in her preparations 
to lay her head upon my bosom, and fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she 
was so glad, she was so glad! that I was obliged to say, "Charley, if you 
go on in this way, I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than 
I thought I was!" So Charley became as quiet as a mouse, and took her 
bright face here and there, across and across the two rooms, out of the 
shade into the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, 
while I watched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded 
and the pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its 
white cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and beautifully 
arranged for me by Ada downstairs, was ready at the bed-side, I felt sure I 
was steady enough to say something to Charley that was not new to my 
thoughts.
First, I complimented Charley on the room; and indeed, it was so fresh and 
airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I had been lying 
there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face was brighter than 
before.
"Yet, Charley," said I looking round, "I miss something, surely, that I am 
accustomed to?"
Poor little Charley looked round too, and pretended to shake her head, as 
if there were nothing absent.
"Are the pictures all as they used to be?" I asked her.
"Every one of them, miss," said Charley.
"And the furniture, Charley?"
"Except where I have moved it about, to make more room, miss."
"And yet," said I, "I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it is, 
Charley! It's the looking-glass."
Charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten something, 
and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there.
I had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I could thank 
God that it was not a shock to me now. I called Charley back; and when she 
came - at first pretending to smile, but as she drew nearer to me, looking 
grieved - I took her in my arms, and said, "It matters very little, 
Charley. I hope I can do without my old face very well."
I was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great chair, 
and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on Charley. The 
mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too; but what I had to 
bear, was none the harder to bear for that.
My Guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was now no 
good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He came one morning; 
and when he first came in, could only hold me in his embrace, and say, "My 
dear, dear girl!" I had long known - who could know better! - what a deep 
fountain of affection and generosity his heart was; and was it not worth my 
trivial suffering and change to fill such a place in it? "O yes!" I 
thought. "He has seen me, and he loves me better than he did; he has seen 
me, and is even fonder of me than he was before; and what have I to mourn 
for!"
He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a little 
while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed it, fell into 
his usual manner. There never can have been, there never can be, a 
pleasanter manner.
"My little woman," said he, "what a sad time this has been. Such an 
inflexible little woman, too, through all!"
"Only for the best, Guardian," said I.
"For the best?" he repeated, tenderly. "Of course, for the best. But here 
have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has your friend 
Caddy been coming and going late and early; here has everyone about the 
house been utterly lost and dejected; here has even poor Rick been writing -
 to me too - in his anxiety for you!"
I had read of Caddy in Ada's letters, but not of Richard. I told him so.
"Why no, my dear," he replied. "I have thought it better not to mention it 
to her."
"And you speak of his writing to you," said I, repeating his emphasis. "As 
if it were not natural for him to do so, Guardian; as if he could write to 
a better friend!"
"He thinks he could, my love," returned my Guardian, "and to many a better. 
The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest, while unable to write 
to you with any hope of an answer - wrote coldly, haughtily, distantly, 
resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we must look forbearingly on it. 
He is not to blame. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has warped him out of himself, 
and perverted me in his eyes. I have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, 
many a time. If two angels could be concerned in it, I believe it would 
change their nature."
"It has not changed yours, Guardian."
"O yes, it has, my dear," he said, laughingly. "It has made the south wind 
easterly, I don't know how often. Rick mistrusts and suspects me - goes to 
lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect me. Hears I have conflicting 
interests; claims clashing against his, and what not. Whereas, Heaven 
knows, that if I could get out of the mountains of Wiglomeration on which 
my unfortunate name has been so long bestowed (which I can't), or could 
level them by the extinction of my own original right (which I can't, 
either, and no human power ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have 
we got), I would do it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick his 
proper nature, than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, 
broken, heart and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed 
with the Accountant General - and that's money enough, my dear, to be cast 
into a pyramid, in memory of Chancery's transcendant wickedness."
"Is it possible, Guardian," I asked, amazed, "that Richard can be 
suspicious of you?"
"Ah, my love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of such abuses 
to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects lose their 
natural aspects in his sight. It is not his fault."
"But it is a terrible misfortune, Guardian."
"It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within the 
influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater. By little and 
little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed, and it 
communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything around him. But 
again, I say, with all my soul, we must be patient with poor Rick, and not 
blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts, like his, have I seen in my 
time turned by the same means!"
I could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that his 
benevolent disinterested intentions had prospered so little.
"We must not say so, Dame Durden," he cheerfully replied; "Ada is the 
happier, I hope; and that is much. I did think that I and both these young 
creatures might be friends, instead of distrustful foes, and that we might 
so far counteract the suit, and prove too strong for it. But it was too 
much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was the curtain of Rick's cradle."
"But, Guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach him 
what a false and wretched thing it is?"
"We will hope so, my Esther," said Mr Jarndyce, "and that it may not teach 
him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him. There are not many 
grown and matured men living while we speak, good men too, who, if they 
were thrown into this same court as suitors, would not be vitally changed 
and depreciated within three years - within two - within one. How can we 
stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so unfortunate," here he fell into a 
lower tone, as if he were thinking aloud, "cannot at first believe (who 
could?) that Chancery is what it is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, 
to do something with his interests, and bring them to some settlement. It 
procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine 
hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers 
after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well, well, 
well! Enough of this, my dear!"
He had supported me, as at first, all this time; and his tenderness was so 
precious to me, that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and loved him as if 
he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind in this little pause, by 
some means, to see Richard when I grew strong, and try to set him right.
"There are better subjects than these," said my Guardian, "for such a 
joyful time as the time of our dear girl's recovery. And I had a commission 
to broach one of them, as soon as I should begin to talk. When shall Ada 
come to see you, my love?"
I had been thinking of that too. A little in connection with the absent 
mirrors, but not much; for I knew my loving girl would be changed by no 
change in my looks.
"Dear Guardian," said I, "as I have shut her out so long - though indeed, 
indeed, she is like the light to me - "
"I know it well, Dame Durden, well."
He was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and 
affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my heart, 
that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. "Yes, yes, you 
are tired," said he. "Rest a little."
"As I have kept Ada out so long," I began afresh after a short while, "I 
think I should like to have my own way a little longer, Guardian. It would 
be best to be away from here before I see her. If Charley and I were to go 
to some country lodging as soon as I can move, and if I had a week there, 
in which to grow stronger and to be revived by the sweet air, and to look 
forward to the happiness of having Ada with me again, I think it would be 
better for us."
I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used to my 
altered self, before I met the eyes of the dear girl I longed so ardently 
to see; but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I was sure; but I was 
not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing I knew he would pass it over.
"Our spoilt little woman," said my Guardian, "shall have her own way even 
in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears downstairs. And 
see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of chivalry, breathing such ferocious 
vows as never were breathed on paper before, that if you don't go and 
occupy his whole house, he having already turned out of it expressly for 
that purpose, by Heaven and by earth he'll pull it down, and not leave one 
brick standing on another!"
And my Guardian put a letter in my hand; without any ordinary beginning 
such as "My dear Jarndyce," but rushing at once into the words, "I swear if 
Miss Summerson do not come down and take possession of my house, which I 
vacate for her this day at one o'clock, p.m.," and then with the utmost 
seriousness, and in the most emphatic terms, going on to make the 
extraordinary declaration he had quoted. We did not appreciate the writer 
the less for laughing heartily over it; and we settled that I should send 
him a letter of thanks on the morrow, and accept his offer. It was a most 
agreeable one to me; for all the places I could have thought of, I should 
have liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.
"Now, little housewife," said my Guardian, looking at his watch, "I was 
strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be tired too soon; 
and my time has waned away to the last minute. I have one other petition. 
Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour that you were ill, made nothing of 
walking down here - twenty miles, poor soul, in a pair of dancing shoes - 
to inquire. It was Heaven's mercy we were at home, or she would have walked 
back again."
The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!
"Now, pet," said my Guardian, "if it would not be irksome to you to admit 
the harmless little creature one afternoon, before you save Boythorn's 
otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you would make her 
prouder and better pleased with herself than I - though my eminent name is 
Jarndyce - could do in a lifetime."
I have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image of the 
poor afflicted creature, that would fall like a gentle lesson on my mind at 
that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not tell him heartily 
enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always pitied her; never so 
much as now. I had always been glad of my little power to soothe her under 
her calamity; but never, never, half so glad before.
We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out by the coach, and share my 
early dinner. When my Guardian left me, I turned my face away upon my 
couch, and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such blessings, had 
magnified to myself the little trial that I had to undergo. The childish 
prayer of that old birthday, when I had aspired to be industrious, 
contented, and true-hearted, and to do some good to some one, and win some 
love to myself if I could, came back into my mind with a reproachful sense 
of all the happiness I had since enjoyed, and all the affectionate hearts 
that had been turned towards me. If I were weak now, what had I profited by 
those mercies? I repeated the old childish prayer in its old childish 
words, and found that its old peace had not departed from it.
My Guardian now came every day. In a week or so more, I could walk about 
our rooms, and hold long talks with Ada from behind the window-curtain. Yet 
I never saw her; for I had not as yet the courage to look at the dear face, 
though I could have done so easily without her seeing me.
On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The poor little creature ran into 
my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from her very 
heart of hearts, "My dear Fitz Jarndyce!" fell upon my neck and kissed me 
twenty times.
"Dear me!" said she, putting her hand into her reticule, "I have nothing 
here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a pocket-
handkerchief."
Charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it, for 
she held it to her eyes with both hands, and sat so, shedding tears for the 
next ten minutes.
"With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce," she was careful to explain. "Not 
the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at having the 
honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder of you, my love, 
than of the Chancellor. Though I do attend court regularly. By the bye, my 
dear, mentioning pocket-handkerchiefs - "
Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the place 
where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me, and looked unwilling to 
pursue the suggestion.
"Ve-ry right!" said Miss Flite, "ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly indiscreet of 
me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am afraid I am at times 
(between ourselves, you wouldn't think it) a little - rambling you know," 
said Miss Flite, touching her forehead. "Nothing more."
"What were you going to tell me?" said I, smiling, for I saw she wanted to 
go on. "You have roused my curiosity, and now you must gratify it."
Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis, who said, 
"If you please, ma'am, you had better tell them," and therein gratified 
Miss Flite beyond measure.
"So sagacious, our young friend," said she to me, in her mysterious way. 
"Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it's a pretty anecdote. 
Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow us down the road 
from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very ungenteel bonnet - "
"Jenny, if you please, miss," said Charley.
"Just so!" Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. "Jenny. Ye-es! 
And what does she tell our young friend, but that there has been a lady 
with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz Jarndyce's health, 
and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little keepsake, merely 
because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce's! Now, you know, so very 
prepossessing in the lady with the veil!"
"If you please, miss," said Charley, to whom I looked in some astonishment, 
"Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a handkerchief there, and 
that she put it away and kept it with the baby's little things. I think, if 
you please, partly because it was yours, miss, and partly because it had 
covered the baby."
"Diminutive," whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about her 
own forehead to express intellect in Charley. "But exceedingly sagacious! 
And so clear! My love, she's clearer than any counsel I ever heard!"
"Yes, Charley," I returned. "I remember it. Well?"
"Well, miss," said Charley, "and that's the handkerchief the lady took. And 
Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away with it herself 
for a heap of money, but that the lady took it, and left some money 
instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you please, miss."
"Why, who can she be?" said I.
"My love," Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear, with her 
most mysterious look, "in my opinion - don't mention this to our diminutive 
friend - she's the Lord Chancellor's wife. He's married, you know. And I 
understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his lordship's papers into 
the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the jeweller!"
I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an impression 
that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was diverted by my visitor, 
who was cold after her ride, and looked hungry; and who, our dinner being 
brought in, required some little assistance in arraying herself with great 
satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and a much-worn and often-mended pair 
of gloves, which she had brought down in a paper parcel. I had to preside, 
too, over the entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast-fowl, a 
sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant to see 
how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did honour to it, 
that I was soon thinking of nothing else.
When we had finished, and had our little dessert before us, embellished by 
the hands of my dear, who would yield the superintendence of everything 
prepared for me to no one; Miss Flite was so very chatty and happy, that I 
though I would lead her to her own history, as she was always pleased to 
talk about herself. I began by saying "You have attended on the Lord 
Chancellor many years, Miss Flite?"
"O many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a Judgement. Shortly."
There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness, that made me doubtful if I 
had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no more 
about it.
"My father expected a Judgement," says Miss Flite. "My brother. My sister. 
They all expected a Judgement. The same that I expect."
"They are all - "
"Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear," said she.
As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable to her 
by meeting the theme, rather than avoiding it.
"Would it not be wiser," said I, "to expect this Judgement no more?"
"Why, my dear," she answered promptly, "of course it would!"
"And to attend the court no more?"
"Equally of course," said she. "Very wearing to be always in expectation of 
what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I assure you, to the 
bone!"
She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.
"But, my dear," she went on in her mysterious way, "there's a dreadful 
attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention it to our diminutive friend 
when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With good reason. There's a 
cruel attraction in the place, you can't leave it. And you must expect."
I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently and 
smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.
"Ay, ay, ay! You think so, because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry absurd, to 
be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To the head. I find 
it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years, and I have noticed. It's 
the Mace and Seal upon the table."
What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.
"Draw," returned Miss Flite. "Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out of 
them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities out of 
them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night. Cold and 
glittering devils!"
She tapped me several times upon the arm, and nodded good-humouredly, as if 
she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to fear her, 
though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful secrets to me.
"Let me see," said she. "I'll tell you my own case. Before they ever drew 
me - before I had ever seen them - what was it I used to do? Tambourine 
playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at tambour work. Our 
father and our brother had a builder's business. We all lived together. Ve-
ry respectably, my dear! First, our father was drawn - slowly. Home was 
drawn with him. In a few years, he was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt, 
without a kind word or a kind look for any one. He had been so different, 
Fitz Jarndyce. He was drawn to a debtor's prison. There he died. Then our 
brother was drawn - swiftly - to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my 
sister was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill, and in misery; 
and heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of 
Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then I 
found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there."
Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she had 
spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon her, she 
gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.
"You don't quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day. I am a 
little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new faces come, 
unsuspicious, within the influence of the Mace and Seal, in these many 
years. As my father's came there. As my brother's. As my sister's. As my 
own. I hear Conversation Kenge, and the rest of them, say to the new faces, 
'Here's little Miss Flite. O you are new here; and you must come and be 
presented to little Miss Flite!' Ve-ry good. Proud I am sure to have the 
honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I 
know, far better than they do, when the attraction has begun. I know the 
signs, my dear. I saw them begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz 
Jarndyce, my love," speaking low again, "I saw them beginning in our friend 
the Ward in Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he'll be drawn to 
ruin."
She looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually 
softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy, and 
seeming also to lose the connection in her mind, she said, politely, as she 
sipped her glass of wine, "Yes, my dear, as I was saying, I expect a 
Judgment. Shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know, and confer 
estates."
I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard, and by the sad meaning, so 
sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its way through all 
her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite complacent again now, 
and beamed with nods and smiles.
"But, my dear," she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon mine. 
"You have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not once, yet!"
I was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant.
"My physician, Mr Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly attentive to 
me. Though his services were rendered quite gratuitously. Until the Day of 
Judgment. I mean the judgment that will dissolve the spell upon me of the 
Mace and Seal."
"Mr Woodcourt is so far away now," said I, "that I thought the time for 
such congratulation was past, Miss Flite."
"But, my child," she returned, "is it possible that you don't know what has 
happened?"
"No," said I.
"Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!"
"No," said I. "You forget how long I have been here."
"True! My dear, for the moment - true. I blame myself. But my memory has 
been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned. Ve-ry 
strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a terrible 
shipwreck over in those East-Indian seas."
"Mr Woodcourt shipwrecked!"
"Don't be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all 
shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness. Numbers of 
the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it all, my dear 
physician was a hero. Calm and brave, through everything. Saved many lives, 
never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped naked people in his spare 
clothes, took the lead, showed them what to do, governed them, tended the 
sick, buried the dead, and brought the poor survivors safely off at last! 
My dear the poor emaciated creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down 
at his feet, when they got to the land, and blessed him. The whole country 
rings with it. Stay! Where's my bag of documents? I have got it there, and 
you shall read it, you shall read it!"
And I did read all the noble history; though very slowly and imperfectly 
then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see the words, and I 
cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down the long account 
she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so triumphant ever to have known 
the man who had done such generous and gallant deeds; I felt such glowing 
exultation in his renown; I so admired and loved what he had done; that I 
envied the storm-worn people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as 
their preserver. I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and 
blessed him, in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I 
felt that no one - mother, sister, wife - could honour him more than I. I 
did, indeed!
My poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when, as the 
evening began to close in, she rose to take her leave, lest she should miss 
the coach by which she must return, she was still full of the shipwreck, 
which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to understand in all its 
details.
"My dear," said she, as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves, "my 
brave physician ought to have a Title bestowed upon him. And no doubt he 
will. You are of that opinion?"
"That he well deserves one, yes. That he would ever have one, no."
"Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?" she asked, rather sharply.
I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men 
distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great; unless 
occasionally, when they consisted of the accumulation of some very large 
amount of money.
"Why, good gracious," said Miss Flite, "how can you say that? Surely you 
know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in knowledge, 
imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every sort, are added to 
its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and consider. You must be rambling a 
little now, I think, if you don't know that this is the great reason why 
titles will always last in the land!"
I am afraid she believed what she said; for there were moments when she was 
very mad indeed.
And now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to keep. I 
had thought, sometimes, that Mr Woodcourt loved me; and that if he had been 
richer, he would perhaps have told me that he loved me, before he went 
away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done so, I should have been 
glad of it. But, how much better it was now, that this had never hapened! 
What should I have suffered, if I had had to write to him, and tell him 
that the poor face he had known as mine was quite gone from me, and that I 
freely released him from his bondage to one whom he had never seen!
O, it was so much better, as it was! With a great pang mercifully spared 
me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all he had so 
brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone: no chain for me 
to break, or for him to drag; and I could go, please God, my lowly way 
along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler way upon its broader 
road; and though we were apart upon the journey, I might aspire to meet 
him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than he had thought me when I 
found some favour in his eyes, at the journey's end.


Chapter 36

Chesney Wold

Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into Lincolnshire. 
My Guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of me until I was safe 
in Mr Boythorn's house; so he accompanied us, and we were two days upon the 
road. I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and 
leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, 
more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was 
my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world 
was so full of delight for me.
My Guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our way 
down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter, of which 
he took charge; and he left us within half an hour of our arrival at our 
destination, on a delightful evening in the early summer time.
If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand, and I 
had been a princess and her favoured godchild, I could not have been more 
considered in it. So many preparations were made for me, and such an 
endearing remembrance was shown of all my little tastes and likings, that I 
could have sat down, overcome, a dozen times, before I had revisited half 
the rooms. I did better than that, however, by showing them all to Charley 
instead. Charley's delight calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the 
garden, and Charley had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring 
expressions, I was as tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a 
great comfort to be able to say to myself after tea, "Esther, my dear, I 
think you are quite sensible enough to sit down now, and write a note of 
thanks to your host." He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his 
own face, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his 
highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him in 
London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were looking, 
and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the honours of the house 
to me in the most hospitable manner, and how, after singing on my shoulder, 
to the inconceivable rapture of my little maid, he was then at roost in the 
usual corner of his cage, but whether dreaming or no I could not report. My 
note finished and sent off to the post, I made myself very busy in 
unpacking and arranging; and I sent Charley to bed in good time, and told 
her I should want her no more that night.
For I had not yet looked in the glass, and had never asked to have my own 
restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be overcome; but I 
had always said to myself that I would begin afresh, when I got to where I 
now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone, and therefore I said, now 
alone in my own room, "Esther, if you are to be happy, if you are to have 
any right to pray to be true-hearted, you must keep your word, my dear." I 
was quite resolved to keep it; but I sat down for a little while first, to 
reflect upon all my blessings. And then I said my prayers, and thought a 
little more.
My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than once. 
It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and went up to the 
glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little muslin curtain drawn 
across it. I drew it back: and stood for a moment looking through such a 
veil of my own air, that I could see nothing else. Then I put my hair 
aside, and looked at the reflection in the mirror; encouraged by seeing how 
placidly it looked at me. I was very much changed - O very, very much. At 
first, my face was so strange to me, that I think I should have put my 
hands before it and started back, but for the encouragement I have 
mentioned. Very soon it became more familiar, and then I knew the extent of 
the alteration in it better than I had done at first. It was not like what 
I had expected; but I had expected nothing definite, and I dare say 
anything definite would have surprised me.
I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one; but I had been 
very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so good to me, 
that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears, and could stand there 
arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.
One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I went to 
sleep. I had kept Mr Woodcourt's flowers. When they were withered I had 
dried them, and put them in a book that I was fond of. Nobody knew this, 
not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right to preserve what he had 
sent to one so different - whether it was generous towards him to do it. I 
wished to be generous to him, even in the secret depths of my heart, which 
he would never know, because I could have loved him - could have been 
devoted to him. At last I came to the conclusion that I might keep them; if 
I treasured them only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and 
gone, never to be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this 
may not seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.
I took care to be up early in the morning, and to be before the glass when 
Charley came in on tiptoe.
"Dear, dear, miss!" cried Charley, starting. "Is that you?"
"Yes, Charley," said I, quietly putting up my hair. "And I am very well 
indeed, and very happy."
I saw it was a weight off Charley's mind, but it was a greater weight off 
mine. I knew the worst now, and was composed to it. I shall not conceal, as 
I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer; but they always passed 
from me soon, and the happier frame of mind stayed by me faithfully.
Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits 
before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with Charley for 
being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out before breakfast, 
and were to dine early, and were to be out again before and after dinner, 
and were to walk in the garden after tea, and were to go to rest betimes, 
and were to climb every hill and explore every road, lane, and field in the 
neighbourhood. As to restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr 
Boythorn's good housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to 
eat or drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the 
Park, but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful face 
shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent nourishment. Then 
there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby pony, with a short neck 
and a mane all over his eyes, who could canter - when he would - so easily 
and quietly, that he was a treasure. In a very few days, he would come to 
me in the paddock when I called him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me 
about. We arrived at such a capital understanding, that when he was jogging 
with me lazily, and rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted 
his neck, and said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter when you know 
how much I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only 
getting stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake 
or two, and set off directly; while Charley would stand still and laugh 
with such enjoyment, that her laughter was like music. I don't know who had 
given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as naturally as his 
rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise, and drove him triumphantly 
through the green lanes for five miles; but all at once, as we were 
extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take it ill that he should have 
been accompanied so far by the circle of tantalizing little gnats, that had 
been hovering round and round his ears the whole way without appearing to 
advance an inch; and stopped to think about it. I suppose he came to the 
decision that it was not to be borne; for he steadily refused to move, 
until I gave the reins to Charley and got out and walked; when he followed 
me with a sturdy sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm, and 
rubbing his ear against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, "Now, 
Stubbs, I feel quite sure from what I know of you, that you will go on if I 
ride a little while;" for the moment I left him he stood stock still again. 
Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in this order we 
returned home, to the great delight of the village.
Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I am 
sure; for in a week's time the people were so glad to see us go by, though 
ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were faces of 
greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown people before, and 
almost all the children; but now the very steeple began to wear a familiar 
and affectionate look. Among my new friends was an old old woman who lived 
in such a little thatched and whitewashed dwelling, that when the outside 
shutter was turned up on its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This 
old lady had a grandson who was a sailor; and I wrote a letter to him for 
her, and drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought 
him up, and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was 
considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the 
world; but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in which he 
mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way to America, and 
from America would write again, I got all the credit that ought to have 
been given to the Post-office, and was invested with the merit of the whole 
system.
Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many children, 
gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so many cottages, 
going on with Charley's education, and writing long letters to Ada every 
day, I had scarcely any time to think about that little loss of mine, and 
was almost always cheerful. If I did think of it at odd moments now and 
then, I had only to be busy and forget it. I felt it more than I had hoped 
I should, once, when a child said, "Mother, why is the lady not a pretty 
lady now, like she used to be?" But when I found the child was not less 
fond of me, and drew its soft hand over my face with a kind of pitying 
protection in its touch, that soon set me up again. There were many little 
occurrences which suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it 
is to gentle hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. 
One of these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little 
church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had to sign 
the register. The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude 
cross for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had 
known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl in 
the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the school; and I 
could not help looking at her with some surprise. She came aside and 
whispered to me, while tears of honest love and admiration stood in her 
bright eyes, "He's a dear good fellow, miss; but he can't write, yet - he's 
going to learn of me - and I wouldn't shame him for the world!" Why, what 
had I to fear, I thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a 
labouring man's daughter!
The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown, and 
the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my old one. 
Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so rosy; and we both 
enjoyed the whole day, and slept soundly the whole night.
There was a favourite spot of mine in the parkwoods of Chesney Wold, where 
a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had been cleared 
and opened, to improve this point of sight; and the bright sunny landscape 
beyond, was so beautiful that I rested there at least once every day. A 
picturesque part of the Hall, called the Ghost's Walk, was seen to 
advantage from this higher ground; and the startling name, and the old 
legend in the Dedlock family which I had heard from Mr Boythorn, accounting 
for it, mingled with the view and gave it something of a mysterious 
interest, in addition to its real charms. There was a bank here, too, which 
was a famous one for violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley's to 
gather wild flowers, she took as much to the spot as I did.
It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house, or 
never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my arrival, 
and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or uninterested about 
the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this place, wondering how the 
rooms ranged, and whether any echo like a footstep really did resound at 
times, as the story said, upon the lonely Ghost's Walk. The indefinable 
feeling with which Lady Dedlock had impressed me, may have had some 
influence in keeping me from the house even when she was absent. I am not 
sure. Her face and figure were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot 
say that they repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever 
reason or no reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at 
which my story now arrives.
I was resting at my favourite point, after a long ramble, and Charley was 
gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been looking at the 
Ghost's Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off, and picturing to 
myself the female shape that was said to haunt it, when I became aware of a 
figure approaching through the wood. The perspective was so long, and so 
darkened by leaves, and the shadows of the branches on the ground made it 
so much more intricate to the eye, that at first I could not discern what 
figure it was. By little and little, it revealed itself to be a woman's - a 
lady's - Lady Dedlock's. She was alone, and coming to where I sat with a 
much quicker step, I observed to my surprise, than was usual with her.
I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost within 
speaking distance before I knew her), and would have risen to continue my 
walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so much by her 
hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick advance and 
outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in her manner, and the 
absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a something in her face that I 
had pined for and dreamed of when I was a little child; something I had 
never seen in any face; something I had never seen in hers before.
A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady Dedlock 
stopped, upon the instant, and changed back almost to what I had known her.
"Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you," she said, now advancing 
slowly. "You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very ill, I know. I 
have been much concerned to hear it."
I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face, than I could have 
stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand; and its deadly 
coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of her features, 
deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot say what was in my 
whirling thoughts.
"You are recovering again?" she asked kindly.
"I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock."
"Is this your young attendant?"
"Yes."
"Will you send her on before, and walk towards your house with me?"
"Charley," said I, "take your flowers home, and I will follow you 
directly."
Charley, with her best curtsey, blushingly tied on her bonnet, and went her 
way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat beside me.
I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was, when I saw in her 
hand my handkerchief, with which I had covered the dead baby.
I looked at her; but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I could not 
draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and wild, that I 
felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she caught me to her 
breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me, and called me back to 
myself: when she fell down on her knees and cried to me, "O my child, my 
child, I am your wicked and unhappy mother! O try to forgive me!" - when I 
saw her at my feet on the bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, 
through all my tumult of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of 
God that I was so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace 
of likeness; as that nobody could ever now look at me, and look at her, and 
remotely think of any near tie between us.
I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before me in 
such affliction and humiliation. I did so, in broken incoherent words; for, 
besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her at my feet. I 
told her - or I tried to tell her - that if it were for me, her child, 
under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive her, I did it, and had 
done it, many, many years. I told her that my heart overflowed with love 
for her; that it was natural love, which nothing in the past had changed, 
or could change. That it was not for me, then resting for the first time on 
my mother's bosom, to take her to account for having given me life; but 
that my duty was to bless her and receive her, though the whole world 
turned from her, and that I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother 
in my embrace, and she held me in hers; and among the still woods in the 
silence of the summer day, there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled 
minds that was not at peace.
"To bless and receive me," groaned my mother, "it is far too late. I must 
travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will. From day to 
day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way before my guilty 
feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought upon myself. I bear it 
and I hide it."
Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of proud 
indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off again.
"I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for 
myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!"
These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more terrible in 
its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her hands, she shrunk 
down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I should touch her; nor 
could I, by my utmost persuasions, or by any endearments I could use, 
prevail upon her to rise. She said, No, no, no, she could only speak to me 
so; she must be proud and disdainful everywhere else; she would be humbled 
and ashamed there, in the only natural moments of her life.
My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly frantic. 
She had but then known that her child was living. She could not have 
suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me down here, to 
speak to me but once in all her life. We never could associate, never could 
communicate, never probably from that time forth could interchange another 
word, on earth. She put into my hands a letter she had written for my 
reading only; and said, when I had read it, and destroyed it - but not so 
much for her sake, since she asked nothing, as for her husband's and my own 
- I must evermore consider her as dead. If I could believe that she loved 
me, in this agony in which I saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to 
do that; for then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what 
she suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope, and beyond all help. 
Whether she preserved her secret until death, or it came to be discovered 
and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she had taken, it was 
her solitary struggle always; and no affection could come near her, and no 
human creature could render her any aid.
"But is the secret safe so far?" I asked. "Is it safe now, dearest mother?"
"No," replied my mother. "It has been very near discovery. It was saved by 
an accident. It may be lost by another accident - tomorrow, any day."
"Do you dread a particular person?"
"Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of these 
tears," said my mother, kissing my hands. "I dread one person very much."
"An enemy?"
"Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir Leicester 
Dedlock's lawyer; mechanically faithful without attachment, and very 
jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the 
mysteries of great houses."
"Has he any suspicions?"
"Many."
"Not of you?" I said alarmed.
"Yes! He is always vigilant, and always near me. I may keep him at a stand 
still, but I can never shake him off."
"Has he so little pity or compunction?"
"He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his 
calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets, and the holding 
possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent in 
it."
"Could you trust in him?"
"I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years will end 
where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the end be. It may be 
near, it may be distant; while the road lasts, nothing turns me."
"Dear mother, are you so resolved?"
"I am resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with pride, 
scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived many vanities 
with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if I can. It has 
closed around me, almost as awfully as if these woods of Chesney Wold, had 
closed around the house; but my course through it is the same. I have but 
one; I can have but one."
"Mr Jarndyce - " I was beginning, when my mother hurriedly inquired:
"Does he suspect?"
"No," said I. "No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!" And I told her 
what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. "But he is so good 
and sensible," said I, "that perhaps if he knew - "
My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position, raised 
her hand up to my lips, and stopped me.
"Confide fully in him," she said, after a little while. "You have my free 
consent - a small gift from such a mother to her injured child! - but do 
not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me, even yet."
I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now - for my 
agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely understood 
myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother's voice, so 
unfamiliar and so melancholy to me; which in my childhood I had never 
learned to love and recognise, had never been sung to sleep with, had never 
heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired by; made an enduring 
impression on my memory - I say I explained, or tried to do it, how I had 
only hoped that Mr Jarndyce, who had been the best of fathers to me, might 
be able to afford some counsel and support to her. But my mother answered 
no, it was impossible; no one could help her. Through the desert that lay 
before her, she must go alone.
"My child, my child!" she said. "For the last time! These kisses for the 
last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall meet no 
more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have been so long. 
Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, 
prosperous, and flattered; think of your wretched mother, conscience-
stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the reality is in her suffering, 
in her useless remorse, in her murdering within her breast the only love 
and truth of which it is capable! And then forgive her, if you can; and cry 
to Heaven to forgive her, which it never can!"
We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm, that she 
took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and, with a last 
kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me into the wood. 
I was alone; and, calm and quiet below me in the sun and shade, lay the old 
house, with its terraces and turrets, on which there had seemed to me to be 
such complete repose when I first saw it, but which now looked like the 
obdurate and unpitying watcher of my mother's misery.
Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in my 
sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of discovery, or 
even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took such precautions as 
I could to hide from Charley that I had been crying; and I constrained 
myself to think of every sacred obligation that there was upon me to be 
careful and collected. It was not a little while before I could succeed, or 
could even restrain bursts of grief; but after an hour or so, I was better, 
and felt that I might return. I went home very slowly, and told Charley, 
whom I found at the gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend 
my walk after Lady Dedlock had left me, and that I was overtired, and would 
lie down. Safe in my own room I read the letter. I clearly derived from it -
 and that was much then - that I had not been abandoned by my mother. Her 
elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood, discovering signs of 
life in me when I had been laid aside as dead, had, in her stern sense of 
duty, with no desire or willingness that I should live, reared me in rigid 
secrecy, and had never again beheld my mother's face from within a few 
hours of my birth. So strangely did I hold my place in this world, that, 
until within a short time back, I had never, to my own mother's knowledge, 
breathed - had been buried - had never been endowed with life - had never 
borne a name. When she had first seen me in the church, she had been 
startled; and had thought of what would have been like me, if it had ever 
lived, and had lived on; but that was all, then.
What more the letter told me, needs not to be repeated here. It has its own 
times and places in my story.
My first care was to burn what my mother had written, and to consume even 
its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me, that I 
then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared. That I felt 
as if I knew it would have been better and happier for many people, if 
indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of myself, as the danger 
and the possible disgrace of my own mother, and of a proud family name. 
That I was so confused and shaken, as to be possessed by a belief that it 
was right, and had been intended, that I should die in my birth; and that 
it was wrong, and not intended that I should be then alive.
These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep, worn out; and when I 
awoke, I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world, with my load 
of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened of myself thinking 
anew of her, against whom I was a witness; of the owner of Chesney Wold; of 
the new and terrible meaning of the old words, now moaning in my ear like a 
surge upon the shore, "Your mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are 
hers. The time will come - and soon enough - when you will understand this 
better, will feel it too, as no one save a woman can." With them, those 
other words returned, "Pray daily that the sins of others be not visited 
upon your head." I could not disentangle all that was about me; and I felt 
as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation had come 
down.
The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still 
contended with the same distress. I went out alone; and, after walking a 
little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees, and the 
fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me, was attracted 
to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not have gone near it, if 
I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it was, I took the path that led 
close by it.
I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the terrace 
garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its well-kept 
beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it was, and how the 
old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights of shallow steps, were 
seamed by time and weather; and how the trained moss and ivy grew about 
them, and around the old stone pedestal of the sundial; and I heard the 
fountain falling. Then the way went by long lines of dark windows, 
diversified by turreted towers, and porches, of eccentric shapes, where old 
stone lions and grotesque monsters bristled outside dens of shadow, and 
snarled at the evening gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. 
Thence the path wound underneath a gateway, and through a courtyard where 
the principal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables where 
none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of the wind 
through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall, or in the low 
complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of the dogs, or in the 
slow striking of the clock. So, encountering presently a sweet smell of 
limes, whose rustling I could hear, I turned with the turning of the path, 
to the south front; and there, above me, were the balustrades of the 
Ghost's Walk, and one lighted window that might be my mother's.
The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps from 
being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping to look at 
nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing quickly on, and 
in a few moments should have passed the lighted window, when my echoing 
footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind that there was a dreadful truth 
in the legend of the Ghost's Walk; that it was I, who was to bring calamity 
upon the stately house; and that my warning feet were haunting it even 
then. Seized with an augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran 
from myself and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never 
paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and black 
behind me.
Not before I was alone in my own room for the night, and had again been 
dejected and unhappy there, did I begin to know how wrong and thankless 
this state was. But, from my darling who was coming on the morrow, I found 
a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation that I must have been of 
marble if it had not moved me; from my Guardian, too, I found another 
letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden, if I should see that little woman 
anywhere, that they had moped most pitiably without her, that the 
housekeeping was going to rack and ruin, that nobody else could manage the 
keys, and that everybody in and about the house declared it was not the 
same house, and was becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters 
together made me think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved, and how 
happy I ought to be. That made me think of all my past life; and that 
brought me, as it ought to have done before, into a better condition.
For, I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I 
should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved for 
such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked together, for 
my welfare; and that if the sins of the fathers were sometimes visited upon 
the children, the phrase did not mean what I had in the morning feared it 
meant. I knew I was as innocent of my birth, as a queen of hers; and that 
before my Heavenly Father I should not be punished for birth, nor a queen 
rewarded for it. I had had experience, in the shock of that very day, that 
I could, even thus soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that 
had fallen on me. I renewed my resolutions, and prayed to be strengthened 
in them; pouring out my heart for myself, and for my unhappy mother, and 
feeling that the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon 
my sleep, and when the next day's light awoke me, it was gone.
My dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in the afternoon. How to help 
myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a long walk 
along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so Charley and I 
and Stubbs - Stubbs, saddled, for we never drove him after the one great 
occasion - made a long expedition along that road, and back. On our return, 
we held a great review of the house and garden; and saw that everything was 
in its prettiest condition, and had the bird out ready as an important part 
of the establishment.
There were more than two full hours yet to elapse, before she could come; 
and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I was 
nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so well that I 
was more concerned for their effect on her than on any one. I was not in 
this slight distress because I at all repined - I am quite certain I did 
not, that day - but, I thought, would she be wholly prepared? When she 
first saw me, might she not be a little shocked and disappointed? Might it 
not prove a little worse than she had expected? Might she not look for her 
old Esther, and not find her? Might she not have to grow used to me, and to 
begin all over again?
I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl's face so well, and it was 
such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure, beforehand, she 
could not hide that first look from me. And I considered whether, if it 
should signify any one of these meanings, which were so very likely, could 
I quite answer for myself?
Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to wait 
and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such bad 
preparation, that I resolved to go along the road again, and meet her.
So I said to Charley, "Charley, I will go by myself and walk along the road 
until she comes." Charley highly approving of anything that pleased me, I 
went, and left her at home.
But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many 
palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was not, 
and could not be, the coach yet), that I resolved to turn back and go home 
again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the coach coming up 
behind me (though I still knew it neither would, nor could, do any such 
thing), that I ran the greater part of the way, to avoid being overtaken.
Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice thing 
to have done! Now I was hot, and had made the worst of it, instead of the 
best.
At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more yet, 
Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the garden, "Here 
she comes, miss! Here she is!"
I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room, and hid myself 
behind the door. There I stood, trembling, even when I heard my darling 
calling as she came upstairs, "Esther, my dear, my love, where are you? 
Little woman, dear Dame Durden!"
She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel girl! 
the old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection. Nothing else in 
it - no, nothing, nothing!
O how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful girl down 
upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely cheek, bathing it 
with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a child, calling me by 
every tender name that she could think of, and pressing me to her faithful 
heart.


Chapter 37

Jarndyce And Jarndyce

If the secret that I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to 
Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine; and I did not 
feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my Guardian, unless some great 
emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my present duty 
appeared to be plain, and, blest in the attachment of my dear, I did not 
want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though often when she was 
asleep, and all was quiet, the remembrance of my mother kept me waking, and 
made the night sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada 
found me what I used to be - except, of course, in that particular of which 
I have said enough, and which I have no intention of mentioning any more, 
just now, if I can help it.
The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening, when 
Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house, and when I 
was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock had spoken to me 
in the woods the day before yesterday, was great. Greater still, when Ada 
asked me what she had said, and when I replied that she had been kind and 
interested; and when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked 
upon her proud manner, and her imperious chilling air. But Charley helped 
me through unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed 
at the House two nights, on her way from London to visit at some other 
great house in the next county; and that she had left early on the morning 
after we had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the 
adage about little pitchers, I am sure; for she heard of more sayings and 
doings, in a day, than would have come to my ears in a month.
We were to stay a month at Mr Boythorn's. My pet had scarcely been there a 
bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after we had 
finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and just as the 
candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very important air behind 
Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the room.
"Oh! if you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes at 
their roundest and largest. "You're wanted at the Dedlock Arms."
"Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the public-house?"
"I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward, and 
folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron; which she always 
did, in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential, "but it's a 
gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please to come without 
saying anything about it."
"Whose compliments, Charley?"
"His'n, miss," returned Charley: whose grammatical education was advancing, 
but not very rapidly.
"And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?"
"I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little maid. "It 
was W. Grubble, miss."
"And who is W. Grubble, Charley?"
"Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. "Don't you know, miss? The 
Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she were slowly 
spelling out the sign.
"Ay? The landlord, Charley?"
"Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but she 
broke her ankle and it never joined. And her brother's the sawyer, that was 
put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll drink himself to death 
entirely on beer," said Charley.
Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive now, I 
thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Charley be quick with 
my bonnet and veil, and my shawl; and having put them on, went away down 
the little hilly street, where I was as much at home as in Mr Boythorn's 
garden.
Mr Grubble was standing in his shirt sleeves at the door of his very clean 
little tavern, waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both hands when 
he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an iron vessel (it 
looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded passage to his best parlour: 
a neat carpeted room, with more plants in it than were quite convenient, a 
coloured print of Queen Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, 
two stuffed and dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a 
curious pumpkin (but I don't know which, and I doubt if many people did) 
hanging from the ceiling. I knew Mr Grubble very well by sight, from his 
often standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man, 
who never seemed to consider himself cosily dressed for his own fireside 
without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat except at church.
He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it looked, 
backed out of the room - unexpectedly to me, for I was going to ask him by 
whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour being then opened, 
I heard some voices, familiar in my ears, I thought, which stopped. A quick 
light step approached the room in which I was, and who should stand before 
me, but Richard!
"My dear Esther!" he said, "my best friend!" and he really was so warm-
hearted and earnest, that in the first surprise and pleasure of his 
brotherly greeting, I could scarcely find breath to tell him that Ada was 
well.
"Answering my very thoughts - always the same dear girl!" said Richard, 
leading me to a chair, and seating himself beside me.
I put my veil up, but not quite.
"Always the same dear girl!" said Richard, just as heartily as before.
I put my veil up altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve, and 
looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind welcome, 
and how greatly I rejoiced to see him; the more so, because of the 
determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to him.
"My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a greater wish 
to talk, than you, for I want you to understand me."
"And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand some one 
else."
"Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard - "I 
suppose you mean him?"
"Of course I do."
"Then, I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that 
subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind - you, my dear! I 
am not accountable to Mr Jarndyce, or Mr Anybody."
I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.
"Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that, now. I want to 
appear quietly in your country house here, with you under my arm, and give 
my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty to John Jarndyce will 
allow that?"
"My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily welcome at 
his house - your home, if you will but consider it so; and you are as 
heartily welcome here."
"Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard, gaily.
I asked him how he liked his profession?"
"Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. "It's all right. It does as well 
as anything else, for a time. I don't know that I shall care about it when 
I come to be settled; but I can sell out then, and - however, never mind 
all that botheration at present."
So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite of 
Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager seeking look that passed over 
him, so dreadfully like her!
"I am in town on leave, just now," said Richard.
"Indeed?"
"Yes. I have run over to look after my - my Chancery interests, before the 
long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh. "We are beginning 
to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you."
No wonder that I shook my head!
"As you say, it's not a pleasant subject." Richard spoke with the same 
shade crossing his face as before. "Let it go to the four winds for 
tonight. - Puff! Gone! - Who do you suppose is with me?"
"Was it Mr Skimpole's voice I heard?"
"That's the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a fascinating 
child it is!"
I asked Richard if anyone knew of their coming down together? He answered, 
No, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old infant - so he called Mr 
Skimpole - and the dear old infant had told him where we were, and he had 
told the dear old infant he was bent on coming to see us, and the dear old 
infant had directly wanted to come too; and so he had brought him. "And he 
is worth - not to say his sordid expenses - but thrice his weight in gold," 
said Richard. "He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh 
and green-hearted!"
I certainly did not see the proof of Mr Skimpole's unworldliness in his 
having his expenses paid by Richard; but I made no remark about that. 
Indeed, he came in, and turned our conversation. He was charmed to see me; 
said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and sympathy, at intervals 
for six weeks, on my account; had never been so happy as in hearing of my 
progress; began to understand the mixture of good and evil in the world 
now; felt that he appreciated health the more, when somebody else was ill; 
didn't know but what it might be in the scheme of things that A should 
squint to make B happier in looking straight; or that C should carry a 
wooden leg, to make D better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk 
stocking.
"My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr Skimpole, 
"full of the brightest visions of the future, which he evokes out of the 
darkness of Chancery. Now that's delightful, that's inspiriting, that's 
full of poetry! In old times, the woods and solitudes were made joyous to 
the shepherd by the imaginary piping and dancing of Pan and the Nymphs. 
This present shepherd, our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of 
Court by making Fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious 
notes of a judgment from the bench. That's very pleasant, you know! Some 
ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of these 
legal and equitable abuses? How do you defend them?' I reply, 'My growling 
friend, I don't defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There is a 
shepherd-youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into something highly 
fascinating to my simplicity. I don't say it is for this that they exist - 
for I am a child among you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to 
account to you or myself for anything - but it may be so.'"
I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a worse 
friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time, when he most 
required some right principle and purpose, he should have this captivating 
looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all 
principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how such 
a nature as my Guardian's, experienced in the world, and forced to 
contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family 
misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr Skimpole's avowal of his 
weaknesses and display of guileless candour; but I could not satisfy myself 
that it was as artless as it seemed; or that it did not serve Mr Skimpole's 
idle turn quite as well as any other part, and with less trouble.
They both walked back with me; and Mr Skimpole leaving us at the gate, I 
walked softly in with Richard, and said, "Ada, my love, I have brought a 
gentleman to visit you." It was not difficult to read the blushing, 
startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I knew it. It was 
a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins only.
I almost mistrusted myself, as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but I 
was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her very much - 
any one must have done that - and I dare say, would have renewed their 
youthful engagement with great pride and ardour, but that he knew how she 
would respect her promise to my Guardian. Still, I had a tormenting idea 
that the influence upon him extended even here: that he was postponing his 
best truth and earnestness, in this as in all things, until Jarndyce and 
Jarndyce should be off his mind. Ah me! what Richard would have been 
without that blight I never shall know now!
He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make any 
secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too implicitly and 
confidingly, he thought) from Mr Jarndyce; that he had come openly to see 
her, and to see me, and to justify himself for the present terms on which 
he stood with Mr Jarndyce. As the dear old infant would be with us 
directly, he begged that I would make an appointment for the morning, when 
he might set himself right, through the means of an unreserved conversation 
with me. I proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this 
was arranged. Mr Skimpole soon afterwards appeared, and made us merry for 
an hour. He particularly requested to see Little Coavinses (meaning 
Charley), and told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late 
father all the business in his power; and that if one of her little 
brothers would make haste to get set-up in the same profession, he hoped he 
should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.
"For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr Skimpole, looking 
beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am constantly being 
bailed out - like a boat. Or paid off - like a ship's company. Somebody 
always does it for me. I can't do it, you know, for I never have any money. 
But Somebody does it. I get out by Somebody's means; I am not like the 
starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who Somebody is, upon my word I 
couldn't tell you. Let us drink to Somebody. God bless him!"

Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for him 
long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy, and the sky 
without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the sparkles in the fern, the 
grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of the woods seemed 
to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if in the still night 
when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the 
minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual 
for the glory of that day.
"This is a lovely place," said Richard, looking round. "None of the jar and 
discord of law-suits here!"
But there was other trouble.
"I tell you what, my dear girl," said Richard, "when I get affairs in 
general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest."
"Would it not be better to rest now?" I asked.
"Oh, as to resting now," said Richard, "or as to doing anything very 
definite now, that's not easy. In short it can't be done; I can't do it at 
least."
"Why not?" said I.
"You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house, 
liable to have the roof put on or taken off - to be from top to bottom 
pulled down or built up - tomorrow, next day, next week, next month, next 
year - you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now? There's no 
now for us suitors."
I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor little 
wandering friend had expatiated, when I saw again the darkened look of last 
night. Terrible to think, it had in it also, a shade of that unfortunate 
man who had died.
"My dear Richard," said I, "this is a bad beginning of our conversation."
"I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden."
"And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once, never 
to found a hope or expectation on the family curse."
"There you come back to John Jarndyce!" said Richard, impatiently. "Well! 
We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of what I have 
to say: and it's as well at once. My dear Esther, how can you be so blind? 
Don't you see that he is an interested party, and that it may be very well 
for him to wish me to know nothing of the suit, and care nothing about it, 
but that it may not be quite so well for me?"
"O Richard," I remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever have seen 
him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof and known 
him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place where there is 
no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?"
He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of reproach. 
He was silent for a little while, before he replied in a subdued voice:
"Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean fellow, and that I have 
some sense of suspicion and distrust being poor qualities in one of my 
years."
"I know it very well," said I. "I am not more sure of anything."
"That's a dear girl!" retorted Richard, "and like you, because it gives me 
comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all this business, 
for it's a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion to tell you."
"I know perfectly," said I, "I know as well, Richard - what shall I say? as 
well as you do - that such misconstructions are foreign to your nature. And 
I know, as well as you know, what so changes it."
"Come, sister, come," said Richard, a little more gaily, "you will be fair 
with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that influence, 
so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a little twisted him, 
too. I don't say that he is not an honourable man, out of all this 
complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it taints everybody. You 
know it taints everybody. You have heard him say so fifty times. Then why 
should he escape?"
"Because," said I, "his is an uncommon character, and he has resolutely 
kept himself outside the circle, Richard."
"Oh, because and because!" replied Richard, in his vivacious way. "I am not 
sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to preserve that 
outward indifference. It may cause other parties interested to become lax 
about their interests; and people may die off, and points may drag 
themselves out of memory, and many things may smoothly happen that are 
convenient enough."
I was so touched with pity for Richard, that I could not reproach him any 
more, even by a look. I remembered my Guardian's gentleness towards his 
errors, and with what perfect freedom from resentment he had spoken of 
them.
"Esther," Richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that I have come here to 
make under-handed charges against John Jarndyce. I have only come to 
justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well, and we got on very 
well, while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same suit; but as soon 
as I began to take an interest in it, and to look into it, then it was 
quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce discovers that Ada and I must break 
off, and that if I don't amend that very objectionable course, I am not fit 
for her. Now, Esther, I don't mean to amend that very objectionable course: 
I will not hold John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of compromise, 
which he has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, 
I must maintain my rights, and Ada's. I have been thinking about it a good 
deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to."
Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal. His 
face, his voice, his manner, all showed that, too plainly.
"So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him about all 
this), that we are at issue, and that we had better be at issue openly than 
covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his protection, and he goes his 
road, and I go mine. The fact is, our roads are not the same. Under one of 
the wills in dispute I should take much more than he. I don't mean to say 
that it is the one to be established; but there it is, and it has its 
chance."
"I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard," said I, "of your letter. I 
had heard of it already, without an offended or angry word."
"Indeed?" replied Richard, softening. "I am glad I said he was an 
honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say that, and 
have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these views of mine 
appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you tell her what has 
passed between us. But if you had gone into case as I have, if you had only 
applied yourself to the papers as I did when I was at Kenge's, if you only 
knew what an accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions 
and cross-suspicions, they involve, you would think me moderate in 
comparison."
"Perhaps so," said I. "But do you think that, among those many papers, 
there is much truth and justice, Richard?"
"There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther, - "
"Or was once, long ago," said I.
"Is - is - must be somewhere," pursued Richard, impetuously, "and must be 
brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of, is not the 
way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John Jarndyce says it 
changes, has changed, and will change, everybody who has any share in it. 
Then the greater right I have on my side, when I resolve to do all I can to 
bring it to an end."
"All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no others have 
done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier because of so many 
failures?"
"It can't last for ever," returned Richard, with a fierceness kindling in 
him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. "I am young and 
earnest; and energy and determination have done wonders many a time. Others 
have only half thrown themselves into it. I devote myself to it. I make it 
the object of my life."
"Oh Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!"
"No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned, affectionately. 
"You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your 
prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good 
Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so convenient, we 
were not on natural terms."
"Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?"
"No, I don't say that. I mean that all this business puts us on unnatural 
terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See another reason 
for urging it on! I may find out, when it's over, that I have been mistaken 
in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am free of it, and I may 
then agree with what you say today. Very well. Then I shall acknowledge it, 
and make him reparation."
Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in confusion 
and indecision until then!
"Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin, Ada, to 
understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful, about John Jarndyce; 
but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent 
myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for 
her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though 
you disapprove of it; and - and in short," said Richard, who had been 
hesitating through these words, "I - I don't like to represent myself in 
this litigious, contentions, doubting character, to a confiding girl like 
Ada."
I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words, than in 
anything he had said yet.
"Why," acknowledged Richard, "that may be true enough, my love. I rather 
feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play by and by. I 
shall come all right again, then, don't you be afraid."
I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada?
"Not quite," said Richard. "I am bound not to withhold from her that John 
Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me as 'My dear 
Rick,' trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling me that they 
should make no difference in him. (All very well of course, but not 
altering the case.) I also want Ada to know, that if I see her seldom just 
now, I am looking after her interests as well as my own - we two being in 
the same boat exactly - and that I hope she will not suppose, from any 
flying rumours she may hear, that I am at all light-headed or imprudent; on 
the contrary, I am always looking forward to the termination of the suit, 
and always planning in that direction. Being of age now, and having taken 
the step I have taken, I consider myself free from any accountability to 
John Jarndyce; but Ada being still a ward of the Court, I don't ask her to 
renew our engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be 
myself once more, and we shall both be in very different worldly 
circumstances, I believe. If you will tell her all this with the advantage 
of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind 
service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on the 
head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak House.
"Richard," said, "you place great confidence in me, but I fear you will not 
take advice from me?"
"It's impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any other, 
readily."
As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and 
character were not being dyed one colour?
"But I may ask you a question, Richard?"
"I think so," said he laughing. "I don't know who may not, if you may not."
"You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life?"
"How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled?"
"Are you in debt again?"
"Why of course I am," said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.
"Is it of course?"
"My dear child, certainly. I can't throw myself into an object so 
completely, without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don't know, that 
under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It's only a question 
between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within the mark anyway. 
Bless your heart, my excellent girl," said Richard, quite amused with me, 
"I shall be all right. I shall pull through, my dear!"
I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood, that I tried, in 
Ada's name, in my Guardian's, in my own, by every fervent means that I 
could think of, to warn him of it, and to show him some of his mistakes. He 
received everything I said, with patience and gentleness, but it all 
rebounded from him without taking the least effect. I could not wonder at 
this, after the reception his preoccupied mind had given to my Guardian's 
letter; but I determined to try Ada's influence yet.
So, when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went home to 
breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give her, and told 
her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was losing himself, 
and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made her very unhappy, of 
course; though she had a far, far greater reliance on his correcting his 
errors than I could have - which was so natural and loving in my dear! - 
and she presently wrote him this little letter:

"My Dearest Cousin, - Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. 
I write this, to repeat most earnestly for myself all that she said to you, 
and to let you know how sure I am that you will sooner or later find our 
cousin John a pattern of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will 
deeply, deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so much 
wrong.
"I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next, but I trust you 
will understand it as I mean it. I have some fears, my dearest cousin, that 
it may be partly for my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for 
yourself - and if for yourself, for me. In case this should be so, or in 
case you should entertain much thought of me in what you are doing, I most 
earnestly entreat and beg you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake 
that will make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon the 
shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry with me for saying this. 
Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my sake, and for your own, and in a natural 
repugnance for that source of trouble which had its share in making us both 
orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it go for ever. We have 
reason to know, by this time, that there is no good in it, and no hope; 
that there is nothing to be got from it but sorrow.

"My dearest cousin, it is needless for me say that you are quite free, and 
that it is very likely you may find some one whom you will love much better 
than your first fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that the 
object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow your fortunes far and 
wide, however moderate or poor, and see you happy, doing your duty and 
pursuing your chosen way: than to have the hope of being, or even to be, 
very rich with you (if such a thing were possible), at the cost of dragging 
years of procrastination and anxiety, and of your indifference to other 
aims. You may wonder at my saying this so confidently with so little 
knowledge or experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own heart. - 
Ever, my dearest cousin, Your most affectionate,
Ada."

This note brought Richard to us very soon; but it made little change in 
him, if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who was wrong -
 he would show us - we should see! He was animated and glowing, as if Ada's 
tenderness had gratified him; but I could only hope, with a sigh, that the 
letter might have some stronger effect upon his mind on reperusal, than it 
assuredly had then.
As they were to remain with us that day, and had taken their places to 
return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking to Mr 
Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way; and I delicately 
said, that there was a responsibility in encouraging Richard.
"Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson," he repeated, catching at the word 
with the pleasantest smile, "I am the last man in the world for such a 
thing. I never was responsible in my life - I can't be."
"I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I, timidly enough: he being 
so much older and more cleverer than I.
"No, really?" said Mr Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most 
agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be 
solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took a 
handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so much 
money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of counting. Call 
it four and nine-pence - call it four pound nine. They tell me I owe more 
than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people 
will let me owe. If they don't stop, why should I? There you have Harold 
Skimpole in little. If that's responsibility, I am responsible."
The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again, and looked 
at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been mentioning a 
curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me feel as if he 
really had nothing to do with it.
"Now when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "I am disposed to say, 
that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should consider so 
refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me to be the very 
touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my dear Miss Summerson, 
intent upon the perfect working of the whole little orderly system of which 
you are the centre, I feel inclined to say to myself - in fact I do say to 
myself, very often - that's responsibility."
It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I persisted so 
far as to say, that we all hoped he would check and not confirm Richard in 
the sanguine views he entertained just then.
"Most willingly," he retorted, "if I could. But, my dear Miss Summerson, I 
have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand, and leads me through 
Westminister Hall in an airy procession after Fortune, I must go. If he 
says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!' I must join it. Common sense wouldn't, I 
know; but I have no common sense."
"It was very unfortunate for Richard," I said.
"Do you think so!" returned Mr Skimpole. "Don't say that, don't say that. 
Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense - an excellent man - a 
good deal wrinkled - dreadfully practical - change for a ten-pound note in 
every pocket - ruled account-book in his hand - say, upon the whole, 
resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping 
obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young bud, says to this highly 
respectable companion, 'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very 
bright, it's very beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the 
landscape to come at it!' The respectable companion instantly knocks him 
down with the ruled account-book; tells him, in a literal prosaic way, that 
he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud, horsehair 
wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that's a painful change; - sensible in 
the last degree, I have no doubt, but disagreeable. I can't do it. I 
haven't got the ruled account-book, I have none of the tax-gathering 
elements in my composition, I am not at all respectable, and I don't want 
to be. Odd perhaps, but so it is!"
It was idle to say more; so I proposed that we should join Ada and Richard, 
who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr Skimpole in despair. He had 
been over the Hall in the course of the morning, and whimsically described 
the family pictures as we walked. There were such portentous shepherdesses 
among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone, he told us, that peaceful crooks 
became weapons of assault in their hands. They tended their flocks severely 
in buckram and powder, and put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify 
commoners, as the chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There 
was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, 
flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full 
action between his horse's two hind legs: showing, he supposed, how little 
a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented as having 
evidently been, in life, what he called "stuffed people," - a large 
collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on their 
various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from animation, and 
always in glass cases.
I was not so easy now, during any reference to the name, but that I felt it 
a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise, hurried away to 
meet a stranger, whom he first descried coming slowly towards us.
"Dear me!" said Mr Skimpole. "Vholes!"
We asked if that were a friend of Richard's.
"Friend and legal adviser," said Mr Skimpole. "Now, my dear Miss Summerson, 
if you want common sense, responsibility, and respectability, all united - 
if you want an exemplary man - Vholes is the man."
We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman of 
that name.
"When he emerged from legal infancy," returned Mr Skimpole, "he parted from 
our conversational friend Kenge, and took up, I believe, with Vholes. 
Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to Vholes."
"Had you known him long?" asked Ada.
"Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with him 
which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had done 
something or other, in a very agreeable, civil manner - taken proceedings, 
I think, is the expression - which ended in the proceeding of his taking 
me. Somebody was so good as to step in and pay the money - something and 
fourpence was the amount; I forget the pounds and shillings, but I know it 
ended with fourpence, because it struck me at the time as being so odd that 
I could owe anybody fourpence - and after that, I brought them together; 
Vholes asked me for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of 
it," he looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the 
discovery, "Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something, and called it 
commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think it must have 
been a five-pound note!"
His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard's coming 
back to us in an excited state, and hastily presenting Mr Vholes - a sallow 
man with pinched lips that looked as if they were cold, a red eruption here 
and there upon his face, tall and thin, about fifty years of age, high-
shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in black, black-gloved, and buttoned to 
the chin, there was nothing so remarkable in him as a lifeless manner, and 
a slow fixed way he had of looking at Richard.
"I hope I don't disturb you, ladies," said Mr Vholes; and now I observed 
that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of speaking. "I 
arranged with Mr Carstone that he should always know when his cause was in 
the Chancellor's paper, and being informed by one of my clerks last night 
after post time that it stood, rather unexpectedly, in the paper for 
tomorrow, I put myself into the coach early this morning and came down to 
confer with him."
"Yes!" said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me, "we 
don't do these things in the old slow way, now. We spin along, now! Mr 
Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in, and catch 
the mail tonight, and go up by it!"
"Anything you please, sir," returned Mr Vholes. "I am quite at your 
service."
"Let me see," said Richard, looking at his watch. "If I run down to the 
Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or a chaise, 
or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour then before starting. I'll 
come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take care of Mr Vholes 
while I am gone?"
He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the dusk 
of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.
"Is Mr Carstone's presence necessary tomorrow, sir?" said I. "Can it do any 
good?"
"No, miss," Mr Vholes replied. "I am not aware that it can."
Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to be 
disappointed.
"Mr Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own interests," 
said Mr Vholes, "and when a client lays down his own principle, and it is 
not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it out. I wish in business to be 
exact and open. I am a widower with three daughters - Emma, Jane, and 
Caroline - and my desire is so to discharge the duties of life as to leave 
them a good name. This appears to be a pleasant spot, miss."
The remark being made, to me, in consequence of my being next to him as we 
walked, I assented, and enumerated its chief attractions.
"Indeed?" said Mr Vholes. "I have the privilege of supporting an aged 
father in the Vale of Taunton - his native place - and I admire that 
country very much. I had no idea there was anything so attractive here."
To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr Vholes if he would like to live 
altogether in the country?
"There, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string. My health is not 
good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only myself to 
consider, I should take refuge in rural habits; especially as the cares of 
business have prevented me from ever coming much into contact with general 
society, and particularly with ladies' society, which I have most wished to 
mix in. But with my three daughters, Emma, Jane, and Caroline - and my aged 
father - I cannot afford to be selfish. It is true, I have no longer to 
maintain a dear grandmother who died in her hundred-and-second year; but 
enough remains to render it indispensable that the mill should be always 
going."
It required some attention to hear him, on account of his inward speaking 
and his lifeless manner.
"You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. "They are my 
weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little independence, as 
well as a good name."
We now arrived at Mr Boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all prepared, 
was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried, shortly afterwards, 
and leaning over Mr Vholes' chair, whispered something in his ear. Mr 
Vholes replied aloud - or as nearly aloud I suppose as he ever replied to 
anything - "You will drive me, will you, sir? It is all the same to me, 
sir. Anything you please. I am quite at your service."
We understood from what followed that Mr Skimpole was to be left until the 
morning to occupy the two places which had been already paid for. As Ada 
and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard, and very sorry so to 
part with him, we made it as plain as we politely could that we should 
leave Mr Skimpole to the Dedlock Arms, and retire when the night-travellers 
were gone.
Richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went out 
together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had ordered a 
gig to wait; and where we found a man with a lantern standing at the head 
of gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed to it.
I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's light; 
Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his hand; Mr 
Vholes, quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking at him as if he 
were looking at his prey and charming it. I have before me the whole 
picture of the warm dark night, the summer lightning, the dusty track of 
road closed in by hedgerows and high trees, the gaunt pale horse with his 
ears pricked up, and the driving away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
My dear girl told me, that night, how Richard's being thereafter prosperous 
or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this difference to her, 
that the more he needed love from one unchanging heart, the more love that 
unchanging heart would have to give him; how he thought of her through his 
present errors, and she would think of him at all times; never of herself, 
if she could devote herself to him: never of her own delights, if she could 
minister to his.
And she kept her word?
I looked along the road before me, where the distance already shortens and 
the journey's end is growing visible; and, true and good above the dead sea 
of the Chancery suits, and all the ashey fruit it casts ashore, I think I 
see my darling.


Chapter 38

A Struggle

When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were punctual to 
the day, and were received with an overpowering welcome. I was perfectly 
restored to health and strength; and finding my housekeeping keys laid 
ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if I had been a new year, with a 
merry little peal. "Once more, duty, duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are 
not overjoyed to do it, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through 
anything and everything, you ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, 
my dear!"
The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business, 
devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to and fro 
between the Growlery and all other parts of the house, so many 
rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new beginning 
altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when these arrangements 
were completed, and everything was in order, I paid a visit of a few hours 
to London, which something in the letter I had destroyed at Chesney Wold 
had induced me to decide upon in my own mind.
I made Caddy Jellyby - her maiden name was so natural to me that I always 
called her by it - the pretext for this visit; and wrote her a note 
previously, asking the favour of her company on a little business 
expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London by 
stage-coach in such good time, that I walked to Newman Street with the day 
before me.
Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding day, was so glad and so 
affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her husband 
jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad - I mean as good; and in short 
it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any possibility of doing 
anything meritorious.
The elder Mr Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was milling his 
chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an apprentice - it seemed 
such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade of dancing - was 
waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law was extremely kind and 
considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived most happily together. (When she 
spoke of their living together, she meant that the old gentleman had all 
the good things and all the good lodging, while she and her husband had 
what they could get, and were poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)
"And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I.
"Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa; but I see very 
little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say; but Ma thinks there 
is something absurd in my having married a dancing-master, and she is 
rather afraid of its extending to her."
It struck me that if Mrs Jellyby had discharged her own natural duties and 
obligations, before she swept the horizon with a telescope in search of 
others, she would have taken the best precautions against becoming absurd; 
but I need scarcely observe that I kept this to myself.
"And your papa, Caddy?"
"He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of sitting 
in the corner there, that it's a treat to see him."
Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr Jellyby's head 
against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found such a 
resting-place for it.
"And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?"
"Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed; for to tell you a grand 
secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's health is not 
strong and I want to be able to assist him. What with schools, and classes 
here, and private pupils, and the apprentices, he really has too much to 
do, poor fellow!"
The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me, that I asked Caddy, 
if there were many of them?
"Four," said Caddy. "One indoor, and three out. They are very good 
children; only when they get together they will play - children-like - 
instead of attending to their work. So the little boy you saw just now 
waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, and we distribute the others as 
well as we can."
"That is only for their steps, of course?" said I.
"Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise so many 
hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They dance in the 
academy; and at this time of year we do Figures at five every morning."
"Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed.
"I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the outdoor 
apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room, not to 
disturb old Mr Turveydrop), and when I put up the window, and see them 
standing on the doorstep with their little pumps under their arms, I am 
actually reminded of the Sweeps."
All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure. Caddy 
enjoyed the effect of her communication, and cheerfully recounted the 
particulars of her own studies.
"You see, my dear, to save expense, I ought to know something of the Piano, 
and I ought to know something of the Kit too, and consequently I have to 
practise those two instruments as well as the details of our profession. If 
Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had some little musical 
knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any; and that part of the work 
is, at first, a little discouraging, I must allow. But I have a very good 
ear, and I am used to drudgery - I have to thank Ma for that, at all events 
- and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the world 
over." Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a little jingling 
square piano, and really rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then 
she good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, and while she still 
laughed herself, said, "Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!"
I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and praised 
her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed, dancing-master's 
wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in her limited ambition 
she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, wholesome, loving course 
of industry and perseverance that was quite as good as a Mission.
"My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me. I 
shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes, Esther, even in my 
small world! You recollect that first night when I was so unpolite and 
inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching people to dance, of 
all other possibilities and impossibilities!"
Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back, 
preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy informed 
me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet, I was glad to 
tell her; for I should have been vexed to take her away then. Therefore we 
three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I made one in the dance.
The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the melancholy 
boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty 
kitchen, there were two other boys, and one dirty little limp girl in a 
gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on 
(that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old 
threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not 
dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and 
the most untidy legs and feet - and heels particularly. I asked Caddy what 
had made their parents choose this profession for them? Caddy said she 
didn't know; perhaps they were designed for teachers; perhaps for the 
stage. They were all people in humble circumstances, and the melancholy 
boy's mother kept a a ginger-beer shop.
We danced for an hour with great gaiety; the melancholy child doing wonders 
with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be some sense of 
enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy, while she was 
observant of her husband, and was evidently founded upon him, had acquired 
a grace and self-possession of her own, which, united to her pretty face 
and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She already relieved him of much of 
the instruction of these young people; and he seldom interfered, except to 
walk his part in the figure if he had anything to do in it. He always 
played the tune. The affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension 
to the boys, was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock.
When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready to go 
out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go out with me. 
I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating the apprentices. The 
two outdoor boys went upon the staircase to put on their half-boots, and 
pull the in-door boy's hair; as I judged from the nature of his objections. 
Returning with their jackets buttoned, and their pumps stuck in them, they 
then produced packets of cold bread and meat, and bivouacked under a 
painted lyre on the wall. The little gauzy child, having whisked her 
sandals into the reticule and put on a trodden down pair of shoes, shook 
her head into the dowdy bonnet at one shake; and answering my inquiry 
whether she liked dancing, by replying, "not with boys," tied it across her 
chin and went home contemptuous.
"Old Mr Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not finished 
dressing yet, and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you before you go. You 
are such a favourite of his, Esther."
I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it necessary to 
add that I readily dispensed with this attention.
"It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is very much 
looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to support. You 
can't think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa, of an evening, about the 
Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested."
There was something in the picture of Mr Turveydrop bestowing his 
Deportment on Mr Jellyby, that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if he 
brought her papa out much?
"No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that; but he talks to Pa, and 
Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course I am aware 
that Pa has hardly any claims to Deportment, but they get on together 
delightfully. You can't think what good companions they make. I never saw 
Pa take snuff before in my life; but he takes one pinch out of Mr 
Turveydrop's box regularly, and keeps putting it to his nose and taking it 
away again, all the evening.
That old Mr Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of life, 
have come to the rescue of Mr Jellyby from Borrioboola Gha, appeared to me 
to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.
"As to Peepy," said Caddy, with a little hesitation, "whom I was most 
afraid of - next to having any family of my own, Esther - as an 
inconvenience to Mr Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to that 
child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets him take 
the newspaper up to him to bed; he gives him the crusts of his toast to 
eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he tells him to come 
to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, I 
am a very fortunate girl, and ought to be very grateful. Where are we 
going, Esther?"
"To the Old Street Road," said I; "where I have a few words to say to the 
solicitor's clerk, who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on the very 
day when I came to London, and first saw you, my dear. Now I think of it, 
the gentleman brought us to your house."
"Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you," returned 
Caddy.
To the Old Street Road we went, and there inquired at Mrs Guppy's residence 
for Mrs Guppy. Mrs Guppy, occupying the parlours, and having indeed been 
visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut in the front parlour door 
by peeping out before she was asked for, immediately presented herself, and 
requested us to walk in. She was an old lady in a large cap, with rather a 
red nose and rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little 
sitting-room was prepared for a visit; and there was a portrait of her son 
in it, which I had almost written here, was more like than life; it 
insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to let him 
off.
Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too. He 
was dressed in a great many colours, and was discovered at a table reading 
law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.
"Miss Summerson," said Mr Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an Oasis. Mother, 
will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady, and get out of 
the gangway."
Mrs Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish appearance, did 
as her son requested; and then sat down in a corner, holding her pocket-
handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, with both hands.
I presented Caddy, and Mr Guppy said that any friend of mine was more than 
welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit.
"I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I.
Mr Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his breast-pocket, 
putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket with a bow. Mr 
Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her head as she smiled, and 
made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow.
"Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I.
Anything like the jocoseness of Mr Guppy's mother, now, I think I never 
saw. She made no sound of laughter; but she rolled her head, and shook it, 
and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to Caddy with her 
elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so unspeakably entertained 
altogether that it was with some difficulty she could marshal Caddy through 
the folding-door into her bedroom adjoining.
"Miss Summerson," said Mr Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of a 
parent ever mindful of a son's happiness. My mother, though highly 
exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates."
I could have hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have 
turned so red, or changed so much, as Mr Guppy did when I now put up my 
veil.
"I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I, "in 
preference to calling at Mr Kenge's, because, remembering what you said on 
an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared I might otherwise 
cause you some embarrassment, Mr Guppy."
I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw such 
faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension.
"Miss Summerson," stammered Mr Guppy, "I - I - beg your pardon, but in our 
profession - we - we - find it necessary to be explicit. You have referred 
to an occasion, miss, when I - when I did myself the honour of making a 
declaration which - "
Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly swallow. 
He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to swallow it, 
coughed again, made faces again, looked all around the room, and fluttered 
his papers.
"A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained, "which 
rather knocks me over. I - er - a little subject to this sort of thing - er 
- By George!"
I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his hand to 
his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his chair into the 
corner behind him.
"My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr Guppy, " - dear me - something 
bronchial, I think - hem! - to remark that you was so good on that 
occasion, as to repel and repudiate that declaration. You - you wouldn't 
perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses are present, it might be 
a satisfaction to - to your mind - if you was to put in that admission."
"There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal without any 
reservation or qualification whatever, Mr Guppy."
"Thank you miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled hands. 
"So far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er - this is certainly 
bronchial! - must be in the tubes - er - you wouldn't perhaps be offended 
if I was to mention - not that it's necessary, for your own good sense or 
any person's sense must show 'em that - if I was to mention that such 
declaration on my part was final, and there terminated?"
"I quite understand that," said I.
"Perhaps - er - it may not be worth the form, but it might be a 
satisfaction to your mind - perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that, 
miss?" said Mr Guppy.
"I admit it most fully and freely," said I.
"Thank you," returned Mr Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I regret that 
my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which I have no 
control, will put it out of my power ever to fall back upon that offer, or 
to renew it in any shape or form whatever; but it will ever be a retrospect 
entwined - er - with friendship's bowers." Mr Guppy's bronchitis came to 
his relief, and stopped his measurement of the table.
"I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began.
"I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr Guppy. "I am so persuaded that 
your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will - will keep you as square 
as possible - that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am sure, in hearing 
any observation you may wish to offer."
"You were so good as to imply, on that occasion - "
"Excuse me, miss," said Mr Guppy, "but we had better not travel out of the 
record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied anything."
"You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might possibly have 
the means of advancing my interests, and promoting my fortunes, by making 
discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that you founded 
that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an orphan girl, 
indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr Jarndyce. Now, the 
beginning and the end of what I have come to beg of you is, Mr Guppy, that 
you will have the kindness to relinquish all idea of so serving me. I have 
thought of this sometimes, and I have thought of it most lately - since I 
have been ill. At length I have decided, in case you should at any time 
recall that purpose, and act upon it any way, to come to you, and assure 
you that you are altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in 
reference to me that would do me the least service, or give me the least 
pleasure. I am acquainted with my personal history; and I have it in my 
power to assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. 
You may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse my 
giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the assurance I 
have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you do this, for my 
peace."
"I am bound to confess," said Mr Guppy, "that you express yourself, miss, 
with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you credit. Nothing 
can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and if I mistook any 
intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to tender a full apology. I 
should wish to be understood, miss, as hereby offering that apology - 
limiting it, as your own good sense and right feeling will point out the 
necessity of, to the present proceedings."
I must say for Mr Guppy that the shuffling manner he had had upon him 
improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do something I 
asked, and he looked ashamed.
"If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once, so that I may 
have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to speak, "you 
will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as possible, because 
you announced this impression of yours to me in a confidence which I have 
really wished to respect -and which I always have respected, as you 
remember. I have mentioned my illness. There really is no reason why I 
should hesitate to say that I know very well that any little delicacy I 
might have had in making a request to you, is quite removed. Therefore I 
make the entreaty I have now preferred; and I hope you will have sufficient 
consideration for me, to accede to it.'
I must do Mr Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked more 
and more ashamed, and that he looked most ashamed, and very earnest, when 
he now replied with a burning face:
"Upon my word and honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I 
am a living man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another 
step in opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it, if it will be any 
satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching the 
matters now in question," continued Mr Guppy, rapidly, as if he were 
repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth, so - "
"I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank you very 
much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!"
Mr Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making met me the recipient of 
her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr Guppy saw us 
to the door with the air of one who was either imperfectly awake or walking 
in his sleep, and we left him there, staring.
But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and with 
his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently:
"Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!"
"I do," said I, "quite confidently."
"I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr Guppy, going with one leg and staying 
with the other, "but this lady being present - your own witness - it might 
be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish to set at rest) if you 
was to repeat those admissions."
"Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be surprised 
when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any engagement - "
"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr Guppy.
"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between this 
gentleman - "
"William Guppy of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex," 
he murmured.
"Between this gentleman, Mr William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in 
the county of Middlesex, and myself."
"Thank you, miss," said Mr Guppy. "Very full, - er - excuse me - lady's 
name, Christian and surname both?"
I gave them.
"Married woman, I believe?" said Mr Guppy. "Married woman. Thank you. 
Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within the city 
of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford Street. Much 
obliged."
He ran home and came running back again.
"Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry that my 
arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which I have no 
control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly terminated some time 
back," said Mr Guppy to me, forlornly and despondently, "but it couldn't 
be. Now could it, you know? I only put it to you."
I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a doubt. He 
thanked me, and ran to his mother's again - and back again.
"It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr Guppy. "If an altar 
could be erected in the bowers of friendship - but, upon my soul, you may 
rely upon me in every respect, save and except the tender passion only!"
The struggle in Mr Guppy's breast, and the numerous oscillations it 
occasioned him between his mother's door and us, were sufficiently 
conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted cutting), 
to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but when we last 
looked back, Mr Guppy was still oscillating in the same troubled state of 
mind.


Chapter 39

Attorney And Client

The name of Mr Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground Floor, is inscribed 
upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane: a little, pale, wall-eyed, 
woebegone inn, like a large dust-binn of two compartments and a sifter. It 
looks as if Symond were a sparing man in his day, and constructed his inn 
of old building materials, which took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and 
all things decaying and dismal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with 
congenial shabbiness. Quartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of 
Symond, are the legal bearings of Mr Vholes.
Mr Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation retired, is 
squeezed up in a corner, and blinks at a dead wall. Three feet of knotty 
floored dark passage bring the client to Mr Vholes's jet black door, in an 
angle profoundly dark on the brightest midsummer morning, and incumbered by 
a black bulkhead of cellarage staircase, against which belated civilians 
generally strike their brows. Mr Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale 
that one clerk can open the door without getting off his stool, while the 
other who elbows him at the same desk has equal faculties for poking the 
fire. A smell as of unwholesome sheep, blending with the smell of must and 
dust, is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of mutton 
fat in candles, and to the fretting of parchment forms and skins in greasy 
drawers. The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close. The place was last 
painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man, and the two chimneys 
smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of soot everywhere, and the dull 
cracked windows in their heavy frames have but one piece of character in 
them, which is a determination to be always dirty, and always shut, unless 
coerced. This accounts for the phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually 
having a bundle of firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.
Mr Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business, but he is 
a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater attorneys who have 
made good fortunes, or are making them, to be a most respectable man. He 
never misses a chance in his practice; which is a mark of respectability. 
He never takes any pleasure; which is another mark of respectability. He is 
reserved and serious; which is another mark of respectability. His 
digestion is impaired; which is highly respectable. And he is making hay of 
the grass which is flesh, for his three daughters. And his father is 
dependent on him in the Vale of Taunton.
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. 
There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently 
maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes 
a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think 
it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make 
business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to 
grumble.
But, not perceiving this quite plainly - only seeing it by halves in a 
confused way - the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a bad 
grace, and do grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr Vholes is 
brought into powerful play against them. "Repeal this statute, my good 
sir?" says Mr Kenge, to a smarting client, "repeal it, my dear sir? Never, 
with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and what will be the effect of your 
rash proceeding on a class of practitioners very worthily represented, 
allow me to say to you, by the opposite attorney in the case, Mr Vholes? 
Sir, that class of practitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. 
Now you cannot afford - I would say, the social system cannot afford - to 
lose an order of men like Mr Vholes. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute 
in business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against the 
existing state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in your case; 
but I can never raise my voice for the demolition of a class of men like Mr 
Vholes." The respectability of Mr Vholes has even been cited with crushing 
effect before Parliamentary committees, as in the following blue minutes of 
a distinguished attorney's evidence. "Question (number five hundred and 
seventeen thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine). If I understand you, 
these forms of practice indisputably occasion delay? Answer. Yes, some 
delay. Question. And great expense? Answer. Most assuredly they cannot be 
gone through for nothing. Question. And unspeakable vexation? Answer. I am 
not prepared to say that. They have never given me any vexation; quite the 
contrary. Question. But you think that their abolition would damage a class 
of practitioners? Answer. I have no doubt of it. Question. Can you instance 
any type of that class? Answer. Yes. I would unhesitatingly mention Mr 
Vholes. He would be ruined. Question. Mr Vholes is considered, in the 
profession, a respectable man? Answer" - which proved fatal to the inquiry 
for ten years - "Mr Vholes is considered, in the profession, a most 
respectable man."
So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less disinterested will 
remark that they don't know what this age is coming to; that we are 
plunging down precipices; that now here is something else gone; that these 
changes are death to people like Vholes: a man of undoubted respectability, 
with a father in the Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a 
few steps more in this direction, say they, and what is to become of 
Vholes's father? Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to be 
shirt-makers, or governesses? As though Mr Vholes and his relations being 
minor cannibal chiefs, and it being proposed to abolish cannibalism, 
indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make maneating unlawful, and 
you starve the Vholeses!
In a word, Mr Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the Vale 
of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber, to shore up 
some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a nuisance. And with 
a great many people, in a great many instances, the question is never one 
of a change from Wrong to Right (which is quite an extraneous 
consideration), but is always one of injury or advantage to that eminently 
respectable legion, Vholes.
The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long vacation. Mr 
Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags hastily stuffed out of 
all regularity of form, as the larger sort of serpents are in their first 
gorged state, have returned to the official den. Mr Vholes, quiet and 
unmoved, as a man of so much respectability ought to be, takes off his 
close black gloves as if he were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight 
hat as if he were scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client 
throws his hat and gloves upon the ground - tosses them anywhere, without 
looking after them or caring where they go; flings himself, into a chair, 
half sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand, and 
looks the portrait of Young Despair.
"Again nothing done!" says Richard. "Nothing, nothing done!"
"Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. "That is scarcely 
fair, sir, scarcely fair!"
"Why, what is done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.
"That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes. "The question may 
branch off into what is doing, what is doing?"
"And what is doing?" asks the moody client.
Vholes, sitting with his arms on his desk, quietly bringing the tips of his 
five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers, and quietly 
separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at his client, 
replies:
"A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our shoulders to the wheel, Mr 
Carstone, and the wheel is going round."
"Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five 
accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and walking 
about the room.
"Mr C," returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever he goes, 
"your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your account. Excuse me 
if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be so impetuous, not to 
wear yourself out so. You should have more patience. You should sustain 
yourself better."
"I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr Vholes?" says Richard, sitting down 
again with an impatient laugh, and beating the Devil's Tattoo with his boot 
on the patternless carpet.
"Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the client, as if he were making a 
lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his professional 
appetite. "Sir," returns Vholes, with his inward manner of speech and his 
bloodless quietude; "I should not have had the presumption to propose 
myself as a model, for your imitation or any man's. Let me but leave the 
good name to my three daughters, and that is enough for me; I am not a self-
seeker. But, since you mention me so pointedly, I will acknowledge that I 
should like to impart to you a little of my - come sir, you are disposed to 
call it insensibility, and I am sure I have no objection - say 
insensibility - a little of my insensibility."
"Mr Vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "I had no intention to 
accuse you of insensibility."
"I think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable Vholes. 
"Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests with a cool 
head, and I can quite understand that to your excited feelings I may 
appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My daughters may know me 
better; my aged father may know me better. But they have known me much 
longer than you have, and the confiding eye of affection is not the 
distrustful eye of business. Not that I complain, sir, of the eye of 
business being distrustful; quite the contrary. In attending to your 
interests, I wish to have all possible checks upon me; it is right that I 
should have them; I court inquiry. But your interests demand that I should 
be cool and methodical, Mr Carstone; and I cannot be otherwise - no, sir, 
not even to please you."
Mr Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently watching a 
mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young client, and 
proceeds in his buttoned-up half-audible voice, as if there were an unclean 
spirit in him that will neither come out nor speak out:
"What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the vacation. I should hope 
you gentlemen of the army may find many means of amusing yourselves, if you 
give your minds to it. If you had asked me what I was to do, during the 
vacation, I could have answered you more readily. I am to attend to your 
interests. I am to be found here, day by day, attending to your interests. 
That is my duty, Mr C; and term time or vacation makes no difference to me. 
If you wish to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at 
all times alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don't. Not that I 
blame them for going; I merely say, I don't go. This desk is your rock, 
sir!"
Mr Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. Not to 
Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to him. Perhaps Mr 
Vholes knows there is.
"I am perfectly aware, Mr Vholes," says Richard, more familiarly and good-
humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the world; and that 
to have to do with you, is to have to do with a man of business who is not 
to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my case, dragging on this dislocated 
life, sinking deeper and deeper into difficulty every day, continually 
hoping and continually disappointed, conscious of change upon change for 
the worse in myself, and of no change for the better in anything else; and 
you will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do."
"You know," says Mr Vholes, "that I never give hopes, sir. I told you from 
the first, Mr C, that I never give hopes. Particularly in a case like this, 
where the greater part of the costs comes out of the estate, I should not 
be considerate of my good name, if I gave hopes. It might seem as if costs 
were my object. Still, when you say there is no change for the better, I 
must, as a bare matter of fact, deny that."
"Aye?" returns Richard, brightening. "But how do you make it out?"
"Mr Carstone, you are represented by - "
"You said just now - a rock."
"Yes, sir," says Mr Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping the hollow 
desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust on dust, "a 
rock. That's something. You are separately represented, and no longer 
hidden and lost in the interests of others. That's something. The suit does 
not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk it about. That's something. 
It's not all Jarndyce, in fact as well as in name. That's something. Nobody 
has it all his own way now, sir. And that's something, surely."
Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his clenched 
hand.
"Mr Vholes! if any man had told me, when I first went to John Jarndyce's 
house, that he was anything but the disinterested friend he seemed - that 
he was what he has gradually turned out to be - I could have found no words 
strong enough to repel the slander; I could not have defended him too 
ardently. So little did I know of the world! Whereas, now, I do declare to 
you that he becomes to me the embodiment of the suit; that, in place of its 
being an abstraction, it is John Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more 
indignant I am with him; that every new delay, and every new 
disappointment, is only a new injury from John Jarndyce's hand."
"No, no," says Vholes. "Don't say so. We ought to have patience, all of us. 
Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage."
"Mr Vholes," returns the angry client. "You know as well as I, that he 
would have strangled the suit if he could."
"He was not active in it," Mr Vholes admits, with an appearance of 
reluctance. "He certainly was not active in it. But however, but however, 
he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the heart, Mr C!"
"You can," returns Richard.
"I, Mr C?"
"Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are, or are not, our 
interests conflicting? Tell - me - that?" says Richard, accompanying his 
last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.
"Mr C," returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking his hungry 
eyes, "I should be wanting in my duty as your professional adviser, I 
should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if I represented 
those interests as identical with the interests of Mr Jarndyce. They are no 
such thing, sir. I never impute motives; I both have, and am, a father, and 
I never impute motives. But I must not shrink from a professional duty, 
even if it sows dissension in families. I understand you to be now 
consulting me professionally, as to your interests? You are so? I reply 
then, they are not identical with those of Mr Jarndyce."
"Of course they are not!" cries Richard. "You found that out, long ago."
"Mr C," returns Vholes, "I wish to say no more of any third party than is 
necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied, together with any little 
property of which I may become possessed through industry and perseverance, 
to my daughters Emma, Jane, and Caroline. I also desire to live in amity 
with my professional brethren. When Mr Skimpole did me the honour, sir - I 
will not say the very high honour, for I never stoop to flattery - of 
bringing us together in this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no 
opinion or advice as to your interests, while those interests were 
intrusted to another member of the profession. And I spoke in such terms as 
I was bound to speak, of Kenge and Carboy's office, which stands high. You, 
sir, thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless, 
and to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, sir, and I 
accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount in this 
office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me mention, are not 
in a good state, and rest might improve them; but I shall not rest, sir, 
while I am your representative. Whenever you want me, you will find me 
here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come. During the long vacation, sir, I 
shall devote my leisure to studying your interests more and more closely, 
and to making arrangements for moving heaven and earth (including, of 
course, the Chancellor) after Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately 
congratulate you, sir," says Mr Vholes, with the severity of a determined 
man, "when I ultimately congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your 
accession to fortune - which, but that I never give hopes, I might say 
something further about - you will owe me nothing, beyond whatever little 
balance may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and 
client, not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. I 
pretend to no claim upon you, Mr C, but for the zealous and active 
discharge - not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much credit I 
stipulate for - of my professional duty. My duty prosperously ended, all 
between us is ended."
Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his principles, 
that as Mr Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment, perhaps Mr C. will 
favour him with an order on his agent for twenty pounds on account.
"For there have been many little consultations and attendances of late, 
sir," observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his Diary, "and these 
things mount up, and I don't profess to be a man of capital. When we first 
entered on our present relations, I stated to you openly - it is a 
principle of mine that there never can be too much openness between 
solicitor and client - that I was not a man of capital; and that if capital 
was your object, you had better leave your papers in Kenge's office. No, Mr 
C, you will find none of the advantages, or disadvantages, of capital here, 
sir. This," Vholes gives the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock; it 
pretends to be nothing more."
The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved, and his vague hopes 
rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft: not without perplexed 
consideration and calculation of the date it may bear, implying scant 
effects in the agent's hands. All the while, Vholes, buttoned up in body 
and mind, looks at him attentively. All the while, Vholes's official cat 
watches the mouse's hole.
Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr Vholes, for Heaven's sake 
and Earth's sake, to do his utmost, to "pull him through" the Court of 
Chancery. Mr Vholes, who never gives hopes, lays his palm upon the client's 
shoulder, and answers with a smile, "Always here, sir. Personally, or by 
letter, you will always find me here, sir, with my shoulder to the wheel." 
Thus they part; and Vholes, left alone, employs himself in carrying sundry 
little matters out of his Diary into his draft bill book, for the ultimate 
behoof of his three daughters. So might an industrious fox, or bear, make 
up his account of chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs; not 
to disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up 
maidens, who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage situated in 
a damp garden at Kennington.
Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond's Inn into the sunshine of 
Chancery Lane - for there happens to be sunshine there today - walks 
thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and passes under the shadow 
of the Lincoln's Inn trees. On many such loungers have the speckled shadows 
of those trees often fallen; on the like bent head, the bitten nail, the 
lowering eye, the lingering step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good 
consuming and consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby 
yet, but that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in Precedent, 
is very rich in such Precedents; and why should one be different from ten 
thousand?
Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began, that as he saunters 
away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months together, though he 
hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case as if it were a startling 
one. While his heart is heavy with corroding care, suspense, distrust, and 
doubt, it may have room for some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how 
different his first visit there, how different he, how different all the 
colours of his mind. But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with 
shadows and being defeated by them, necessitates the setting up of 
substances to combat; from the impalpable suit which no man alive can 
understand, the time for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy 
relief to turn to the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved 
him from this ruin, and make him his enemy. Richard has told Vholes the 
truth. Is he in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries 
equally at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, 
and that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is resolving 
his existence into itself: besides, it is a justification to him in his own 
eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor.
Is Richard a monster in all this - or would Chancery be found rich in such 
Precedents too, if they could be got for citation from the Recording Angel?
Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as, biting his 
nails and brooding, he crosses the square, and is swallowed up by the 
shadow of the southern gateway. Mr Guppy and Mr Weevle are the possessors 
of those eyes, and they have been leaning in conversation against the low 
stone parapet under the trees. He passed close by them, seeing nothing but 
the ground.
"William," says Mr Weevle, adjusting his whiskers; "there's combustion 
going on there! It's not a case of Spontaneous, but it's smouldering 
combustion it is."
"Ah!" says Mr Guppy, "he wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I suppose he's 
over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him. He was as high as the 
Monument when he was on trial at our place. A good riddance to me, whether 
as clerk or client! Well, Tony, that as I was mentioning is what they're up 
to."
Mr Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet, as 
resuming a conversation of interest.
"They are still up to it, sir," says Mr Guppy, "still taking stock, still 
examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of rubbish. At this 
rate they'll be at it these seven years."
"And Small is helping?"
"Small left us at a week's notice. Told Kenge, his grandfather's business 
was too much for the old gentleman, and he could better himself by 
undertaking it. There had been a coolness between myself and Small on 
account of his being so close. But he said you and I began it; and as he 
had me there - for we did - I put our acquaintance on the old footing. 
That's how I come to know what they're up to."
"You haven't looked in at all?"
"Tony," says Mr Guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved with you, I 
don't greatly relish the house, except in your company, and therefore I 
have not; and therefore I proposed this little appointment for our fetching 
away your things. There goes the hour by the clock! Tony!" Mr Guppy becomes 
mysteriously and tenderly eloquent; "it is necessary that I should impress 
upon your mind once more, that circumstances over which I have no control, 
have made a melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans, and in that 
unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend. That image 
is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish now, in connection 
with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the court, with 
your aid as a friend, is to let 'em alone and bury 'em in oblivion. Do you 
think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I put it to you, Tony, as 
a friend), from your knowledge of that capricious and deep old character 
who fell a prey to the - Spontaneous element; do you, Tony, think it at all 
likely that, on second thoughts, he put those letters away anywhere after 
you saw him alive, and that they were not destroyed that night?"
Mr Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly thinks not.
"Tony," says Mr Guppy, as they walk towards the court, "once again 
understand me, as a friend. Without entering into further explanations, I 
may repeat that the idol is down. I have no purpose to serve now, but 
burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myself. I owe it to myself, and 
I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the circumstances over which I 
have no control. If you was to express to me by a gesture, by a wink, that 
you saw lying anywhere in your late lodgings, any papers that so much as 
looked like the papers in question, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, 
on my own responsibility."
Mr Weevle nods. Mr Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by having 
delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and in part 
romantic - this gentleman having a passion for conducting anything in the 
form of an examination, or delivering anything in the form of a summing up 
or a speech - accompanies his friend with dignity to the court.
Never, since it has been a court, has it had such a Fortunatus's purse of 
gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop. Regularly, every 
morning at eight, is the elder Mr Smallweed brought down to the corner and 
carried in, accompanied by Mrs Smallweed, Judy, and Bart; and regularly, 
all day, do they all remain there until nine at night, solaced by gypsy 
dinners, not abundant in quantity, from the cook's shop; rummaging and 
searching, digging, delving, and diving among the treasures of the late 
lamented. What those treasures are, they keep so secret, that the court is 
maddened. In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of teapots, crown-
pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses stuffed with Bank 
of England notes. It possesses itself of the sixpenny history (with highly-
coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also 
of Mr Elwes, of Suffolk, and transfers all the facts from those authentic 
narratives to Mr Krook. Twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a 
cartload of old paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles 
and pries into the baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen 
who write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue paper are seen 
prowling in the neighbourhood - shy of each other, their late partnership 
being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the prevailing 
interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in what are 
professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject, is received with 
loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the regular business like a 
man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in the revived Caledonian melody of 
"We're a nodding," points the sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever 
the nature of that refreshment may be) with such archness, and such a turn 
of the head towards next door, that she is immediately understood to mean, 
Mr Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double 
encore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and, as Mrs Piper and 
Mrs Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance is the 
signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to discover 
everything, and more.
Mr Weevle and Mr Guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon them, knock 
at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a high state of 
popularity. But, being contrary to the court's expectation admitted, they 
immediately become unpopular, and are considered to mean no good.
The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the ground-
floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced into the back 
shop by Mr Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the sunlight, can at 
first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but they gradually discern the 
elder Mr Smallweed, seated in his chair upon the brink of a well or grave 
of waste paper; the virtuous Judy groping therein, like a female sexton; 
and Mrs Smallweed on the level ground in the vicinity, snowed up in a heap 
of paper fragments, print and manuscript, which would appear to be the 
accumulated compliments that have been sent flying at her in the course of 
the day. The whole party, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt, 
and present a fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the 
room. There is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier 
if possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead inhabitant, 
and even with his chalked writing on the wall.
On the entrance of visitors, Mr Smallweed and Judy simultaneously fold 
their arms and stop in their researches.
"Aha!" croaks the old gentleman. "How de do, gentlemen, how de do! Come to 
fetch your property, Mr Weevle? That's well, that's well. Ha! ha! We should 
have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your warehouse room, if you 
had left it here much longer. You feel quite at home here, again, I 
daresay? Glad to see you, glad to see you!"
Mr Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr Guppy's eye follows Mr 
Weevle's eye. Mr Weevle's eye comes back without any new intelligence in 
it. Mr Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr Smallweed's eye. That engaging 
old gentleman is still murmuring, like some wound-up instrument running 
down, "How de do, sir - how de - how -." And then, having run down, he 
lapses into grinning silence, as Mr Guppy starts at seeing Mr Tulkinghorn 
standing in the darkness opposite, with his hands behind him.
"Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says Grandfather Smallweed. 
"I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note; but he is so 
good!"
Mr Guppy slightly nudging his friend to take another look makes a shuffling 
bow to Mr Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod. Mr Tulkinghorn is 
looking on as if he had nothing else to do, and were rather amused by the 
novelty.
"A good deal of property here, sir, I should say," Mr Guppy observes to Mr 
Smallweed.
"Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! rags and rubbish! Me and 
Bart, and my granddaughter Judy, are endeavouring to make out an inventory 
of what's worth anything to sell. But we haven't come to much as yet, we - 
haven't - come - to - hah!"
Mr Smallweed has run down again; while Mr Weevle's eye, attended by Mr 
Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back.
"Well, sir," says Mr Weevle. "We won't intrude any longer, if you'll allow 
us to go upstairs."
"Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're at home. Make yourself so, pray!"
As they go upstairs, Mr Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly, and looks at 
Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull and dismal, 
with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that memorable night yet in 
the discoloured grate. They have a great disinclination to touch any 
object, and carefully blow the dust from it first. Nor are they desirous to 
prolong their visit: packing the few movables with all possible speed, and 
never speaking above a whisper.
"Look here," says Tony, recoiling. "Here's that horrible cat coming in!"
Mr Guppy retreats behind a chair. "Small told me of her. She went leaping 
and bounding and tearing about, that night, like a Dragon, and got out on 
the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight, and then came 
tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see such a brute? Looks 
as if she knew all about it, don't she? Almost looks as if she was Krook. 
Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!"
Lady Jane in the doorway, with her tiger-snarl from ear to ear, and her 
club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr Tulkinghorn stumbling 
over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and swearing wrathfully, takes her 
arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam the house-tops again, and return by 
the chimney.
"Mr Guppy," says Mr Tulkinghorn, "could I have a word with you?"
Mr Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty from 
the wall, and depositing those works of art in their old ignoble band-box. 
"Sir," he returns, reddening, "I wish to act with courtesy towards every 
member of the profession, and especially, I am sure, towards a member of it 
so well known as yourself - I will truly add, sir, so distinguished as 
yourself. Still, Mr Tulkinghorn, sir, I must stipulate that if you have any 
word with me, that word is spoken in the presence of my friend."
"Oh, indeed?" says Mr Tulkinghorn.
"Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all; but they are 
amply sufficient for myself."
"No doubt, no doubt." Mr Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the hearthstone 
to which he has quietly walked. "The matter is not of that consequence that 
I need put you to the trouble of making any conditions, Mr Guppy." He 
pauses here to smile, and his smile is as dull and rusty as his pantaloons. 
"You are to be congratulated, Mr Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, 
sir."
"Pretty well so, Mr Tulkinghorn; I don't complain."
"Complain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and access to 
elegant ladies! Why, Mr Guppy, there are people in London who would give 
their ears to be you."
Mr Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still reddening 
ears to be one of those people at present instead of himself, replies, 
"Sir, if I attend to my profession, and do what is right by Kenge and 
Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no consequence to them, nor to 
any member of the profession, not excepting Mr Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I 
am not under any obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect 
for you, sir, and without offence - I repeat, without offence - "
"Oh, certainly!"
" - I don't intend to do it."
"Quite so," says Mr Tulkinghorn, with a calm nod. "Very good: I see by 
these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable great, 
sir?"
He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft impeachment.
"A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient," observes Mr Tulkinghorn. 
He has been standing on the hearth-stone, with his back to the smoked 
chimney-piece, and now turns round, with his glasses to his eyes. "Who is 
this? 'Lady Dedlock.' Ha! A very good likeness in its way, but it wants 
force of character. Good day to you, gentlemen; good day!"
When he has walked out, Mr Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves himself 
to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy Gallery, 
concluding with Lady Dedlock.
"Tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be quick in 
putting the things together, and in getting out of this place. It were in 
vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between myself and one of the 
members of a swanlike aristocracy whom I now hold in my hand, there has 
been undivulged communication and association. The time might have been, 
when I might have revealed it to you. It never will be more. It is due 
alike to the oath I have taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to 
circumstances over which I have no control, that the whole should be buried 
in oblivion. I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever 
testified in the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with 
which I may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word 
of inquiry!"
This charge Mr Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic lunacy, 
while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair, and even in 
his cultivated whiskers.


Chapter 40

National And Domestic

England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle would go 
out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being nobody in Great 
Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no 
Government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting between those two great 
men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did not come off; because if both 
pistols had taken effect, and Coodle and Doodle had killed each other, it 
is to be presumed that England must have waited to be governed until young 
Coodle and young Doodle, now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. 
This stupendous national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle's 
making the timely discovery, that if in the heat of debate he had said that 
he scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle, he 
had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce him to 
withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while it as 
opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas Doodle had in 
his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down to posterity as the 
mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has been some weeks in the 
dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well observed by Sir Leicester 
Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the marvellous part of the matter is, 
that England has not appeared to care very much about it, but has gone on 
eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, as the old world 
did in the days before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle 
knew the danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest 
possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not only 
condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in with him 
all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his brothers-in-law. So 
there is hope for the old ship yet.
Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country - chiefly in 
the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is 
available in a good many places simultaneously, and can throw himself upon 
a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia being much 
occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns, and swallowing 
Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself black in the face that 
she does neither - plainly to the advancement of her glory and morality - 
the London season comes to a sudden end, through all the Doodleites and 
Coodleites dispersing to assist Britannia in those religious exercises.
Hence Mrs Rouncewell housekeeper at Chesney Wold foresees, though no 
instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be expected, 
together with a pretty large accession of cousins and others who can in any 
way assist the great Constitutional work. And hence the stately old dame, 
taking Time by the forelock, leads him up and down the staircases, and 
along the galleries and passages and through the rooms, to witness before 
he grows any older that everything is ready; that floors are rubbed bright, 
carpets spread, curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and 
kitchen cleared for action, all things prepared as beseems the Dedlock 
dignity.
This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations are 
complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many appliances of 
habitation, and with no inhabitants except the pictured forms upon the 
walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in possession might have 
ruminated passing along; so did they see this gallery hushed and quiet, as 
I see it now; so think, as I think, of the gap that they would make in this 
domain when they were gone; so find it, as I find it, difficult to believe 
that it could be without them; so pass from my world, as I pass from 
theirs, now closing the reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, 
and so die. Through some of the fiery windows, beautiful from without, and 
set, at this sunset hour, not in dull grey stone but in a glorious house of 
gold, the light excluded at the other windows pours in, rich, lavish, 
overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen Dedlocks 
thaw. Strange movements come upon their features, as the shadows of leaves 
play there. A dense Justice in a corner is beguiled into a wink. A staring 
Baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in his chin. Down into the bosom 
of a stony shepherdess there steals a fleck of light and warmth, that would 
have done it good a hundred years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-
heeled shoes, very like her - casting the shadow of that virgin event 
before her full two centuries - shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. 
A maid of honour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes 
(and other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it 
ripples as it glows.
But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and shadow 
slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age and death. And 
now, upon my lady's picture over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade 
falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and flutters it, and looks as 
if a great arm held a veil or hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over 
her. Higher and darker rises shadow on the wall - now a red gloom on the 
ceiling - now the fire is out.
All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved 
solemnly away, and changed - not the first or the last of beautiful things 
that look so near and will so change - into a distant phantom. Light mists 
arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the garden are heavy 
in the air. Now, the woods settle into great masses as if they were each 
one profound tree. And now the moon rises, to separate them, and to glimmer 
here and there is horizontal lines behind their stems, and to make the 
avenue a pavement of light among high cathedral arches fantastically 
broken.
Now, the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than 
ever, is like a body without life. Now, it is even awful, stealing through 
it, to think of the live people who have slept in the solitary bedrooms: to 
say nothing of the dead. Now is the time for shadow, when every corner is a 
cavern, and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is reflected 
in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be 
made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when 
the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from 
stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of 
heads inside. But, of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the 
long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the last to 
be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening 
hands raised up, and menacing the handsome face with every breath that 
stirs.
"She is not well, ma'am," says a groom in Mrs Rouncewell's audience-
chamber.
"My Lady not well? What's the matter?"
"Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma'am, since she was last here - I don't 
mean with the family, ma'am, but when she was here as a bird of passage-
like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept her room a good 
deal."
"Chesney Wold, Thomas," rejoins the housekeeper, with proud complacency, 
"will set my Lady up! There is no finer air, and no healthier soil, in the 
world!"
Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject; probably hints 
them, in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of his neck 
to his temples; but he forbears to express them further, and retires to the 
servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.
This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening, down 
come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and down come 
the cousins and others from all the points of the compass. Henceforth for 
some weeks, backward and forward rush mysterious men with no names, who fly 
about all those particular parts of the country on which Doodle is at 
present throwing himself in an auriferous and malty shower, but who are 
merely persons of a restless disposition and never do anything anywhere.
On these national occasions, Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful. A 
better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at dinner, 
there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the other 
cousins, to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and there, and 
show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard to find. Volumnia 
is a little dim, but she is of the true descent; and there are many who 
appreciate her sprightly conversation, her French conundrums so old as to 
have become in the cycles of time almost new again, the honour of taking 
the fair Dedlock in to dinner, or even the privilege of her hand in the 
dance. On these national occasions, dancing may be a patriotic service: and 
Volumnia is constantly seen hopping about, for the good of an ungrateful 
and unpensioning country.
My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and, being 
still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But, at all the dismal 
dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other melancholy pageants, her 
mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir Leicester, he conceives it utterly 
impossible that anything can be wanting, in any direction, by any one who 
has the good fortune to be received under that roof; and in a state of 
sublime satisfaction, he moves among the company, a magnificent 
refrigerator.
Daily the cousins trot through dust, and canter over roadside turf, away to 
hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and hunting-whips for the 
counties, and kid gloves and riding-canes for the boroughs), and daily 
bring back reports on which Sir Leicester holds forth after dinner. Daily 
the restless men who have no occupation in life, present the appearance of 
being rather busy. Daily, Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir 
Leicester on the state of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed 
to conclude that Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought 
her.
"How are we getting on?" says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. "Are we 
safe?"
The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will throw 
himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has just appeared 
in the long drawing-room after dinner; a bright particular star, surrounded 
by clouds of cousins.
"Volumnia," replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, "we are 
doing tolerably."
"Only tolerably!"
Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own particular 
fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near it, and repeats, 
with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who should say, I am not a 
common man, and when I say tolerably, it must not be understood as a common 
expression: "Volumnia, we are doing tolerably."
"At least there is no opposition to you," Volumnia asserts with confidence.
"No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many 
respects, I grieve to say, but - "
"It is not so bad as that. I am glad to hear it!"
Volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir Leicester, 
with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to himself, "A 
sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally precipitate."
In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock's observation 
was superfluous: Sir Leicester, on these occasions, always delivering in 
his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale order to be promptly 
executed. Two other little seats that belong to him, he treats as retail 
orders of less importance; merely sending down the men, and signifying to 
the tradespeople, "You will have the goodness to make these materials into 
two members of parliament, and to send them home when done."
"I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown a bad 
spirit, and that this opposition to the Government has been of a most 
determined and most implacable description."
"W-r-retches!" says Volumnia.
"Even," proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins on 
sofas and ottomans, "even in many - in fact, in most - of those places in 
which the Government has carried it against a faction - "
(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the 
Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly that the same position 
towards the Coodleites.)
" - Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be 
constrained to inform you that the Party has not triumphed without being 
put to an enormous expense. Hundreds," says Sir Leicester, eyeing the 
cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation, "Hundreds of 
thousands of pounds!"
If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too innocent; 
seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well with a sash and 
tucker, is a little out of keeping with the rouge and pearl necklace. 
Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks,
"What for?"
"Volumnia," remonstrates Sir Leicester, with his utmost severity. 
"Volumnia!"
"No, no, I don't mean what for," cries Volumnia with her favourite little 
scream. "How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!"
"I am glad," returns Sir Leicester, "that you do mean what a pity."
Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people ought to 
be tried as traitors, and made to support the Party.
"I am glad, Volumnia," repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these mollifying 
sentiments, "that you do mean what a pity. It is disgraceful to the 
electors. But as you, though inadvertently, and without intending so 
unreasonable a question, asked me 'what for?' let me reply to you. For 
necessary expenses. And I trust to your good sense, Volumnia, not to pursue 
the subject, here or elsewhere."
Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspects 
towards Volumnia, because it is whispered abroad that these necessary 
expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be unpleasantly 
connected with the word bribery; and because some graceless jokers have 
consequently suggested the omission from the Church service of the ordinary 
supplication in behalf of the High Court of Parliament, and have 
recommended instead that the prayers of the congregation be requested for 
six hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.
"I suppose," observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover her 
spirits after her late castigation, "I suppose Mr Tulkinghorn has been 
worked to death."
"I don't know," says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, "why Mr Tulkinghorn 
should be worked to death. I don't know what Mr Tulkinghorn's engagements 
may be. He is not a candidate."
Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could 
desire to know by whom, and what for? Volumnia, abashed again, suggests, by 
Somebody - to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester is not aware that 
any client of Mr Tulkinghorn has been in need of his assistance.
Lady Dedlock seated at an open window with her arm upon its cushioned ledge 
and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the park, has seemed to 
attend since the lawyer's name was mentioned.
A languid cousin with a moustache, in a state of extreme debility, now 
observes from his couch, that - man told him ya'as'dy that Tulkinghorn had 
gone down to t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion 'bout something; and 
that, contest being over t' day, 'twould be highly jawlly thing if 
Tulkinghorn should pear with news that Coodle man was floored.
Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon, that Mr 
Tulkinghorn has arrived, and is taking dinner. My Lady turns her head 
inward, for the moment, then looks out again as before.
Volumnia is charmed to hear that her Delight is come. He is so original, 
such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing all sorts of 
things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded that he must be a 
Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge, and wears short aprons, 
and is made a perfect Idol of, with candlesticks and trowels. These lively 
remarks the fair Dedlock delivers in her youthful manner, while making a 
purse.
"He has not been here once," she adds, "since I came. I really had some 
thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had almost 
made up my mind that he was dead."
It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker gloom 
within herself, but a shade is on my Lady's face, as if she thought, "I 
would he were!"
"Mr Tulkinghorn," says Sir Leicester, "is always welcome here, and always 
discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and deservedly 
respected."
The debilitated cousin supposes he is " 'normously rich fler."
"He has a stake in the country," says Sir Leicester, "I have no doubt. He 
is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on a footing of 
equality with the highest society."
Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.
"Good gracious, what's that?" cries Volumnia with her little withered 
scream.
"A rat," says my Lady. "And they have shot him."
Enter Mr Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.
"No, no," says Sir Leicester, "I think not. My Lady, do you object to the 
twilight?"
On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
"Volumnia?"
O! nothing is so delicious to Volumnia, as to sit and talk in the dark.
"Then take them away," says Sir Leicester. "Tulkinghorn, I beg your pardon. 
How do you do?"
Mr Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his passing 
homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester's hand, and subsides into the chair 
proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on the opposite side of 
the Baronet's little newspaper table. Sir Leicester is apprehensive that my 
Lady, not being very well, will take cold at that open window. My Lady is 
obliged to him, but would rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester 
rises, adjusts her scarf about her, and returns to his seat. Mr Tulkinghorn 
in the meanwhile takes a pinch of snuff.
"Now," says Sir Leicester. "How has that contest gone?"
"Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in both 
their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one."
It is a part of Mr Tulkinghorn's policy and mastery to have no political 
opinions; indeed, no opinions. Therefore he says "you" are beaten, and not 
"we."
Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a thing. 
The debilitated cousin holds that it's - sort of thing that's sure tapn 
slongs votes - giv'n - Mob.
"It's the place, you know," Mr Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the fast 
increasing darkness, when there is silence again, "where they wanted to put 
up Mrs Rouncewell's son."
"A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had the 
becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to decline. I 
cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments expressed by Mr 
Rouncewell, when he was here for some half-hour, in this room; but there 
was a sense of propriety in his decision which I am glad to acknowledge."
"Ha!" says Mr Tulkinghorn. "It did not prevent him from being very active 
in this election, though."
Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. "Did I 
understand you? Did you say that Mr Rouncewell had been very active in this 
election?"
"Uncommonly active."
"Against - "
"O dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and emphatic. He 
made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the business-part of 
the proceedings he carried all before him."
It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that Sir 
Leicester is staring majestically.
"And he was much assisted," says Mr Tulkinghorn, as a wind-up, "by his 
son."
"By his son, sir?" repeats Sir Leicester, with awful politeness.
"By his son."
"The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady's service?"
"That son. He has but one."
"Then, upon my honour," says Sir Leicester, after a terrific pause, during 
which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare; "then upon my honour, 
upon my life, upon my reputation and principles, the floodgates of society 
are burst open, and the waters have - a - obliterated the landmarks of the 
framework of the cohesion by which things are held together!"
General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is really high 
time, you know, for somebody in power to step in and do something strong. 
Debilitated cousin thinks - Country's going -Dayvle - steeple-chase pace.
"I beg," says Sir Leicester, in a breathless condition, "that we may not 
comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My Lady, let 
me suggest in reference to that young woman - "
"I have no intention," observes my Lady from her window, in a low but 
decided tone, "of parting with her."
"That was not my meaning," returns Sir Leicester. "I am glad to hear you 
say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your patronage, you 
should exert your influence to keep her from these dangerous hands. You 
might show her what violence would be done, in such association, to her 
duties and principles; and you might preserve her for a better fate. You 
might point out to her that she probably would, in good time, find a 
husband at Chesney Wold, by whom she would not be - " Sir Leicester adds, 
after a moment's consideration, "dragged from the altars of her 
forefathers."
These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference when he 
addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in reply. The moon 
is rising; and where she sits there is a little stream of cold pale light, 
in which her head is seen.
"It is worthy of remark," says Mr Tulkinghorn, "however, that these people 
are, in their way, very proud."
"Proud?" Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.
"I should not be surprised, if they all voluntarily abandoned the girl - 
yes, lover and all - instead of her abandoning them, supposing she remained 
at Chesney Wold under such circumstances."
"Well!" says Sir Leicester, tremulously, "Well! You should know, Mr 
Tulkinghorn. You have been among them."
"Really, Sir Leicester," returns the lawyer, "I state the fact. Why I could 
tell you a story - with Lady Dedlock's permission."
Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! O, he is going to 
tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?
"No. Real flesh and blood." Mr Tulkinghorn stops for an instant, and 
repeats, with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony, "Real 
flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars have only 
lately become known to me. They are very brief. They exemplify what I have 
said. I suppress names for the present. Lady Dedlock will not think me ill-
bred, I hope."
By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking towards the 
moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be seen, perfectly 
still.
"A townsman of this Mrs Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel 
circumstances, as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter who 
attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great lady; not 
merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your condition, Sir 
Leicester."
Sir Leicester condescendingly says, "Yes, Mr Tulkinghorn;" implying that 
then she must have appeared of very considerable moral dimensions indeed, 
in the eyes of an ironmaster.
"The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl, and 
treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her. Now this 
lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she had preserved 
for many years. In fact, she had in early life been engaged to marry a 
young rake - he was a captain in the army - nothing connected with whom 
came to any good. She never did marry him, but she gave birth to a child of 
which he was the father."
By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the moonlight. By 
the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile, perfectly still.
"The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a train 
of circumstances with which I need not trouble you, led to discovery. As I 
received the story, they began in an imprudence on her own part one day, 
when she was taken by surprise; which shows how difficult it is for the 
firmest of us (she was very firm) to be always guarded. There was great 
domestic trouble and amazement, you may suppose; I leave you to imagine, 
Sir Leicester, the husband's grief. But that is not the present point. When 
Mr Rouncewell's townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the 
girl to be patronised and honoured than he would have suffered her to be 
trodden underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly 
took her away as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of the 
honour done him and his daughter by the lady's condescension; not the 
least. He resented the girl's position, as if the lady had been the 
commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock will excuse 
its painful nature."
There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting with 
Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever was any such 
lady, and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The majority incline 
to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in few words - "no business 
- Rouncewell's fernal townsman." Sir Leicester generally refers back in his 
mind to Wat Tyler, and arranges a sequence of events on a plan of his own.
There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept in 
Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and this is the 
first night in many on which the family have been alone. It is past ten, 
when Sir Leicester begs Mr Tulkinghorn to ring for candles. Then the stream 
of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and then Lady Dedlock for the first 
time moves, and rises, and comes forward to a table for a glass of water. 
Winking cousins, bat-like in the candle glare, crowd round to give it; 
Volumnia (always ready for something better if procurable) takes another, a 
very mild sip of which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-
possessed, looked after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long 
perspective by the side of that Nymph, not at all improving her as a 
question of contrast.


Chapter 41

In Mr Tulkinghorn's Room

Mr Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room, a little breathed by the journey 
up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his face as if he 
had discharged his mind of some grave matter, and were, in his close way, 
satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly self-repressed that he 
is triumphant, would be to do him as great an injustice as to suppose him 
troubled with love or sentiment, or any romantic weakness. He is sedately 
satisfied. Perhaps there is a rather increased sense of power upon him, as 
he loosely grasps one of his veinous wrists with his other hand, and 
holding it behind his back walks noiselessly up and down.
There is a capacious writing-table in the room, on which is a pretty large 
accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his reading-glasses lie 
upon the desk, the easy chair is wheeled up to it, and it would seem as 
though he had intended to bestow an hour or so upon these claims on his 
attention before going to bed. But he happens not to be in a business mind. 
After a glance at the documents awaiting his notice - with his head bent 
low over the table, the old man's sight for print or writing being 
defective at night - he opens the French window and steps out upon the 
leads. There he again walks slowly up and down, in the same attitude; 
subsiding, if a man so cool may have any need to subside, from the story he 
has related downstairs.
The time was once, when men as knowing as Mr Tulkinghorn would walk on 
turret-tops in the starlight, and look up into the sky to read their 
fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible tonight, though their brilliancy 
is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be seeking his own star, as 
he methodically turns and turns upon the leads, it should be but a pale one 
to be so rustily represented below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that 
may be written in other characters nearer to his hand.
As he paces the leads, with his eyes most probably as high above his 
thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in 
passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his room 
is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite the 
window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door too, but the night being 
warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These eyes that met his 
own, are looking in through the glass from the corridor outside. He knows 
them well. The blood has not flushed into his face so suddenly and redly 
for many a long year, as when he recognises Lady Dedlock.
He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors behind 
her. There is a wild disturbance - is it fear or anger? - in her eyes. In 
her carriage and all else, she looks as she looked downstairs two hours 
ago.
Is it fear or is it anger, now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as pale, 
both as intent.
"Lady Dedlock?"
She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped into the 
easy chair by the table. They look at each other, like two pictures.
"Why have you told my story to so many persons?"
"Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it."
"How long have you known it?"
"I have suspected it a long while - fully known it, a little while."
"Months?"
"Days."
He stands before her, with one hand on a chair-back and the other in his 
old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood before her 
at any time since her marriage. The same formal politeness, the same 
composed deference that might as well be defiance; the whole man the same 
dark, cold object, at the same distance, which nothing has ever diminished.
"Is this true concerning the poor girl?"
He slightly inclines and advances his head, as not quite understanding the 
question.
"You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story also? 
Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried in the 
streets?"
So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this woman 
has, to keep these raging passions down! Mr Tulkinghorn's thoughts take 
such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey eyebrows a hair's-breath 
more contracted than usual, under her gaze.
"No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir 
Leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand. But it 
would be a real case if they knew - what we know."
"Then they do not know it yet?"
"No."
"Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?"
"Really, Lady Dedlock," Mr Tulkinghorn replies, "I cannot give a 
satisfactory opinion on that point."
And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he watches the 
struggle in her breast, "The power and force of this woman are 
astonishing!"
"Sir," she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the energy 
she has, that she may speak distinctly, "I will make it plainer. I do not 
dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it, and felt its truth as 
strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr Rouncewell here. I knew very well 
that if he could have had the power of seeing me as I was, he would 
consider the poor girl tarnished by having for a moment been, although most 
innocently, the subject of my great and distinguished patronage. But, I 
have an interest in her; or I should rather say - no longer belonging to 
this place - I had; and if you can find so much consideration for the woman 
under your foot as to remember that, she will be very sensible of your 
mercy."
Mr Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug of self-
depreciation, and contracts his eyebrows a little more.
"You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too. Is 
there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I can 
release, or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in obtaining 
his release, by certifying to the exactness of your discovery? I will write 
anything, here and now, that you will dictate. I am ready to do it."
And she would do it! thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand with 
which she takes the pen!
"I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. Pray spare yourself."
"I have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare myself, 
nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you have done. Do 
what remains, now."
"Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to say a few 
words, when you have finished."
Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do it all 
this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened window. Away in 
the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and the wide house is as 
quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where are the digger and the 
spade, this peaceful night, destined to add the last great secret to the 
many secrets of the Tulkinghorn existence? Is the man born yet, is the 
spade wrought yet? Curious questions to consider, more curious perhaps not 
to consider, under the watching stars upon a summer night.
"Of repentance or remorse, or any feeling of mine," Lady Dedlock presently 
proceeds, "I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would be deaf. Let 
that go by. It is not for your ears."
He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with her 
disdainful hand.
"Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels are 
all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there. So, my 
dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had with me, 
please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own dress, in order 
that I might avoid observation. I went to be henceforward lost. Make this 
known. I leave no other charge with you."
"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock," says Mr Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. "I am not 
sure that I understand you. You went? - "
"To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold tonight. I go this hour."
Mr Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises; but he, without removing hand 
from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, shakes his 
head.
"What? Not go as I have said?"
"No, Lady Dedlock," he very calmly replies.
"Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you forgotten 
the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and who it is?"
"No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means."
Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in her 
hand, when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot, or 
raising his voice:
"Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and hear me, or before you reach 
the staircase I shall ring the alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I 
must speak out, before every guest and servant, every man and woman in it."
He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand confusedly 
to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else; but when so practised an 
eye as Mr Tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a moment in such a subject, he 
thoroughly knows its value.

He promptly says again, "Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock," and 
motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but he 
motions again, and she sits down.
"The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady Dedlock; 
but, as they are not of my making, I will not apologise for them. The 
position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well known to you, that 
I can hardly imagine but that I must long have appeared in your eyes the 
natural person to make this discovery."
"Sir," she returns, without looking up from the ground, on which her eyes 
are now fixed. "I had better have gone. It would have been far better not 
to have detained me. I have no more say."
"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add, a little more to hear."
"I wish to hear it at the window, then. I can't breathe where I am."
His jealous glance as she walks that way, betrays an instant's misgiving 
that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and dashing against 
ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the terrace below. But a 
moment's observation of her figure as she stands in the window without any 
support, looking out at the stars - not up - gloomily out at those stars 
which are low in the heavens - reassures him. By facing round as she has 
moved, he stands a little behind her.
"Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision satisfactory 
to myself, on the course before me. I am not clear what to do, or how to 
act next. I must request you, in the mean time, to keep your secret as you 
have kept it so long, and not to wonder that I keep it too."
He pauses, but she makes no reply.
"Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an important subject. You are honouring 
me with your attention?"
"I am."
"Thank you. I might have known it, from what I have seen of your strength 
of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but I have the habit 
of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go on. The sole 
consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester."
"Then why," she asks in a low voice, and without removing her gloomy look 
from those distant stars, "do you detain me in his house?"
"Because he is the consideration. Lady Dedlock, I have no occasion to tell 
you that Sir Leicester is a very proud man; that his reliance upon you is 
implicit; that the fall of that moon out of the sky, would not amaze him 
more than your fall from your high position as his wife."
She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as ever 
he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company.
"I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that with anything short of this case that 
I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up, by means of my own strength 
and my own hands, the oldest tree on this estate, as to shake your hold 
upon Sir Leicester, and Sir Leicester's trust and confidence in you. And 
even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that he could doubt (that, even 
with him, is impossible), but that nothing can prepare him for the blow."
"Not my flight?" she returned. "Think of it again."
"Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a hundred 
times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible to save the 
family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of."
There is a quiet decision in his reply, which admits of no remonstrance.
"When I speak of Sir Leicester being the sole consideration, he and the 
family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the baronetcy, Sir Leicester and 
Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors and his patrimony;" Mr 
Tulkinghorn very dry here; "are, I need not say to you, Lady Dedlock, 
inseparable."
"Go on!"
"Therefore," says Mr Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot style, 
"I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up, if it can be. How can it 
be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his wits, or laid upon a death-bed? 
If I inflicted this shock upon him tomorrow morning, how could the 
immediate change in him be accounted for? What could have caused it? What 
could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the wall-chalking and the street-
crying would come on directly; and you are to remember that it would not 
affect you merely (whom I cannot at all consider in this business) but your 
husband, Lady Dedlock, your husband."
He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or animated.
"There is another point of view," he continues, "in which the case presents 
itself. Sir Leicester is devoted to you almost to infatuation. He might not 
be able to overcome that infatuation, even knowing what we know. I am 
putting an extreme case, but it might be so. If so, it were better that he 
knew nothing. Better for common sense, better for him, better for me. I 
must take all this into account, and it combines to render a decision very 
difficult."
She stands looking out at the same stars, without a word. They are 
beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her.
"My experience teaches me," says Mr Tulkinghorn, who has by this time got 
his hands in his pockets, and is going on in his business consideration of 
the matter, like a machine. "My experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that 
most of the people I know would do far better to leave marriage alone. It 
is at the bottom of three-fourths of their troubles. So I thought when Sir 
Leicester married, and so I always have thought since. No more about that. 
I must now be guided by circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg you to 
keep your own counsel, and I will keep mine."
"I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure day by 
day?" she asks, still looking at the distant sky.
"Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock."
"It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?"
"I am sure that what I recommend is necessary."
"I am to remain upon this gaudy platform, on which my miserable deception 
has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when you give the 
signal?" she says slowly.
"Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without forewarning 
you."
She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory, or 
calling them over in her sleep.
"We are to meet as usual?"
"Precisely as usual, if you please."
"And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?"
"As you have done so many years. I should not have made that reference 
myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your secret can be no 
heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no better than it was. I 
know it certainly, but I believe we have never wholly trusted each other."
She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time, before 
asking:
"Is there anything more to be said tonight?"
"Why," Mr Tulkinghorn returns methodically, as he softly rubs his hands, "I 
should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my arrangements, Lady 
Dedlock."
"You may be assured of it."
"Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business 
precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any 
communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview I have 
expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's feelings and 
honour, and the family reputation. I should have been happy to have made 
Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration too, if the case had admitted of it; 
but unfortunately it does not."
"I can attest your fidelity, sir."
Both before and after saying it, she remains absorbed; but at length moves, 
and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence, towards the door. 
Mr Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he would have done 
yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago, and makes his old-
fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an ordinary look that he 
receives from the handsome face as it goes into the darkness, and it is not 
an ordinary movement, though a very slight one, that acknowledges his 
courtesy. But, as he reflects when he is left alone, the woman has been 
putting no common constraint upon herself.
He would know it all the better, if he saw the woman pacing her own rooms 
with her hair wildly thrown from her flung back face, her hands clasped 
behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. He would think so all 
the more, if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down for hours, without 
fatigue, without intermission, followed by the faithful step upon the 
Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled air, draws the window-
curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And truly when the stars go out and 
the wan day peeps into the turret chamber, finding him at his oldest, he 
looks as if the digger and the spade were both commissioned, and would soon 
be digging.
The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant country 
in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins entering on 
various public employments, principally receipt of salary; and at the 
chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty thousand pounds upon a hideous 
old General, with a mouth of false teeth like a pianoforte too full of 
keys, long the admiration of Bath and the terror of every other community. 
Also into rooms high in the roof, and into offices in courtyards and over 
stables, where humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keeper's lodges and in 
holy matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing 
everything up with it - the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the 
earth, the dropping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and creeping 
things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold emerald velvet 
where the roller passes, the smoke of the great kitchen fire wreathing 
itself straight and high into the lightsome air. Lastly, up comes the flag 
over Mr Tulkinghorn's unconscious head, cheerfully proclaiming that Sir 
Leicester and Lady Dedlock are in their happy home, and that there is 
hospitality at the place in Lincolnshire.


Chapter 42

In Mr Tulkinghorn's Chambers

From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock 
property, Mr Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and dust of 
London. His manner of coming and going between the two places, is one of 
his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it were next door 
to his chambers, and returns to his chambers as if he had never been out of 
Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither changes his dress before the journey, nor 
talks of it afterwards. He melted out of his turret-room this morning, just 
as now, in the late twilight, he melts into his own square.
Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant fields, 
where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into wigs, and the 
pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among 
mankind but not consorting with them, aged without experience of genial 
youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest in holes and corners of 
human nature that he has forgotten its broader and better range, comes 
sauntering home. In the oven made by the hot pavements and hot buildings, 
he has baked himself dryer than usual; and he has, in his thirsty mind, his 
mellowed port-wine half a century old.
The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr Tulkinghorn's side 
of the Fields, when that high-priest of noble mysteries arrives at his own 
dull courtyard. He ascends the doorsteps and is gliding into the dusky 
hall, when he encounters, on the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little 
man.
"Is that Snagsby?"
"Yes sir. I hope you are well sir. I was just giving you up sir, and going 
home."
"Ay? What is it? What do you want with me?"
"Well sir," says Mr Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his head, in 
his deference towards his best customer. "I was wishful to say a word to 
you sir."
"Can you say it here?"
"Perfectly sir."
"Say it then." The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing at the 
top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the courtyard.
"It is relating," says Mr Snagsby, in a mysterious low voice - "it is 
relating - not to put too fine a point upon it - to the foreigner sir."
Mr Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. "What foreigner?"
"The foreign female sir. French, if I don't mistake? I am not acquainted 
with that language myself, but I should judge from her manners and 
appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly foreign. Her that was 
upstairs sir, when Mr Bucket and me had the honour of waiting upon you with 
the sweeping-boy that night."
"Oh! yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense."
"Indeed sir?" Mr Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his hat. "I 
am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in general, but I 
have no doubt it would be that." Mr Snagsby appears to have set out in this 
reply with some desperate design of repeating the name; but on reflection 
coughs again to excuse himself.
"And what can you have to say, Snagsby," demands Mr Tulkinghorn, "about 
her?"
"Well sir," returns the stationer, shading his communication with his hat, 
"it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is very great - at 
least, it's as great as can be expected, I'm sure - but my little woman is 
rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she is very 
much given to jealousy. And you see, a foreign female of that genteel 
appearance coming into the shop, and hovering - I should be the last to 
make use of a strong expression, if I could avoid it, but hovering sir - in 
the court - you know it is - now ain't it? I only put it to yourself sir."
Mr Snagsby having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a cough 
of general application to fill up all the blanks.
"Why, what do you mean?" asks Mr Tulkinghorn.
"Just so sir," returns Mr Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it yourself, 
and would excuse the reasonableness of my feelings when coupled with the 
known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the foreign female - which 
you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound I am sure - 
caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon quick, and made 
inquiry, and got the direction and come at dinner-time. Now Guster, our 
young woman, is timid and has fits, and she, taking fright at the 
foreigner's looks - which are fierce - and at a grinding manner that she 
has of speaking - which is calculated to alarm a weak mind - gave way to 
it, instead of bearing up against it, and tumbled down the kitchen stairs 
out of one into another, such fits as I do sometimes think are never gone 
into, or come out of, in any house but ours. Consequently there was by good 
fortune ample occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the 
shop. When she did say that Mr Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by 
his Employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of 
viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually calling 
at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has been, as I began 
by saying, hovering - Hovering sir," Mr Snagsby repeats the word with 
pathetic emphasis, "in the court. The effects of which movement it is 
impossible to calculate. I shouldn't wonder if it might have already given 
rise to the painfullest mistakes even in the neighbours' minds, not 
mentioning (if such a thing was possible) my little woman. Whereas, 
Goodness knows," says Mr Snagsby, shaking his head, "I never had an idea of 
a foreign female, except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms 
and a baby, or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never 
had, I do assure you sir!"
Mr Tulkinghorn has listened gravely to this complaint, and inquires, when 
the stationer has finished, "And that's all, is it, Snagsby?"
"Why yes sir, that's all," says Mr Snagsby, ending with a cough that 
plainly adds, "and it's enough too - for me."
"I don't know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless she is 
mad," says the lawyer.
"Even if she was, you know sir," Mr Snagsby pleads, "it wouldn't be a 
consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign dagger, 
planted in the family."
"No," says the other. "Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry you 
have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here."
Mr Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes his 
leave, lightened in heart. Mr Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying to himself, 
"These women were created to give trouble, the whole earth over. The 
Mistress not being enough to deal with, here's the maid now! But I will be 
short with this jade at least!"
So saying he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms, lights 
his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much of allegory 
overhead there; but that importunate Roman, who is for ever toppling out of 
the clouds and pointing, is at his old work pretty distinctly. Not 
honouring him with much attention, Mr Tulkinghorn takes a small key from 
his pocket, unlocks a drawer in which there is another key, which unlocks a 
chest in which there is another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which 
he prepares to descend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the 
door with a candle in his hand, when a knock comes.
"Who's this? - Ay, ay, mistress, it's you, is it? You appear at a good 
time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?"
He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk's hall, and taps his 
dry cheek with the key, as he addresses these words of welcome to 
Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her lips tightly shut, 
and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly closes the door before 
replying.
"I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir."
"Have you!"
"I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he is not 
at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for you."
"Quite right, and quite true."
"Not true. Lies!"
At times, there is a suddenness in the manner of Mademoiselle Hortense so 
like a bodily spring upon the subject of it, that such subject 
involuntarily starts and falls back. It is Mr Tulkinghorn's case at 
present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with her eyes almost shut up (but 
still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and shaking her 
head.
"Now, mistress," says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the chimney-
piece. "If you have anything to say, say it, say it."
"Sir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby."
"Mean and shabby, eh?" returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the key.
"Yes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have attrapped me -
 catched me - to give you information; you have asked me to show you the 
dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night, you have prayed me to come 
in it here to meet that boy - Say! Is it not?" Mademoiselle Hortense makes 
another spring.
"You are a vixen, a vixen!" Mr Tulkinghorn seems to meditate, as he looks 
distrustfully at her; then he replies, "Well, wench, well. I paid you."
"You paid me!" she repeats, with fierce disdain. "Two sovereign! I have not 
change them, I ref-use them, I des-pise them, I throw them from me!" Which 
she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as she speaks, and 
flinging them with such violence on the floor, that they jerk up again into 
the light before they roll away into corners, and slowly settle down there 
after spinning vehemently.
"Now!" says Mademoiselle Hortense, darkening her large eyes again. "You 
have paid me? Eh, my God, O yes!"
Mr Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key, while she entertains herself 
with a sarcastic laugh.
"You must be rich, my fair friend," he composedly observes, "to throw money 
about in that way!"
"I am rich," she returns, "I am very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of all 
my heart. You know that."
"Know it? How should I know it?"
"Because you have known it perfectly, before you prayed me to give you that 
information. Because you have known perfectly that I was en-r-r-r-raged!" 
It appears impossible for Mademoiselle to roll the letter r sufficiently in 
this word, notwithstanding that she assists her energetic delivery, by 
clenching both her hands, and setting all her teeth.
"Oh! I knew that, did I?" says Mr Tulkinghorn, examining the wards of the 
key.
"Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me because you 
knew that. You had reason! I det-est her." Mademoiselle Hortense folds her 
arms, and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders.
"Having said this, have you anything else to say, Mademoiselle?"
"I am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you 
cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to chase her, 
to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you well, and with a good 
will. It is what you do. Do I not know that?"
"You appear to know a good deal," Mr Tulkinghorn retorts.
"Do I not? Is it that I am so weak as to believe, like a child, that I come 
here in that dress to receive that boy, only to decide a little bet, a 
wager? - Eh my God, O yes!" In this reply, down to the word "wager" 
inclusive, Mademoiselle has been ironically polite and tender; then, has 
suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant scorn, with her black 
eyes in one and the same moment very nearly shut, and staringly wide open.
"Now let us see," says Mr Tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the key, and 
looking imperturbably at her, "how this matter stands."
"Ha! Let us see," Mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight nods of 
her head.
"You come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have just 
stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again."
"And again," says Mademoiselle, with more tight and angry nods. "And yet 
again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!"
"And not only here, but you will go to Mr Snagsby's, too, perhaps? That 
visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?"
"And again," repeats Mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination. "And yet 
again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!"
"Very well. Now Mademoiselle Hortense, let me recommend you to take the 
candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it behind the 
clerk's partition in the corner yonder."
She merely throws a laugh over her shoulder, and stands her ground with 
folded arms.
"You will not, eh?"
"No, I will not!"
"So much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this is the 
key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of prisons are 
larger. In this city, there are houses of correction (where the treadmills 
are, for women) the gates of which are very strong and heavy, and no doubt 
the keys too. I am afraid a lady of your spirit and activity would find it 
an inconvenience to have one of those keys turned upon her for any length 
of time. What do you think?"
"I think," Mademoiselle replies, without any action, and in a clear 
obliging voice, "that you are a miserable wretch."
"Probably," returns Mr Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. "But I don't 
ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the prison."
"Nothing. What does it matter to me?"
"Why it matters this much, mistress," says the lawyer, deliberately putting 
away his handkerchief, and adjusting his frill, "the law is so despotic 
here, that it interferes to prevent any of our good English citizens from 
being troubled, even by a lady's visits, against his desire. And, on his 
complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold of the troublesome lady, 
and shuts her up in prison under hard discipline. Turns the key upon her, 
mistress." Illustrating with the cellar key.
"Truly?" returns Mademoiselle, in the same pleasant voice. "That is droll! 
But - my faith! - still what does it matter to me!"
"My fair friend," says Mr Tulkinghorn, "make another visit here, or at Mr 
Snagsby's, and you shall learn."
"In that case you will send Me to the prison, perhaps?"
"Perhaps."
It would be contradictory for one in Mademoiselle's state of agreeable 
jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish expansion thereabouts 
might look as if a very little more would make her do it.
"In a word, mistress," says Mr Tulkinghorn, "I am sorry to be unpolite, but 
if you ever present yourself uninvited here - or there - again, I will give 
you over to the police. Their gallantry is great, but they carry 
troublesome people through the streets in an ignominious manner; strapped 
down on a board, my good wench."
"I will prove you," whispers Mademoiselle, stretching out her hand, "I will 
try if you dare to do it!"
"And if," pursues the lawyer, without minding her, "I place you in that 
good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time before you 
find yourself at liberty again."
"I will prove you," repeats Mademoiselle in her former whisper.
"And now," proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, "you had better 
go. Think twice, before you come here again."
"Think you," she answers, "twice two hundred times!"
"You were dismissed by your lady, you know," Mr Tulkinghorn observes, 
following her out upon the staircase, "as the most implacable and 
unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf, and take warning by what I 
say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I threaten, I will do, 
mistress."
She goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is gone, he 
goes down too; and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle, devotes 
himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents: now and then, as he 
throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the pertinacious Roman 
pointing from the ceiling.


Chapter 43

Esther's Narrative

It matters little now, how much I thought of my living mother who had told 
me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to approach her, or 
to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of the peril in which her 
life was passed was only to be equalled by my fears of increasing it. 
Knowing that my mere existence as a living creature was an unforeseen 
danger in her way, I could not always conquer that terror of myself which 
had seized me when I first knew the secret. At no time did I dare to utter 
her name. I felt as if I did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation 
anywhere, when I was present, took that direction, as it sometimes 
naturally did, I tried not to hear - I mentally counted, repeated something 
that I knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious, now, that I often did 
these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken of; but 
I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might lead to her 
betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.
It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's voice, 
wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to do, and 
thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so new to me. It 
matters little that I watched for every public mention of my mother's name; 
that I passed and repassed the door of her house in town, loving it, but 
afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the theatre when my mother was 
there and saw me, and when we were so wide asunder, before the great 
company of all degrees, that any link or confidence between us seemed a 
dream. It is all, all over. My lot has been so blest that I can relate 
little of myself which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others. 
I may well pass that little, and go on.
When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations with 
my Guardian, of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was deeply 
grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong; but she was so 
faithful to Richard, that she could not bear to blame him, even for that. 
My Guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his name with a word of 
reproof. "Rick is mistaken, my dear," he would say to her. "Well, well! we 
have all been mistaken over and over again. We must trust to you and time 
to set him right."
We knew afterwards what we suspected then; that he did not trust to time 
until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had written to 
him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle persuasive art his 
kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard was deaf and blind to all. 
If he were wrong he would make amends when the Chancery suit was over. If 
he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to 
clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. 
Suspicion and misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him 
work the suit out, and come through it to his right mind. This was his 
unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession of his 
whole nature, that it was impossible to place any consideration before him 
which he did not - with a distorted kind of reason - make a new argument in 
favour of his doing what he did. "So that it is even more mischievous," 
said my Guardian once to me, "to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow, 
than to leave him alone."
I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr Skimpole as 
a good adviser for Richard.
"Adviser?" returned my Guardian, laughing. "My dear, who would advise with 
Skimpole?"
"Encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said I.
"Encourager!" returned my Guardian again. "Who could be encouraged by 
Skimpole?"
"Not Richard?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature, is 
a relief to him, and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging, or 
occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not 
to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole."
"Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us, and now looked over 
my shoulder, "what made him such a child?"
"What made him such a child?" inquired my Guardian, rubbing his head, a 
little at a loss.
"Yes, cousin John."
"Why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is all 
sentiment, and - and susceptibility, and - and sensibility - and - and 
imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I 
suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth, attached too much 
importance to them, and too little to any training that would have balanced 
and adjusted them; and so he became what he is. Hey?" said my Guardian, 
stopping short, and looking at us hopefully. "What do you think, you two?"
Ada glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an expense 
to Richard.
"So it is, so it is," returned my Guardian, hurriedly. "That must not be. 
We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do."
And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever introduced 
Richard to Mr Vholes, for a present of five pounds.
"Did he?" said my Guardian, with a passing shade of vexation on his face. 
"But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is nothing 
mercenary in that, with him. He has no idea of the value of money. He 
introduces Rick; and then he is good friends with Mr Vholes, and borrows 
five pounds of him. He means nothing by it, and thinks nothing of it. He 
told you him self, I'll be bound, my dear?"
"O yes!" said I.
"Exactly!" cried my Guardian, quite triumphant. "There you have the man! If 
he had meant any harm by it, or was conscious of any harm in it, he 
wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he does it, in mere simplicity. But you 
shall see him in his own home, and then you'll understand him better. We 
must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole, and caution him on these points. Lord 
bless you, my dears, an infant, an infant!"
In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day, and 
presented ourselves at Mr Skimpole's door.
He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there were at 
that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in cloaks, 
smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant than one might 
have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody always paying his rent 
at last, or whether his inaptitude for business rendered it particularly 
difficult to turn him out, I don't know; but he had occupied the same house 
some years. It was in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our 
expectation. Two or three of the area railing were gone; the water-butt was 
broken; the knocker was loose; the bell handle had been pulled off a long 
time, to judge from the rusty state of the wire; and dirty footprints on 
the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited.
A slatternly full-blown girl, who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in 
her gown and the cracks in her shoes, like an overripe berry, answered our 
knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping up the gap with 
her figure. As she knew Mr Jarndyce (indeed Ada and I both thought that she 
evidently associated him with the receipt of her wages), she immediately 
relented and allowed us to pass in. The lock of the door being in a 
disabled condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain, 
which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs?
We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture than 
the dirty footprints. Mr Jarndyce, without further ceremony, entered a room 
there, and we followed. It was dingy enough, and not at all clean; but 
furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a 
sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a 
piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and 
pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered 
and wafered over; but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on 
the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, 
and there was a bottle of light wine. Mr Skimpole himself reclined upon the 
sofa, in a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china 
cup - it was then about midday - and looking at a collection of wallflowers 
in the balcony.
He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and 
received us in his usual airy manner.
"Here I am, you see!" he said, when we were seated; not without some little 
difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. "Here I am! This 
is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and mutton for 
breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret; I am 
content. I don't want them for themselves, but they remind me of the sun. 
There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. Mere animal 
satisfaction!"
"This is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever prescribed), 
his sanctum, his studio," said my Guardian to us.
"Yes," said Mr Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the bird's 
cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his feathers now 
and then, and clip his wings; but he sings, he sings!"
He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "he sings! Not an 
ambitious note, but still he sings."
"These are very fine," said my Guardian. "A present!"
"No," he answered. "No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man wanted to 
know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should wait for the 
money. 'Really, my friend,' I said, 'I think not - if your time is of any 
value to you.' I suppose it was, for he went away."
My Guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "is it 
possible to be worldly with this baby?"
"This is a day," said Mr Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a 
tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it the Saint 
Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a blue-
eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment daughter, and I 
have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all. They'll be enchanted."
He was going to summon them, when my Guardian interposed, and asked him to 
pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. "My dear 
Jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, "as many moments 
as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what o'clock it is, 
and we never care. Not the way to get on in life, you'll tell me? 
Certainly. But we don't get on in life. We don't pretend to do it."
My Guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "You hear him?"
"Now Harold," he began, "the word I have to say relates to Rick."
"The dearest friend I have!" returned Mr Skimpole, cordially. "I suppose he 
ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms with you. But he 
is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry, and I love him. If you 
don't like it, I can't help it. I love him."
The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration, really had a 
disinterested appearance, and captivated my Guardian; if not, for the 
moment, Ada too.
"You are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned Mr Jarndyce, 
"but we must save his pocket, Harold."
"Oh!" said Mr Skimpole. "His pocket? Now, you are coming to what I don't 
understand." Taking a little more claret, and dipping one of the cakes in 
it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an ingenuous foreboding 
that he never could be made to understand."
"If you go with him here or there," said my Guardian, plainly, "you must 
not let him pay for both."
"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr Skimpole, his genial face irradiated by the 
comicality of this idea, "what am I to do? If he takes me anywhere, I must 
go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I had any money, I don't 
know anything about it. Suppose I say to a man, how much? Suppose the man 
says to me seven and sixpence? I know nothing about seven and sixpence. It 
is impossible for me to pursue the subject, with any consideration for the 
man. I don't go about asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in 
Moorish - which I don't understand. Why should I go about asking them what 
seven and sixpence is in Money - which I don't understand?"
"Well," said my Guardian, by no means displeased with this artless reply, 
"if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must borrow the money 
of me (never breathing the least allusion to that circumstance), and leave 
the calculation to him."
"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr Skimpole, "I will do anything to give you 
pleasure, but it seems an idle form - a superstition. Besides, I give you 
my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I thought Mr Carstone was 
immensely rich. I thought he had only to make over something, or to sign a 
bond, or a draft or a cheque, or a bill, or to put something on a file 
somewhere, to bring down a shower of money."
"Indeed it is not so, sir," said Ada. "He is poor."
"No, really?" returned Mr Skimpole, with his bright smile, "you surprise 
me."
"And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my Guardian, 
laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr Skimpole's dressing-gown, 
"be you very careful not to encourage him in that reliance, Harold."
"My dear good friend," returned Mr Skimpole, "and my dear Miss Summerson, 
and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It's business, and I don't know 
business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges from great feats of 
business, presents the brightest prospects before me as their result, and 
calls upon me to admire them. I do admire them - as bright prospects. But I 
know no more about them, and I tell him so."
The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us, the 
lighthearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the fantastic 
way in which he took himself under his own protection and argued about that 
curious person, combined with the delightful ease of everything he said 
exactly to make out my Guardian's case. The more I saw of him, the more 
unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, 
conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when 
he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his having 
anything to do with anyone for whom I cared.
Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr Skimpole 
left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters (his sons had run 
away at various times), leaving my Guardian quite delighted by the manner 
in which he had vindicated his childish character. He soon came back, 
bringing with him the three young ladies and Mrs Skimpole, who had once 
been a beauty, but was now a delicate high-nosed invalid, suffering under a 
complication of disorders.
"This," said Mr Skimpole, "is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa - plays and 
sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment daughter, Laura - 
plays a little but don't sing. This is my Comedy daughter, Kitty - sings a 
little but don't play. We all draw a little, and compose a little, and none 
of us have any idea of time or money."
Mrs Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to strike 
out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that she rather 
impressed her sigh upon my Guardian, and that she took every opportunity of 
throwing in another.
"It is pleasant," said Mr Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from one to 
the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting, to trace peculiarities 
in families. In this family we are all children, and I am the youngest."
The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by this 
droll fact; particularly the Comedy daughter.
"My dears, it is true," said Mr Skimpole, "is it not? So it is, and so it 
must be, because, like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature to.' Now, 
here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity, and a knowledge 
of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very strange in Miss 
Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know nothing about chops in this 
house. But we don't; not the least. We can't cook anything whatever. A 
needle and thread we don't know how to use. We admire the people who 
possess the practical wisdom we want; but we don't quarrel with them. Then 
why should they quarrel with us? Live, and let live, we say to them. Live 
upon your practical wisdom, and let us live upon you!"
He laughed, but, as usual, seemed quite candid, and really to mean what he 
said.
"We have sympathy, my roses," said Mr Skimpole, "sympathy for everything. 
Have we not?"
"O yes, papa," cried the three daughters.
"In fact, that is our family department," said Mr Skimpole, "in this hurly-
burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being interested, and we 
do look on, and we are interested. What more can we do! Here is my Beauty 
daughter, married these three years. Now, I dare say her marrying another 
child, and having two more, was all wrong in point of political economy: 
but it was very agreeable. We had our little festivities on those 
occasions, and exchanged social ideas. She brought her young husband home 
one day, and they and their young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I 
dare say, at some time or other, Sentiment and Comedy will bring their 
husbands home, and have their nests upstairs, too. So we get on, we don't 
know how, but somehow."
She looked very young indeed, to be the mother of two children; and I could 
not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the three daughters 
had grown up as they could, and had had just as little hap-hazard 
instruction as qualified them to be their father's playthings in his idlest 
hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted, I observed, in their respective 
styles of wearing their hair; the Beauty daughter being in the classic 
manner; the Sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing; and the Comedy 
daughter in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and 
vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were 
dressed to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.
Ada and I conversed with these young ladies, and found them wonderfully 
like their father. In the meanwhile Mr Jarndyce (who had been rubbing his 
head to a great extent, and hinting at a change in the wind) talked with 
Mrs Skimpole in a corner, where we could not help hearing the chink of 
money. Mr Skimpole had previously volunteered to go home with us, and had 
withdrawn to dress himself for the purpose.
"My roses," he said, when he came back, "take care of mamma. She is poorly 
today. By going home with Mr Jarndyce for a day or two, I shall hear the 
larks sing, and preserve my amiability. It has been tried, you know, and 
would be tried again if I remained at home.
"That bad man!" said the Comedy daughter.
"At the very time when he knew papa was lying down by his wallflowers, 
looking at the blue sky," Laura complained.
"And when the smell of hay was in the air!" said Arethusa.
"It showed a want of poetry in the man," Mr Skimpole assented; but with 
perfect good-humour. "It was coarse. There was an absence of the finer 
touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great offence," he 
explained to us, "at an honest man - "
"Not honest, papa. Impossible!" they all three protested.
"At a rough kind of fellow - a sort of human hedgehog rolled up," said Mr 
Skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood, and from whom we borrowed 
a couple of armchairs. We wanted a couple of armchairs, and we hadn't got 
them, and therefore of course we looked to a man who had got them, to lend 
them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. He had them back. 
He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He objected to their being 
worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. I said, 'Can you, 
at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an 
armchair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object 
to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of 
sight? Don't you know that these armchairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' 
He was unreasonable and unpersuadable, and used intemperate language. Being 
as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him. I 
said, 'Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary, we are 
all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming summer morning 
here you see me' (I was on the sofa) 'with flowers before me, fruit upon 
the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air full of fragrance, 
contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common brotherhood, not to 
interpose between me and a subject so sublime, the absurd figure of an 
angry baker!' But he did," said Mr Skimpole, raising his laughing eyebrows 
in playful astonishment; "he did interpose that ridiculous figure, and he 
does and he will again. And therefore I am very glad to get out of his way, 
and to go home with my friend Jarndyce."
It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs Skimpole and the daughters 
remained behind to encounter the baker; but this was so old a story to all 
of them that it had become a matter of course. He took leave of his family 
with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any other aspect in which he 
showed himself, and rode away with us in perfect harmony of mind. We had an 
opportunity of seeing through some open doors, as we went downstairs, that 
his own apartment was a palace to the rest of the house.
I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very startling 
to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what ensued from it, was 
to happen before this day was out. Our guest was in such spirits on the way 
home, that I could do nothing but listen to him and wonder at him; nor was 
I alone in this, for Ada yielded to the same fascination. As to my 
Guardian, the wind, which had threatened to become fixed in the east when 
we left Somers Town, veered completely round, before we were a couple of 
miles from it.
Whether of questionable childishness or not, in any other matters, Mr 
Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no way 
wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room before any 
of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet looking after my 
housekeeping, singing refrains of barcarolles and drinking songs, Italian 
and German, by the score.
We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the piano 
idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music, and talking 
between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined old Verulam wall, 
tomorrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and had got tired of; when a 
card was brought in, and my Guardian read aloud in a surprised voice:
"Sir Leicester Dedlock!"
The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me, and 
before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have hurried 
away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, to retire to 
Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it was. I heard 
my name, and found that my Guardian was presenting me, before I could move 
to a chair.
"Pray be seated, Sir Leicester."
"Mr Jarndyce," said Sir Leicester in reply, as he bowed and seated himself, 
"I do myself the honour of calling here - "
"You do me the honour, Sir Leicester."
"Thank you - of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire, to express my 
regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may have against 
a gentleman who - who is known to you and has been your host, and to whom 
therefore I will make no further reference, should have prevented you, 
still more ladies under your escort and charge, from seeing whatever little 
there may be to gratify a polite and refined taste, at my house, Chesney 
Wold."
"You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those ladies 
(who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much."
"It is possible, Mr Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the reasons I 
have mentioned I refrain from making further allusion - it is possible, Mr 
Jarndyce, that the gentleman may have done me the honour so far to 
misapprehend my character, as to induce you to believe that you would not 
have been received by my local establishment in Lincolnshire with that 
urbanity, that courtesy, which its members are instructed to show to all 
ladies and gentlemen who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to 
observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse."
My Guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any verbal 
answer.
"It has given me pain, Mr Jarndyce," Sir Leicester weightily proceeded. "I 
assure you, sir, it has given - Me - pain - to learn from the housekeeper 
at Chesney Wold, that a gentleman who was in your company in that part of 
the county, and who would appear to possess a cultivated taste for the Fine 
Arts, was likewise deterred, by some such cause, from examining the family 
pictures with that leisure, that attention, that care, which he might have 
desired to bestow upon them, and which some of them might possibly have 
repaid." Here he produced a card, and read, with much gravity and a little 
trouble, through his eyeglass, "Mr Hirrold, - Herald - Harold - Skampling - 
Skumpling - I beg your pardon, - Skimpole."
"This is Mr Harold Skimpole," said my Guardian, evidently surprised.
"Oh!" exclaimed Sir Leicester, "I am happy to meet Mr Skimpole, and to have 
the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope, sir, that when 
you again find yourself in my part of the county, you will be under no 
similar sense of restraint."
"You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall 
certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to your 
beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold," said Mr 
Skimpole, with his usual happy and easy air, "are public benefactors. They 
are good enough to maintain a number of delightful objects for the 
admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to reap all the admiration 
and pleasure that they yield, is to be ungrateful to our benefactors."
Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. "An artist, sir?"
"No," returned Mr Skimpole. "A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur."
Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might have 
the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr Skimpole next came down into 
Lincolnshire. Mr Skimpole professed himself much flattered and honoured.
"Mr Skimpole mentioned," pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself again to 
my Guardian: "mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may have observed, 
is an old and attached retainer of the family - "
("That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the occasion 
of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare," Mr Skimpole 
airily explained to us.)
"That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there, was Mr 
Jarndyce." Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of the name. "And hence I 
became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed my regret. That 
this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr Jarndyce, but especially a 
gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock, and indeed claiming some distant 
connection with her, and for whom (as I learn from my Lady herself) she 
entertains a high respect, does, I assure you, give - Me - pain."
"Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester," returned my Guardian. "I am 
very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration. Indeed the 
mistake was mine, and I ought to apologise for it."
I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor, and had not even 
appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find that I 
can recal it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it passed. I 
heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused, and my instinctive 
avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so distressing to me, that I 
thought I understood nothing, through the rushing in my head and the 
beating of my heart.
"I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock," said Sir Leicester, rising, "and 
my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of exchanging a few words 
with Mr Jarndyce and his wards, on the occasion of an accidental meeting 
during their sojourn in the vicinity. Permit me, Mr Jarndyce, to repeat to 
yourself, and to these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr 
Skimpole. Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford 
me any gratification to hear that Mr Boythorn had favoured my house with 
his presence; but those circumstances are confined to that gentleman 
himself, and do not extend beyond him."
"You know my old opinion of him," said Mr Skimpole, lightly appealing to 
us. "An amiable bull, who is determined to make every colour scarlet!"
Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed, as if he could not possibly hear another 
word in reference to such an individual; and took his leave with great 
ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all possible speed, and 
remained there until I had recovered my self-command. It had been very much 
disturbed; but I was thankful to find, when I went downstairs again, that 
they only rallied me for having been shy and mute before the great 
Lincolnshire baronet.
By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I must 
tell my Guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being brought into 
contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house, - even of Mr 
Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me, receiving kindnesses and 
obligations from her husband, - was so painful, that I felt I could no 
longer guide myself without his assistance.
When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual talk in 
our pretty room, I went out at my door again, and sought my Guardian among 
his books. I knew he always read at that hour; and as I drew near, I saw 
the light shining out into the passage from his reading-lamp.
"May I come in, Guardian?"
"Surely, little woman. What's the matter?"
"Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet time of 
saying a word to you about myself."
He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his kind 
attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it wore that 
curious expression I had observed in it once before - on that night when he 
had said that he was in no trouble which I could readily understand.
"What concerns you, my dear Esther," said he, "concerns us all. You cannot 
be more ready to speak than I am to hear."
"I know that, Guardian. But I have such need of your advice and support. O! 
you don't know how much need I have tonight."
He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little alarmed.
"Or how anxious I have been to speak to you," said I, "ever since the 
visitor was here today."
"The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?"
"Yes."
He folded his arms, and sat looking at me with an air of the profoundest 
astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not know how to 
prepare him.
"Why, Esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you are the 
two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting together!"
"O yes, Guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago."
The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He 
crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that), and 
resumed his seat before me.
"Guardian," said I, "do you remember, when we were overtaken by the 
thunderstorm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?"
"Of course. Of course I do."
"And reminding you that she and her sister had differed; had 'gone their 
several ways?'"
"Of course."
"Why did they separate, Guardian?"
His face quite altered as he looked at me. "My child, what questions are 
these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I believe. Who 
could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and proud women were! You 
have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen her sister, you would know her 
to have been as resolute and haughty as she."
"O Guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!"
"Seen her?"
He paused a little, biting his lip. "Then, Esther, when you spoke to me 
long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but married once, 
and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and that that time had had 
its influence on his later life - did you know it all, and know who the 
lady was?"
"No, Guardian," I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke upon me. 
"Nor do I know yet."
"Lady Dedlock's sister."
"And why," I could scarcely ask him, "why, Guardian, pray tell me why were 
they parted?"
"It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He 
afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some injury 
which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel with her 
sister, had wounded her beyond all reason; but she wrote him that from the 
date of that letter she died to him - as in literal truth she did - and 
that the resolution was exacted from her by her knowledge of his proud 
temper and his strained sense of honour, which were both her nature too. In 
consideration for those master points in him, and even in consideration for 
them in herself, she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and 
die in it. She did both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of 
her from that hour. Nor did any one."
"O Guardian, what have I done!" I cried, giving way to my grief; "what 
sorrow have I innocently caused!"
"You caused, Esther?"
"Yes, Guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is my 
first remembrance."
"No, no!" he cried, starting.
"Yes, Guardian, yes! And her sister is my mother!"
I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear it 
then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly before 
me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better state of 
mind, that penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude towards him 
through so many years, I believed I had never loved him so dearly, never 
thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that night. And when he had 
taken me to my room and kissed me at the door, and when at last I lay down 
to sleep, my thought was how could I ever be busy enough, how could I ever 
be good enough, how in my little way could I ever hope to be forgetful 
enough of myself, devoted enough to him, and useful enough to others, to 
show him how I blessed and honoured him.


Chapter 44

The Letter And The Answer

My Guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him what 
had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to be done, 
he said, but to keep the secret, and to avoid another such encounter as 
that of yesterday. He understood my feeling, and entirely shared it. He 
charged himself even with restraining Mr Skimpole from improving his 
opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it was not now 
possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were; but no such thing 
could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she had mentioned were well-
founded, which he scarcely doubted, he dreaded discovery. He knew something 
of him, both by sight and by reputation, and it was certain that he was a 
dangerous man. Whatever happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with 
anxious affection and kindness, I was as innocent of as himself; and as 
unable to influence.
"Nor do I understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you, my dear. 
Much suspicion may exist without that connection."
"With the lawyer," I returned. "But two other persons have come into my 
mind since I have been anxious." Then I told him all about Mr Guppy, who I 
feared might have had his vague surmises when I little understood his 
meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview I expressed perfect 
confidence.
"Well," said my Guardian. "Then we may dismiss him for the present. Who is 
the other?"
I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of herself 
she had made to me.
"Ha!" he returned thoughtfully, "that is a more alarming person than the 
clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new service. She 
had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was natural that you 
should come into her head. She merely proposed herself for your maid, you 
know. She did nothing more."
"Her manner was strange," said I.
"Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off, and showed 
that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her death-bed," said 
my Guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and torment to reckon up 
such chances and possibilities. There are very few harmless circumstances 
that would not seem full of perilous meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, 
little woman. You can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through 
this knowledge, as you were before you had it. It is the best you can do, 
for everybody's sake. I sharing the secret with you - "
"And lightening it, Guardian, so much," said I.
" - Will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can 
observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can stretch 
out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is better not to name 
even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear daughter's sake."
I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank him! I 
was going out at the door, when he asked me to stay a moment. Quickly 
turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again; and all at 
once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and far off possibility 
that I understood it.
"My dear Esther," said my Guardian, "I have long had something in my 
thoughts that I have wished to say to you."
"Indeed?"
"I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I should 
wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately considered. Would 
you object to my writing it?"
"Dear Guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for me to 
read?"
"Then see, my love," said he, with his cheery smile; "am I at this moment 
quite as plain and easy - do I seem as open, as honest and old-fashioned, 
as I am at any time?"
I answered, in all earnestness, "Quite." With the strictest truth, for his 
momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and his fine, 
sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.
"Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I said, had 
any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he, with his bright clear 
eyes on mine.
I answered, most assuredly he did not.
"Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess, Esther?"
"Most thoroughly," said I, with my whole heart.
"My dear girl," returned my Guardian, "give me your hand."
He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and, looking down into 
my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of manner - the 
old protecting manner which had made that house my home in a moment - said, 
"You have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the 
stage coach. First and last you have done me a world of good, since that 
time."
"Ah, Guardian, what have you done for me since that time?"
"But," said he, "that is not to be remembered now."
"It never can be forgotten."
"Yes, Esther," said he, with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be forgotten 
now; to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember now, that 
nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite assured of that, 
my dear?"
"I can, and I do," I said.
"That's much," he answered. "That's everything. But I must not take that, 
at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts, until you have 
quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as you know me. 
If you doubt that in the least degree I will never write it. If you are 
sure of that, on good consideration, send Charley to me this night week - 
'for the letter.' But if you are not quite certain, never send. Mind, I 
trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything. If you are not quite 
certain on that one point, never send!"
"Guardian," said I, "I am already certain. I can no more be changed in that 
conviction, that you can be changed towards me. I shall send Charley for 
the letter."
He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference to 
this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week. When the 
appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I was alone, "Go and 
knock at Mr Jarndyce's door, Charley, and say you have come from me - 'for 
the letter.'" Charley went up the stairs, and down the stairs, and along 
the passages - the zig-zag way about the old-fashioned house seemed very 
long in my listening ears that night - and so came back, along the 
passages, and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and brought the letter. 
"Lay it on the table, Charley," said I. So Charley laid it on the table and 
went to bed, and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many 
things.
I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those timid days 
to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute face so cold and 
set; and when I was more solitary with Mrs Rachael, than if I had had no 
one in the world to speak to or to look at. I passed to the altered days 
when I was so blest as to find friends in all around me, and to be beloved. 
I came to the time when I first saw my dear girl, and was received into 
that sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my life. I 
recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of those 
very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright night, and which 
had never paled. I lived my happy life there over again, I went through my 
illness and recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me 
so unchanged, and all this happiness shone like a light, from one central 
figure, represented before me by the letter on the table.
I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and in 
the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed for me in 
every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read much at a time. But 
I read it through three times, before I laid it down. I had thought 
beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It asked me, would I be the 
mistress of Bleak House.
It was not a love letter though it expressed so much love, but was written 
just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his face, and heard 
his voice, and felt the influence of his kind protecting manner, in every 
line. It addressed me as if our places were reversed: as if all the good 
deeds had been mine, and all the feelings they had awakened, his. It dwelt 
on my being young, and he past the prime of life; on his having attained a 
ripe age, while I was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, 
and knowing all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature 
deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage, and 
lose nothing by rejecting it; for no new relation could enhance the 
tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was 
certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew, since our 
late confidence, and had decided on taking it; if it only served to show 
me, through one poor instance, that the whole world would readily unite to 
falsify the stern prediction of my childhood. I was the last to know what 
happiness I could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more; for I was 
always to remember that I owed him nothing, and that he was my debtor, and 
for very much. He had often thought of our future; and, foreseeing that the 
time must come, and fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very 
nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be 
broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made 
it. If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to be 
my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become the dear 
companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter chances and 
changes than Death, even then he could not have me bind myself irrevocably, 
while this letter was yet so new to me; but, even then, I must have ample 
time for reconsideration. In that case, or in the opposite case, let him be 
unchanged in his old relation, in his old manner, in the old name by which 
I called him. And as to his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she 
would ever be the same, he knew.
This was the substance of the letter; written throughout with a justice and 
a dignity, as if he were indeed my responsible guardian, impartially 
representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his integrity he 
stated the full case.
But he did not hint to me, that when I had been better looking, he had had 
this same proceeding in his thoughts, and had refrained from it. That when 
my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he could love me 
just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery of my birth gave him 
no shock. That his generosity rose above my disfigurement, and my 
inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the 
more firmly I might trust in him to the last.
But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of the 
benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but one thing 
to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him poorly, and what 
had I wished for the other night but some new means of thanking him?
Still I cried very much; not only in the fulness of my heart after reading 
the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect - for it was 
strange though I had expected the contents - but as if something for which 
there was no name or distinct idea were indefinitely lost to me. I was very 
happy, very thankful, very hopeful; but I cried very much.
By-and-by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I said, 
"O Esther, Esther, can that be you!" I am afraid the face in the glass was 
going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my finger at it, and it 
stopped.
"That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear, when 
you showed me such a change!" said I, beginning to let down my hair. "When 
you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. In 
fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all."
I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little still, but 
that was because I had been crying; not because I was crying then.
"And so, Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best 
friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great deal 
of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men."
I thought, all at once, if my Guardian had married some one else, how 
should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been a 
change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form, that I 
rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid them down in 
their basket again.
Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how often 
had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my illness, and the 
circumstances of my birth, were only new reasons why I should be busy, 
busy, busy - useful, amiable, serviceable, in all honest, unpretending 
ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly and cry! As to 
its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excuse for 
crying, which it was not) that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak 
House, why should it seem strange? Other people had thought of such things, 
if I had not. "Don't you remember, my plain dear," I asked myself, looking 
at the glass, "what Mrs Woodcourt said before those scars were there, about 
your marrying - "
Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of the 
flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only been 
preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it would be 
better not to keep them now.
They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room - our sitting-
room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a candle, and went softly in 
to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand, I saw my beautiful 
darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and I stole in to kiss her.
It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but I 
dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker than 
that, I took the withered flowers out, and put them for a moment to her 
lips. I thought about her love for Richard; though, indeed, the flowers had 
nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own room, and burned them 
at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my Guardian just as 
usual; quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the least 
constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was none) in 
mine. I was with him several times in the course of the morning, in and 
out, when there was no one there; and I thought it not unlikely that he 
might speak to me about the letter; but he did not say a word.
So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week; over which 
time Mr Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day, that my 
Guardian might speak to me about the letter; but he never did.
I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I tried 
over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not write an 
answer that at all began like a good answer; so I thought each night I 
would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, and he never said a 
word.
At last Mr Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon going out 
for a ride; and I being dressed before Ada, and going down, came upon my 
Guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the drawing-room window 
looking out.
He turned on my coming in, and said, smiling, "Aye, it's you, little woman, 
is it?" and looked out again.
I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down on 
purpose. "Guardian," I said, rather hesitating and trembling, "when would 
you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came for?"
"When it's ready, my dear," he replied.
"I think it is ready," said I.
"Is Charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly.
"No. I have brought it myself, Guardian," I returned.
I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him; and he said, was this the 
mistress of Bleak House; and I said yes; and it made no difference 
presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious 
pet about it.


Chapter 45

In Trust

One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys, as my 
beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened to turn my 
eyes towards the house, and saw a long thin shadow going in which looked 
like Mr Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that morning, of her hopes 
that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the Chancery suit by being so very 
earnest in it; and therefore, not to damp my dear girl's spirits, I said 
nothing about Mr Vholes's shadow.
Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes, and tripping 
along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora's attendants instead of 
my maid, saying, "O if you please, miss, would you step and speak to Mr 
Jarndyce!"
It was one of Charley's peculiarities, that whenever she was charged with a 
message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld, at any 
distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw Charley, 
asking me in her usual form of words, to "step and speak" to Mr Jarndyce, 
long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she had said it so often 
that she was out of breath.
I told Ada I would make haste back, and inquired of Charley, as we went in, 
whether there was not a gentleman with Mr Jarndyce? To which Charley, whose 
grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit to my educational 
powers, replied, "Yes, miss. Him as come down in the country with Mr 
Richard."
A more complete contrast than my Guardian and Mr Vholes, I suppose there 
could not be. I found them looking at one another across a table; the one 
so open, and the other so close; the one so broad and upright, and the 
other so narrow and stooping; the one giving out what he had to say in such 
a rich ringing voice, and the other keeping it in such a cold-blooded, 
gasping, fish-like manner; that I thought I never had seen two people so 
unmatched.
"You know Mr Vholes, my dear," said my Guardian. Not with the greatest 
urbanity, I must say.
Mr Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself again, 
just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not having Richard 
to look at, he looked straight before him.
"Mr Vholes," said my Guardian, eyeing his black figure, as if he were a 
bird of ill-omen, "has brought an ugly report of our most unfortunate 
Rick." Laying a marked emphasis on most unfortunate, as if the words were 
rather descriptive of his connection with Mr Vholes.
I sat down between them; Mr Vholes remained immovable, except that he 
secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with his black 
glove.
"And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to know," said 
my Guardian, "what you think, my dear. Would you be so good as to - as to 
speak up, Mr Vholes?"
Doing anything but that, Mr Vholes observed:
"I have been saying that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr C.'s 
professional adviser, that Mr C.'s circumstances are at the present moment 
in an embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount, as owing to the 
peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr C. has incurred, and the 
means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved off many 
little matters for Mr C.; but there is a limit to staving off, and we have 
reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket to accommodate these 
unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to being repaid, for I do not 
pretend to be a man of capital, and I have a father to support in the Vale 
of Taunton, besides striving to realise some little independence for three 
dear girls at home. My apprehension is, Mr C.'s circumstances being such, 
lest it should end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission; 
which at all events is desirable to be made known to his connections."
Mr Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here merged into the 
silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was his tone; 
and looked before him again.
"Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource," said my 
Guardian to me. "Yet what can I do? You know him, Esther. He would never 
accept of help from me, now. To offer it, or hint at it, would be to drive 
him to an extremity, if nothing else did."
Mr Vholes hereupon addressed me again.
"What Mr Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the 
difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say that 
anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here under the seal 
of confidence and mention it, in order that everything may be openly 
carried on, and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not 
openly carried on. My wish is that everything should be openly carried on. 
I desire to leave a good name behind me. If I consulted merely my own 
interests with Mr C., I should not be here. So insurmountable, as you must 
well know, would be his objections. This is not a professional attendance. 
This can be charged to nobody. I have no interest in it, except as a member 
of society and a father - and a son," said Mr Vholes, who had nearly 
forgotten that point.
It appeared to us that Mr Vholes said neither more nor less than the truth, 
in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such as it was, 
of knowing Richard's situation. I could only suggest that I should go down 
to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see him, and try if it were 
possible to avert the worst. Without consulting Mr Vholes on this point, I 
took my Guardian aside to propose it, while Mr Vholes gauntly stalked to 
the fire, and warmed his funeral gloves.
The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my Guardian's 
part; but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too happy to go, I 
got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr Vholes.
"Well, sir," said Mr Jarndyce, "Miss Summerson will communicate with Mr 
Carstone, and we can only hope that his position may be yet retrievable. 
You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey, sir."
"I thank you, Mr Jarndyce," said Mr Vholes, putting out his long black 
sleeve, to check the ringing of the bell, "not any. I thank you, no, not a 
morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor knife and fork 
at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this period of the day, I 
don't know what the consequences might be. Everything having been openly 
carried on, sir, I will now with your permission take my leave."
"And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take our 
leave, Mr Vholes," returned my Guardian, bitterly, "of a Cause you know 
of."
Mr Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had quite 
steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume, made a short 
one-sided inclination of his head from the neck, and slowly shook it.
"We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of respectable 
practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the wheel. We do it, sir. 
At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think well of my professional 
brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an obligation not to refer to 
me, miss, in communicating with Mr C.?"
I said I would be careful not to do it.
"Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr Jarndyce, good morning, sir." Mr Vholes 
put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in it, on my 
fingers, and then on my Guardian's fingers, and took his long thin shadow 
away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach, passing over all the 
sunny landscape between us and London, chilling the seed in the ground as 
it glided along.
Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going, and why I was 
going; and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was too true 
to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of excuse; and in a 
more loving spirit still - my dear, devoted girl! - she wrote him a long 
letter of which I took charge.
Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted none, 
and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London that 
afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At our usual 
bedtime, Charley and I were rolling away seaward, with the Kentish letters.
It was a night's journey in those coach times; but we had the mail to 
ourselves, and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me as I 
suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At one while my 
journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I thought that I 
should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever have supposed so. 
Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in the world that I should 
have come, and now one of the most unreasonable. In what state I should 
find Richard, what I should say to him, and what he would say to me, 
occupied my mind by turns with these two states of feeling; and the wheels 
seemed to play one tune (to which the burden of my Guardian's letter set 
itself) over and over again all night.
At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal; and very gloomy they were, 
upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little irregular 
houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and 
sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly 
waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as 
any place I ever saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and 
nothing else was moving but a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn 
twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of 
existence, they were spinning themselves into cordage.
But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, 
comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late 
to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our little 
room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very much. Then 
the fog began to rise like a curtain; and numbers of ships that we had had 
no idea were near, appeared. I don't know how many sail the waiter told us 
were then lying in the Downs. Some of these vessels were of grand size: one 
was a large Indiaman just come home: and when the sun shone through the 
clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships 
brightened, and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats putting off 
from the shore to them and from them to the shore, and a general life and 
motion in themselves, and everything around them, was most beautiful.
The large Indiaman was our great attraction, because she had come into the 
Downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats; and we said how glad the 
people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was curious too, 
about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the serpents and the 
tigers; and as she picked up such information much faster than grammar, I 
told her what I knew on those points. I told her, too, how people in such 
voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast on rocks, where they were saved by 
the intrepidity and humanity of one man. And Charley asking how that could 
be, I told her how we knew at home of such a case.
I had thought of sending Richard a note, saying I was there, but it seemed 
so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived in barracks, I 
was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we went out to 
reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard, we found 
everything very quiet at that time in the morning; and I asked a serjeant 
standing on the guardhouse steps, where he lived. He sent a man before to 
show me, who went up some bare stairs, and knocked with his knuckles at a 
door and left us.
"Now then!" cried Richard from within. So I left Charley in the little 
passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, "Can I come in, Richard? 
It's only Dame Durden."
He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin cases, 
books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the floor. He was 
only half-dressed - in plain clothes, I observed, not in uniform - and his 
hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his room. All this I saw after 
he had heartily welcomed me, and I was seated near him, for he started upon 
hearing my voice, and caught me in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He 
was ever the same to me. Down to - ah, poor, poor fellow! - to the end, he 
never received me but with something of his old merry boyish manner.
"Good Heaven, my dear little woman," said he, "how do you come here. Who 
could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is well?"
"Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!"
"Ah!" he said, leaning back in his chair. "My poor cousin! I was writing to 
you, Esther."
So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fulness of his handsome 
youth, leaning back in his chair, and crushing the closely written sheet of 
paper in his hand!
"Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to read it 
after all?" I asked.
"Oh my dear," he returned, with a hopeless gesture. "You may read it in the 
whole room. It is all over here."
I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had heard by 
chance of his being in difficulty, and had come to consult with him what 
could best be done.
"Like you, Esther, but useless, and so not like you!" said he with a 
melancholy smile. "I am away on leave this day - should have been gone in 
another hour - and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out. Well! Let 
bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I only want to have 
been in the church, to have made the round of all the professions."
"Richard," I urged, "it is not so hopeless as that?"
"Esther," he returned, "it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as that 
those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes) would far 
rather be without me than with me. And they are right. Apart from debts and 
duns, and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even for this employment. I have 
no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but for one thing. Why, if this bubble 
hadn't broken now," he said, tearing the letter he had written into 
fragments, and moodily casting them away, by driblets, "how could I have 
gone abroad? I must have been ordered abroad; but how could I have gone. 
How could I, with my experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I 
was at his back!"
I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught the 
hand I had laid upon his arm, and touched my own lips with it to prevent me 
from going on.
"No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid - must forbid. The first is John 
Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell you I 
can't help it now, and can't be sane. But it is no such thing; it is the 
one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was prevailed upon to turn 
out of my road for any other. It would be wisdom to abandon it now, after 
all the time, anxiety and pains I have bestowed upon it! O yes, true 
wisdom. It would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will."
He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his 
determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took out 
Ada's letter and put it in his hand.
"Am I to read it now?" he asked.
As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and, resting his head upon his 
hand, began. He had not read far, when he rested his head upon his two 
hands - to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if the light 
were bad, and went to the window. He finished reading it there, with his 
back towards me; and, after he had finished and had folded it up, stood 
there for some minutes with the letter in his hand. When he came back to 
his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.
"Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?" He spoke in a softened 
voice, and kissed the letter as he asked me.
"Yes, Richard."
"Offers me," he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, "the little 
inheritance she is certain of so soon - just as little and as much as I 
have wasted - and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right with it, 
and remain in the service."
"I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart," said I. "And O, 
my dear Richard, Ada's is a noble heart!"
"I am sure it is. I - I wish I was dead!"
He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his head 
down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so; but I hoped he might 
become more yielding, and I remained silent. My experience was very 
limited; I was not at all prepared for his rousing himself out of this 
emotion to a new sense of injury.
"And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not otherwise to 
be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from me," said he, 
indignantly. "And the dear girl makes me this generous offer from under the 
same John Jarndyce's roof, and with the same John Jarndyce's gracious 
consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new means of buying me off."
"Richard!" I cried out, rising hastily, "I will not hear you say such 
shameful words!" I was very angry with him, indeed, for the first time in 
my life; but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young face 
looking at me, as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder, and 
said, "If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a tone to me. 
Consider!"
He blamed himself exceedingly; and told me in the most generous manner, 
that he had been very wrong, and that he begged my pardon a thousand times. 
At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather fluttered 
after being so fiery.
"To accept this offer, my dear Esther," said he, sitting down beside me, 
and resuming our conversation, - "once more, pray, pray forgive me; I am 
deeply grieved - to accept my dearest cousin's offer is, I need not say, 
impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I could show you, which 
would convince you it is all over here. I have done with the red coat, 
believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in the midst of my troubles and 
perplexities, to know that I am pressing Ada's interests in pressing my 
own. Vholes has his shoulder to the wheel, and he cannot help urging it on 
as much for her as for me, thank God!"
His sanguine hopes were rising within him, and lighting up his features, 
but they made his face more sad to me than it had been before.
"No, no!" cried Richard, exultingly. "If every farthing of Ada's little 
fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining me in what I 
am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary of. It should be 
devoted to what promises a better return, and should be used where she has 
a larger stake. Don't be uneasy for me! I shall now have only one thing on 
my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I shall not be without means. Free 
of my commission, I shall be able to compound with some small usurers, who 
will hear of nothing but their bond now - Vholes says so. I should have a 
balance in my favour any way, but that will swell it. Come, come! You shall 
carry a letter to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more 
hopeful of me, and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my 
dear."
I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and 
nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only came 
from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly; but I saw that on the 
two subjects he had reserved, it was at present hopeless to make any 
representation to him. I saw, too, and had experienced in this very 
interview, the sense of my Guardian's remark, that it was even more 
mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as he was.
Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind 
convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and that 
it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation a 
correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was arranged. I 
found, from what he told me, that Mr Vholes had copies of these papers, and 
had been in consultation with him throughout. Beyond ascertaining this, and 
having been the bearer of Ada's letter, and being (as I was going to be) 
Richard's companion back to London, I had done no good by coming down. 
Admitting this to myself with a reluctant heart, I said I would return to 
the hotel and wait until he joined me there; so he threw a cloak over his 
shoulders and saw me to the gate, and Charley and I went back along the 
beach.
There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval 
officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with unusual 
interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great Indiaman's boats 
now, and we stopped to look.
The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking good-humouredly 
to each other and to the people around, and glancing about them as if they 
were glad to be in England again. "Charley, Charley!" said I, "come away!" 
and I hurried on so swiftly that my little maid was surprised.
It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room, and I had had time to 
take breath, that I began to think why I had made such haste. In one of the 
sunburnt faces I had recognised Mr Allan Woodcourt, and I had been afraid 
of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he should see my altered 
looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my courage had quite failed me.
But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, "My dear, there is 
no reason - there is and there can be no reason at all - why it should be 
worse for you now, than it ever has been. What you were last month, you are 
today; you are no worse, you are no better. This is not your resolution; 
call it up, Esther, call it up!" I was in a great tremble - with running - 
and at first was quite unable to calm myself; but I got better, and I was 
very glad to know it.
The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase. I was 
sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices again - I mean I 
knew Mr Woodcourt's. It would still have been a great relief to me to have 
gone away without making myself known, but I was determined not to do so. 
"No, my dear, no. No, no, no!"
I untied my bonnet, and put my veil half up - I think I mean half down, but 
it matters very little - and wrote on one of my cards that I happened to be 
there with Mr Richard Carstone; and I sent it in to Mr Woodcourt. He came 
immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be by chance among the first to 
welcome him home to England. And I saw that he was very sorry for me.
"You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr Woodcourt," 
said I, "but we can hardly call that a misfortune which enabled you to be 
so useful and so brave. We read of it with the truest interest. It first 
came to my knowledge through your old patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was 
recovering from my severe illness."
"Ah! little Miss Flite!" he said. "She lives the same life yet?"
"Just the same."
I was so comfortable with myself now, as not to mind the veil, and to be 
able to put it aside.
"Her gratitude to you, Mr Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most 
affectionate creature, as I have reason to say."
"You - you have found her so?" he returned. "I - I am glad of that." He was 
so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.
"I assure you," said I, "that I was deeply touched by her sympathy and 
pleasure at the time I have referred to."
"I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill."
"I was very ill."
"But you have quite recovered?"
"I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness," said I. "You know 
how good my Guardian is, and what a happy life we lead; and I have 
everything to be thankful for, and nothing in the world to desire."
I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had for 
myself. It inspired me with new fortitude, and new calmness, to find that 
it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I spoke to him of 
his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and of his probable 
return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He had not found himself 
more favoured by fortune there, than here. He had gone out a poor ship's 
surgeon, and had come home nothing better. While we were talking, and when 
I was glad to believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the 
shock he had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who 
was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure.
I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke of 
Richard's career, Mr Woodcourt had a perception that all was not going well 
with him. He frequently glanced at his face, as if there were something in 
it that gave him pain; and more than once he looked towards me, as though 
he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard was 
in one of his sanguine states, and in good spirits; and was thoroughly 
pleased to see Mr Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.
Richard proposed that we all should go to London together, but Mr Woodcourt 
having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not join us. He dined 
with us, however, at an early hour; and became so much more like what he 
used to be, that I was still more at peace to think I had been able to 
soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not relieved of Richard. When the 
coach was almost ready, and Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he 
spoke to me about him.
I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open; but I 
referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce, and to his 
being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr Woodcourt listened with 
interest and expressed his regret.

"I saw you observe him rather closely," said I. "Do you think him so 
changed?"
"He is changed," he returned, shaking his head.
I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was only an 
instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was gone.
"It is not," said Mr Woodcourt, "his being so much younger or older, or 
thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his face such a 
singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in a young person. 
One cannot say that it is all anxiety, or all weariness; yet it is both, 
and like ungrown despair."
"You do not think he is ill?" said I.
No. He looked robust in body.
"That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to know," I 
proceeded. "Mr Woodcourt, you are going to London?"
"Tomorrow or the next day."
"There is nothing Richard wants so much, as a friend. He always liked you. 
Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with your 
companionship, if you can. You do not know of what service it might be. You 
cannot think how Ada, and Mr Jarndyce, and even I - how we should all thank 
you, Mr Woodcourt!"
"Miss Summerson," he said, more moved than he had been from the first, 
"before Heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept him as a 
trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
"God bless you!" said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought they 
might, when it was not for myself. "Ada loves him - we all love him, but 
Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say. Thank you, and 
God bless you in her name!"
Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words, and gave 
me his arm to take me to the coach.
"Woodcourt," he said, unconscious with what application, "pray let us meet 
in London!"
"Meet?" returned the other. "I have scarcely a friend there, now, but you. 
Where shall I find you?"
"Why, I must get a lodging of some sort," said Richard, pondering. "Say at 
Vholes's, Symond's Inn."
"Good! Without loss of time."
They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach, and Richard was 
yet standing in the street, Mr Woodcourt laid his friendly hand on 
Richard's shoulder, and looked at me. I understood him, and waved mine in 
thanks.
And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry for me. 
I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they 
ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly remembered, to be 
gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.


Chapter 46

Stop Him!

Darkness rests upon Tom-all-Alone's. Dilating and dilating since the sun 
went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in 
the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp 
of Life burns in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, 
and winking - as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's - at many 
horrible things. But they are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a 
dull cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert 
region unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on, 
and is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-
all-Alone's, and Tom is fast asleep.
Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, 
concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. 
Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or 
by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, 
or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be 
set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his 
mind, or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of 
which dust and noise, there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that 
Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to 
somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And, in the hopeful meantime, Tom 
goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.
But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they serve 
him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted 
blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, 
this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on analysis would 
find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be 
able to say Nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom's 
slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one 
obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not 
a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution, through 
every order of society, up to the proudest of the proud, and to the highest 
of the high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has 
his revenge.
It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by night; 
but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it 
must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to 
be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The day begins to break now; 
and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun 
should sometimes set upon the British dominions, than that it should ever 
rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom.
A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep to be 
wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless pillow, 
strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by curiosity, he often 
pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable byways. Nor is he 
merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate interest; 
and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness, 
and to have studied it before.
On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of Tom-
all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and 
silent. No waking creature save himself appears, except in one direction, 
where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a doorstep. He 
walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has journeyed a long 
distance, and is footsore and travel-stained. She sits on the doorstep in 
the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head 
upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She 
is dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward 
her.
The broken footway is so narrow, that when Allan Woodcourt comes to where 
the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. Looking down at 
her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing sir."
"Can't you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?"
"I'm waiting till they get up at another house - a lodging-house - not 
here," the woman patiently returns. "I'm waiting here because there will be 
sun here presently to warm me."
"I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the street."
"Thank you sir. It don't matter."
A habit in him of speaking to the poor, and of avoiding patronage or 
condescension, or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people 
deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books), 
has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
"Let me look at your forehead," he says, bending down. "I am a doctor. 
Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
He knows that by touching her with his skillful and accustomed hand, he can 
soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection, saying, "It's 
nothing;" but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the wounded place when 
she lifts it up to the light.
"Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very sore."
"It do ache a little, sir," returns the woman, with a started tear upon her 
cheek.
"Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won't hurt you."
"O dear no, sir, I'm sure of that!"
He cleanses the injured place and dries it; and having carefully examined 
it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from 
his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is thus employed, he 
says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street:
"And so your husband is a brickmaker?"
"How you know that, sir?" asked the woman, astonished.
"Why, I suppose so, from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on your 
dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in places. And 
I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to their wives too."
The woman hastily lifts up her eyes, as if she would deny that her injury 
is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her forehead, and 
seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again.
"Where is he now?" asks the surgeon.
"He got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the lodging-
house."
"He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and heavy 
hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as he is, and I 
say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it. You have no young 
child?"
The woman shakes her head. "One as I calls mine, sir, but it's Liz's."
"Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!"
By this time he has finished, and is putting up his case. "I suppose you 
have some settled home. Is it far from here?" he asks, good-humouredly 
making light of what he has done, as she gets up and curtseys.
"It's a good two or three-and-twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint Albans. 
You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like, as if you 
did?"
"Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in return. 
Have you money for your lodging?"
"Yes, sir," she says, "really and truly." And she shows it. He tells her, 
in acknowledgement of her many subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, 
gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone's is still asleep, and 
nothing is astir.
Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he 
descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a ragged 
figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the soiled walls - 
which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid - and furtively thrusting 
a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth, whose face is hollow, and 
whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so intent on getting along 
unseen, that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not 
tempt him to look back. He shades his face with his ragged elbow as he 
passes on the other side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on, 
with his anxious hand before him, and his shapeless clothes hanging in 
shreds. Clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it would be 
impossible to say. They look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of 
rank leaves of swampy growth, that rotted long ago.
Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a shadowy 
belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how, or where; but 
there is some association in his mind with such a form. He imagines that he 
must have seen it in some hospital or refuge; still, cannot make out why it 
comes with any special force on his remembrance.
He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's in the morning light, 
thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him; and looking 
round, sees the boy, scouring towards him at great speed, followed by the 
woman.
"Stop him, stop him!" cries the woman, almost breathless. "Stop him, sir!"
He darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker than 
he - makes a curve - ducks - dives under his hands - comes up half-a-dozen 
yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still, the woman follows, crying, 
"Stop him, sir, pray stop him!" Allan, not knowing but that he has just 
robbed her of her money, follows in chase, and runs so hard, that he runs 
the boy down a dozen times; but each time he repeats the curve, the duck, 
the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him, on any of these 
occasions, would be to fell and disable him; but the pursuer cannot resolve 
to do that; and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the 
fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage, and a court which has no 
thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to 
bay, and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps 
at him until the woman comes up.
"O you, Jo!" cries the woman. "What? I have found you at last!"
"Jo," repeats Allan, looking at him with attention. "Jo! Stay. To be sure! 
I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the coroner."
"Yes, I see you once afore at the Inkwhich," whimpers Jo. "What of that?" 
Can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An't I unfortnet enough 
for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me for to be? Iv'e been a chivied 
and a chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by another on you, till I'm 
worritted to skins and bones. The Inkwhich warn't my fault. I done nothink. 
He wos wery good to me he wos; he wos the only one I know'd to speak to, as 
ever come across my crossing. It ain't wery likely I should want him to be 
Inkwhich'd. I only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go and make 
a hole in the water, I'm sure I don't.
He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, 
and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of 
fungus or any unwholesome excresence produced there in neglect and 
impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the 
woman, "Miserable creature, what has he done?"
To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more 
amazedly than angrily: "Oh you, Jo, you Jo. I have found you at last!"
"What has he done?" says Allan. "Has he robbed you?"
"No sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and 
that's the wonder of it."
Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting for one 
of them to unravel the riddle.
"But he was along with me, sir," says the woman, - "O you Jo! - he was 
along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady Lord bless 
her for a good friend to me took pity on him when I durstn't, and took him 
home - "
Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.
"Yes sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a 
thankless monster he ran away in the night, and never has been seen or 
heard of since, till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady that 
was such a pretty dear, caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and 
wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now, if it wasn't for her 
angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? 
You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her 
goodness to you?" demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she 
recalls it, and breaking into passionate tears.
The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his 
dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to 
shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans, 
rattles.
Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually.
"Richard told me," he falters, " - I mean I have heard of this - don't mind 
me for a moment, I will speak presently."
He turns away, and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. 
When he comes back, he has recovered his composure; except that he contends 
against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable, that it 
absorbs the woman's attention.
"You hear what she says. But get up, get up!"
Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises, and stands, after the manner of 
his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of 
his high shoulders against it, and covertly rubbing his right hand over his 
left, and his left foot over his right.
"You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here ever 
since?"
"Whishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning," 
replies Jo, hoarsely.
"Why have you come here now?"
Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher 
than the knees, and finally answers:
"I don't know how to do nothink, and I can't get nothink to do. I'm wery 
poor and ill, and I thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody 
about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till after dark, and 
then go and beg a trifle of Mr Sangsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me 
sumthink he wos, though Mrs Sangsby she wus allus a chivying on me - like 
everybody everywheres."
"Where have you come from?"
Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees again, 
and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of 
resignation.
"Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?"
"Tramp then," says Jo.
"Now, tell me," proceeds Allen, making a strong effort to overcome his 
repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression 
of confidence, "tell me how it came about that you left that house, when 
the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you, and take you 
home."
Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation, and excitedly declares, 
addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he 
never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would 
sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his unfortnet ed 
chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, 
she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really 
meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs.
Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to 
touch him. "Come Jo. Tell me."
"No. I dustn't," says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. "I dustn't, or 
I would."
"But I must know," returns the other, "all the same. Come Jo."
After two or three of such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks 
round the court again, and says in a low voice, "Well, I'll tell you 
something. I wos took away. There!"
"Took away? In the night?"
"Ah!" Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him, and even 
glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding, and through the cracks 
in it, lest the object of his distrust should be looking over, or hidden on 
the other side.
"Who took you away?"
"I dustn't name him," says Jo. "I dustn't do it, sir."
"But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No one 
else shall hear."
"Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as he 
don't hear."
"Why, he is not in this place."
"Oh, ain't he though?" says Jo. "He's in all manner of places, all at 
wanst."
Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good 
faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an 
explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything 
else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.
"Ay!" says Allan. "Why, what had you been doing?"
"Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, 'sept in 
not moving on and the Inkwhich. But I'm a moving on now. I'm a moving on to 
the berryin ground - that's the move as I'm up to."
"No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?"
"Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whispering, "till I was discharged, 
then give me a little money - four half bulls, wot you may call half-crowns 
- and ses 'Hook it! Nobody wants you here,' he ses. 'You hook it. You go 
and tramp,' he ses. 'You move on,' he ses. 'Don't let me ever see you 
nowheres within forty mile of London, or you'll repent it.' So I shall, if 
ever he does see me, and he'll see me if I'm above ground," concludes Jo, 
nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations.
Allan considers a little: then remarks, turning to the woman, but keeping 
an encouraging eye on Jo; "He is not so ungrateful as you supposed. He had 
a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one."
"Thank'ee, sir, thank'ee!" exclaims Jo. "There now! See how hard you wos 
upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it's all 
right. For you wos wery good to me, and I knows too it."
"Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, "come with me, and I will 
find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I take one 
side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you will not run 
away, I know very well, if you make me a promise."
"I won't not unless I wos to see him a coming, sir."
"Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this time, and 
the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come along. Good day 
again, my good woman,"
"Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again."
She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes 
it up. Jo repeating, "Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to 
hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and shivers, and smears 
and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes 
his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the 
opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-
Alone's into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air.


Chapter 47

Jo's Will

As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets, where the high church 
spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning light that 
the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in his mind how and 
where he shall bestow his companion. "It surely is a strange fact," he 
considers, "that in the heart of a civilised world this creature in human 
form should be more difficult to dispose of than an unknown dog." But it is 
none the less a fact because of its strangeness, and the difficulty 
remains.
As first he looks behind him often, to assure himself that Jo is still 
really following. But, look where he will, he still beholds him close to 
the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick to brick 
and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing over at him, 
watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing in his thoughts is to give 
him the slip, Allan goes on; considering with a less divided attention what 
he shall do.
A breakfast-stall at a street corner suggests the first thing to be done. 
He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses, and comes halting 
and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his right hand round and 
round in the hollowed palm of his left - kneading dirt with a natural 
pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, 
and he begins to gulp the coffee, and to gnaw the bread and butter; looking 
anxiously about him in all directions as he eats and drinks, like a scared 
animal.
But he is so sick and miserable, that even hunger has abandoned him. "I 
thought I was amost a starvin, sir," says Jo, soon putting down his food; 
"but I don't know nothink - not even that. I don't care for eating wittles 
nor yet for drinking on 'em." And Jo stands shivering, and looking at the 
breakfast wonderingly.
Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse, and on his chest. "Draw 
breath, Jo!"
"It draws," says Joe, "as heavy as a cart." He might add, "and rattles like 
it;" but he only mutters, "I'm a moving on, sir."
Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop. There is none at hand, but a 
tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of wine, and 
gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to revive, almost 
as soon as it passes his lips. "We may repeat that dose, Jo," observes 
Allan, after watching him with his attentive face. "So! Now we will take 
five minutes rest, and then go on again."
Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his back 
against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in the early 
sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without appearing to watch 
him. It requires no discernment to perceive that he is warmed and 
refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his face brightens somewhat; 
and, by little and little, he eats the slice of bread he had so hopelessly 
laid down. Observant of these signs of improvement, Allan engages him in 
conversation; and elicits to his no small wonder the adventure of the lady 
in the veil, with all its consequences. Jo slowly munches, as he slowly 
tells it. When he has finished his story and his bread, they go on again.
Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of refuge 
for the boy, to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite, Allan leads the 
way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered. But all is changed at 
the rag-and-bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer lodges there; it is shut up; 
and a hard-featured female, much obscured by dust, whose age is a problem - 
but who is indeed no other than the interesting Judy - is tart and spare in 
her replies. These sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss 
Flite and her birds are domiciled with a Mrs Blinder, in Bell Yard, he 
repairs to that neighbouring place; where Miss Flite (who rises early that 
she may be punctual at the Divan of justice held by her excellent friend 
the Chancellor) comes running downstairs, with tears of welcome and with 
open arms.
"My dear physician!" cries Miss Flite. "My meritorious, distinguished, 
honourable officer!" She uses some odd expressions, but is as cordial and 
full of heart as sanity itself can be - more so than it often is. Allan, 
very patient with her, waits until she has no more raptures to express; 
then points out Jo, trembling in a doorway, and tells her how he comes 
there.
"Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now you have a fund of 
knowledge and good sense, and can advise me."
Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider; but 
it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs Blinder is entirely 
let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley's room. "Gridley!" exclaims Miss 
Flite, clapping her hands, after a twentieth repetition of this remark. 
"Gridley! To be sure! of course! My dear physician! General George will 
help us out."
It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and would 
be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on her pinched 
bonnet and her poor little shawl, and to arm herself with her reticule of 
documents. But as she informs her physician, in her disjointed manner, on 
coming down in full array, that General George, whom she often calls upon, 
knows her dear Fitz-Jarndyce, and takes a great interest in all connected 
with her, Allan is induced to think that they may be in the right way. So 
he tells Jo, for his encouragement, that this walking about will soon be 
over now; and they repair to the General's. Fortunately it is not far.
From the exterior of George's Shooting Gallery, and the long entry, and the 
bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He also descries 
promise in the figure of Mr George himself, striding towards them in his 
morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no stock on, and his muscular 
arms, developed by broadsword and dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves 
through his light shirt-sleeves.
"Your servant, sir," says Mr George with a military salute. Good-humouredly 
smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp hair, he then defers 
to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and at some length she performs 
the courtly ceremony of presentation. He winds it up with another "Your 
servant, sir!" and another salute.
"Excuse me, sir. A sailor I believe?" says Mr George.
"I am proud to find I have the air of one," returns Allan; "But I am only a 
sea-going doctor."
"Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket, myself."
Allan hopes Mr George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on that 
account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe, which, in 
his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing. "You are very 
good, sir," returns the trooper. "As I know, by experience, that it's not 
disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it's equally agreeable to yourself - 
" and finishes the sentence by putting it between his lips again. Allan 
proceeds to tell him all he knows about Jo; unto which the trooper listens 
with a grave face.
"And that's the lad, sir, is it?" he inquires, looking along the entry to 
where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the whitewashed front, 
which have no meaning in his eyes.
"That's he," says Allan. "And, Mr George, I am in this difficulty about 
him. I am unwilling to place him a hospital, even if I could procure him 
immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not stay there many 
hours, if he could be so much as got there. The same objection applies to a 
workhouse; supposing I had the patience to be evaded and shirked, and 
handed about from post to pillar in trying to get him into one - which is a 
system that I don't take kindly to."
"No man does, sir," returns Mr George.
"I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he is 
possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered him to keep 
out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person to be everywhere, 
and cognisant of everything."
"I ask your pardon, sir," says Mr George. "But you have not mentioned that 
party's name. Is it a secret, sir?"
"The boy makes it one. But the name is Bucket."
"Bucket the Detective, sir?"
"The same man."
"The man is known to me, sir," returns the trooper, after blowing out a 
cloud of smoke, and squaring his chest; "and the boy is so far correct that 
he undoubtedly is a - rum customer." Mr George smokes with a profound 
meaning after this, and surveys Miss Flite in silence.
"Now, I wish Mr Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that this Jo, 
who tells so strange a story, has reappeared; and to have it in their power 
to speak with him, if they should desire to do so. Therefore I want to get 
him, for the present moment, into any poor lodging kept by decent people, 
where he would be admitted. Decent people and Jo, Mr George," says Allan, 
following the direction of the trooper's eyes along the entry, "have not 
been much acquainted, as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to 
know any one in this neighbourhood, who would receive him for a while, on 
my paying for him beforehand?"
As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man, 
standing at the trooper's elbow, and looking up, with an oddly twisted 
figure and countenance, into the trooper's face. After a few more puffs at 
his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man, and the little 
man winks up at the trooper.
"Well sir," says Mr George, "I can assure you that I would willingly be 
knocked on the head at any time, if it would be at all agreeable to Miss 
Summerson; and consequently I esteem it a privilege to do that young lady 
any service, however small. We are naturally in the vagabond way here, sir, 
both myself and Phil. You see what the place is. You are welcome to a quiet 
corner of it for the boy, if the same would meet your views. No charge 
made, except for rations. We are not in a flourishing state of 
circumstances here, sir. We are liable to be tumbled out neck and crop, at 
a moment's notice. However, sir, such as the place is, and so long as it 
lasts, here it is at your service."
With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr George places the whole building 
at his visitor's disposal.
"I take it for granted, sir," he adds, "you being one of the medical staff, 
that there is no present infection about this unfortunate subject?"
Allan is quite sure of it.
"Because, sir," says Mr George, shaking his head sorrowfully, "we have had 
enough of that."
His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance. "Still, I 
am bound to tell you," observes Allan, after repeating his former 
assurance, "that the boy is deplorably low and reduced; and that he may be -
 I do not say that he is - too far gone to recover."
"Do you consider him in present danger, sir?" inquires the trooper.
"Yes, I fear so."
"Then, sir," returns the trooper, in a decisive manner, "it appears to me - 
being naturally in the vagabond way myself - that the sooner he comes out 
of the street, the better. You Phil! Bring him in!"
Mr Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command; and 
the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought in. He is 
not one of Mrs Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs 
Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrioboola-Gha; he is not 
softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown 
savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to 
all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in 
soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, 
homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him: native ignorance, the 
growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than 
the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From 
the sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing interesting 
about thee.
He shuffles slowly into Mr George's gallery, and stands huddled together in 
a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know that they have an 
inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he is, and partly for what 
he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not of the same order of 
things, not of the same place in creation. He is of no order and no place; 
neither of the beasts, nor of humanity.
"Look here, Jo!" says Allan. "This is Mr George."
Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a moment, and 
then down again.
"He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging-room 
here."
Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After a 
little more consideration, and some backing and changing of the foot on 
which he rests, he mutters that he is "wery thankful."
"You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be obedient, 
and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here, whatever you do, 
Jo."
"Wishermaydie if I don't, sir," says Jo, reverting to his favourite 
declaration. "I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get myself 
into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir - 'sept not 
knowin' nothink and starwation."
"I believe it. Now attend to Mr George. I see he is going to speak to you."
"My intention merely was, sir," observes Mr George, amazingly broad and 
upright, "to point out to him where he can lie down, and get a thorough 
good dose of sleep. Now, look here." As the trooper speaks, he conducts 
them to the other end of the gallery, and opens one of the little cabins. 
"There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here you may rest, on good 
behaviour, as long as Mr, I ask your pardon, sir;" he refers apologetically 
to the card Allan has given him; "Mr Woodcourt pleases. Don't you be 
alarmed if you hear shots; they'll be aimed at the target and not you. Now, 
there's another thing I would recommend, sir," says the trooper, turning to 
his visitor. "Phil, come here!"
Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics.
"Here is a man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. 
Consequently, it is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this 
poor creature. You do, don't you, Phil?"
"Certainly and surely I do, guv'ner," is Phil's reply.
"Now I was thinking, sir," says Mr George, in a martial sort of confidence, 
as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a drum-head, "that 
if this man was to take him to a bath, and was to lay out a few shillings 
in getting him one or two coarse articles - "
"Mr George, my considerate friend," returns Allan, taking out his purse, 
"it is the very favour I would have asked."
Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of improvement. 
Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the best of her way to 
Court; having great fears that otherwise her friend the Chancellor may be 
uneasy about her, or may give the judgment she has so long expected, in her 
absence; and observing "which you know, my dear physician, and general, 
after so many years, would be too absurdly unfortunate!" Allan takes the 
opportunity of going out to procure some restorative medicines; and 
obtaining them near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up 
and down the gallery and to fall into step and walk with him.
"I take it, sir," says Mr George, "that you know Miss Summerson pretty 
well?"
Yes, it appears.
"Not related to her, sir?"
No, it appears.
"Excuse the apparent curiosity," says Mr George. "It seemed to me probable 
that you might take more than a common interest in this poor creature, 
because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest in him. 'Tis my 
case, sir, I assure you."
"And mine, Mr George."
The trooper looks sideways at Allan's sunburnt cheek and bright dark eye, 
rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of him.
"Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I unquestionably 
know the rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Bucket took the lad, 
according to his account. Though he is not acquainted with the name, I can 
help you to it. It's Tulkinghorn. That's what it is."
Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.
"Tulkinghorn. That's the name, sir. I know the man; and know him to have 
been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased person who 
had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow."
Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is?
"What kind of man. Do you mean to look at?"
"I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally, what kind 
of man?"
"Why, then I'll tell you, sir," returns the trooper, stopping short, and 
folding his arms on his square chest, so angrily, that his face fires and 
flushes all over; "he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow-
torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood, than a rusty old 
carbine is. He is a kind of man - by George! - that has caused me more 
restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfaction with myself, 
than all other men put together. That's the kind of man Mr Tulkinghorn is!"
"I am sorry," says Allan, "to have touched so sore a place."
"Sore?" The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his broad 
right hand, and lays it on his imaginary moustache. "It's no fault of 
yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me. He is the man 
I spoke of just now, as being able to tumble me out of this place neck and 
crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won't hold off, and he won't 
come on. If I have a payment to make him, or time to ask him for, or 
anything to go to him about, he don't see me, don't hear me - passes me on 
to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn, Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn 
passes me back again to him - he keeps me prowling and dangling about him, 
as if I was made of the same stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life 
now, pretty well loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? 
Nothing. Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He 
chafes and goads me, till - Bah! nonsense - I am forgetting myself. Mr 
Woodcourt;" the trooper resumes his march; 'all I say is, he is an old man; 
but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs to my horse, 
and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that chance, in one of the 
humours he drives me into - he'd go down, sir!"
Mr George has been so excited, that he finds it necessary to wipe his 
forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity away 
with the National Anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head and 
heavings of his chest still linger behind; not to mention an occasional 
hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar, as if it were 
scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a choking sensation. 
In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about the going down of Mr 
Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.
Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his mattress 
by the careful Phil; to whom, after due administration of medicine by his 
own hands, Allan confides all needful means and instructions. The morning 
is by this time getting on apace. He repairs to his lodgings to dress and 
breakfast; and then, without seeking rest, goes away to Mr Jarndyce to 
communicate his discovery.
With him Mr Jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that there 
are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed; and showing a 
serious interest in it. To Mr Jarndyce, Jo repeats in substance what he 
said in the morning; without any material variation. Only, that cart of his 
is heavier to draw, and draws with a hollower sound.
"Let me lay here quiet, and not be chivied no more," falters Jo; "and be so 
kind any person as is a passin' nigh where I used fur to sweep, as jist to 
say to Mr Snagsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a moving on right forards 
with his duty, and I'll be wery thankful. I'd be more thankful than I am 
aready, if it wos any ways possible for an unfortnet to be it."
He makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the course of 
a day or two, that Allan, after conferring with Mr Jarndyce, good-naturedly 
resolves to call in Crook's Court; the rather, as the cart seems to be 
breaking down.
To Crook's Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr Snagsby is behind his counter 
in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an Indenture of several skins 
which has just come in from the engrosser's; an immense desert of law-hand 
and parchment, with here and there a resting-place of a few large letters 
to break the awful monotony, and save the traveller from despair. Mr 
Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells, and greets the stranger with 
his cough of general preparation for business.
"You don't remember me, Mr Snagsby?"
The stationer's heart begins to thump heavily, for his old apprehensions 
have never abated. It is as much as he can do to answer, "No, sir, I can't 
say I do. I should have considered - not to put too fine a point upon it - 
that I never saw you before, sir."
"Twice before," says Allan Woodcourt. "Once at a poor bedside, and once - "
"It's come at last!" thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection breaks 
upon him. "It's got to a head now, and is going to burst!" But, he has 
sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the little counting-
house, and to shut the door.
"Are you a married man, sir?"
"No, I am not."
"Would you make the attempt, though single," says Mr Snagsby in a 
melancholy whisper, "to speak as low as you can? For my little woman is a 
listening somewheres, or I'll forfeit the business and five hundred pound!"
In deep dejection Mr Snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back against 
his desk, protesting:
"I never had a secret of my own, sir. I can't charge my memory with ever 
having once attempted to deceive my little woman on my own account, since 
she named the day. I wouldn't have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a 
point upon it, I couldn't have done it, I durstn't have done it. Whereas, 
and nevertheless, I find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, 
till my life is a burden to me."
His visitor professes his regret to hear it, and asks him does he remember 
Jo? Mr Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan. O don't he!
"You couldn't name an individual human being - except myself - that my 
little woman is more set and determined against than Jo," says Mr Snagsby.
Allan asks why?
"Why?" repeats Mr Snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump of 
hair at the back of his bald head, "How should I know why? But you are a 
single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married person such 
a question!"
With this beneficent wish, Mr Snagsby coughs a cough of dismal resignation, 
and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to communicate.
"There again!" says Mr Snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his 
feelings, and the suppressed tones of his voice, is discoloured in the 
face. "At it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me, in the 
solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little woman. Then 
comes another certain person, in the person of yourself, and charges me, in 
an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that other certain person above 
all other persons. Why, this is a private asylum! Why, not to put too fine 
a point upon it, this is Bedlam, sir!" says Mr Snagsby.
But it is better than he expected, after all; being no explosion of the 
mine below him, or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen. And being 
tender-hearted, and affected by the account he hears of Jo's condition, he 
readily engages to "look round," as early in the evening as he can manage 
it quietly. He looks round very quietly, when the evening comes; but it may 
turn out that Mrs Snagsby is as quiet a manager as he.
Jo is very glad to see his old friend; and says, when they are left alone, 
that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr Sangsby should come so far out of his 
way on accounts of sich as him. Mr Snagsby, touched by the spectacle before 
him, immediately lays upon the table half-a-crown: that magic balsam of his 
for all kinds of wounds.
"And how do you find yourself, my poor lad?" inquires the stationer, with 
his cough of sympathy.
"I am in luck, Mr Sangsby, I am," returns Jo, "and don't want for nothink. 
I'm more cumfbler nor you can't think. Mr Sangsby! I'm wery sorry that I 
done it, but I didn't go fur to do it, sir."
The stationer softly lays down another half-crown, and asks him what it is 
that he is sorry for having done?
"Mr Sangsby," says Jo, "I went and giv a illness to the lady as wos and yit 
as warn't the t'other lady, and none of 'em never says nothink to me for 
having done it, on accounts of their being ser good and my having been s' 
unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me yesday, and she ses, 'Ah Jo!' 
she ses. 'We thought we'd lost you, Jo!' she ses. And she sits down a 
smilin so quiet, and don't pass a word nor yit a look upon me for having 
done it, she don't, and I turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr Sangsby. And Mr 
Jarnders, I see him a forced to turn away his own self. And Mr Woodcot, he 
come fur to give me somethink fur to ease me, wot he's allus a doin on day 
and night, and wen he come a bendin over me and a speakin up so bold, I see 
his tears a fallin, Mr Sangsby."
The softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table. Nothing 
less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve his feelings.
"Wot I wos a thinkin on, Mr Sangsby," proceeds Jo, "wos, as you was able to 
write wery large, p'raps?"
"Yes, Jo, please God," returns the stationer.
"Uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says Jo, with eagerness.
"Yes, my poor boy."
Jo laughs with pleasure. "Wot I wos a thinkin on then, Mr Sangsby, wos, 
that when I was moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn't be moved no 
furder, whether you might be so good p'raps, as to write out, wery large so 
that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos wery truly hearty sorry 
that I done it and that I never went fur to do it; and that though I didn't 
know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus 
grieved over it, and that I hoped as he'd be able to forgive me in his 
mind. If the writin could be made to say it wery large, he might."
"It shall say it, Jo. Very large."
Jo laughs again. "Thankee, Mr Sangsby. Its wery kind of you, sir, and it 
makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore."
The meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips down 
his fourth half-crown - he has never been so close to a case requiring so 
many - and is fain to depart. And Jo, and he, upon this little earth, shall 
meet no more. No more.
For the cart so hard to draw, is near its journey's end, and drags over 
stony ground. All round the clock, it labours up the broken steeps, 
shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise, and behold it still 
upon its weary road.
Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse and 
works as armourer at his little table in a corner; often looking round, and 
saying with a nod of his green baize cap, and an encouraging elevation of 
his one eyebrow, "Hold up, my boy! Hold up!" There, too, is Mr Jarndyce 
many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always; both thinking, much, how 
strangely Fate has entangled this rough outcast in the web of very 
different lives. There too, the trooper is a frequent visitor: filling the 
doorway with his athletic figure, and, from his superfluity of life and 
strength, seeming to shed down temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to 
speak more robustly in answer to his cheerful words.
Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor today, and Allan Woodcourt, newly arrived, 
stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a while, he softly 
seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards him - just as he sat 
in the law-writer's room - and touches his chest and heart. The cart had 
very nearly given up, but labours on a little more.
The trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped in a 
low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr Woodcourt looks 
round with that grave professional interest and attention on his face, and, 
glancing significantly at the trooper, signs to Phil to carry his table 
out. When the little hammer is next used, there will be a speck of rust 
upon it.
"Well, Joe! What is the matter? Don't be frightened."
"I thought," says Jo, who has started, and is looking round, "I thought I 
was in Tom-all-Alone's agin. Ain't there nobody here but you, Mr Woodcot?"
"Nobody."
"And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's. Am I, sir?"
"No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, "I'm wery thankful."
After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very near 
his ear, and says to him in a low, distinct voice:
"Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?"
"Never knowd nothink, sir."
"Not so much as one short prayer?"
"No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr Chadbands he wos a prayin wunst at Mr 
Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a speakin' to 
hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn't make out nothink on 
it. Different times, there was other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone's a 
prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all 
mostly sounded to be a talking to theirselves, or a passing blame on the 
t'others, and not a talkin to us. We never knowd nothink. I never knowd 
what it wos all about."
It takes him a long time to say this; and few but an experienced and 
attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a short 
relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong effort to get 
out of bed.
"Stay, Jo? What now?"
"It's time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir," he returns with 
a wild look.
"Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo!"
"Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, he 
wos. It's time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground sir, and ask 
to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be berried. He used fur 
to say to me, 'I am as poor as you today, Jo,' he ses. I wants to tell him 
that I am as poor as him now, and have come there to be laid along with 
him."
"By and by, Jo. By and by."
"Ah! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to go myself. But will you promise 
to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?"
"I will, indeed."
"Thank'ee, sir. Thank'ee, sir. They'll have to get the key of the gate 
afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. And there's a step there, 
as I used fur to clean with my broom. - It's turned wery dark, sir. Is 
there any light a comin?"
"It is coming fast, Jo."
Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very near 
its end.
"Jo, my poor fellow!"
"I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a gropin - a gropin - let me catch 
hold of your hand."
"Jo, can you say what I say?"
"I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it's good."
"Our Father."
"Our Father! - yes, that's wery good, sir."
"Which art in Heaven."
"Art in Heaven - is the light a comin, sir?"
"It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name."
"Hallowed be - thy -"
The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!
Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and 
Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly 
compassion, in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.


Chapter 48

Closing In

The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house in 
town is awake. In Lincolnshire, the Dedlocks of the past doze in their 
picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long drawing-room as 
if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town, the Dedlocks of the 
present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through the darkness of the 
night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or hair-powder) on their 
heads, symptomatic of their great humility, loll away the drowsy mornings 
in the little windows of the hall. The fashionable world - tremendous orb, 
nearly five miles round - is in full swing, and the solar system works 
respectfully at its appointed distances.
Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where all the 
senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and refinement, Lady 
Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled and taken, she is never 
absent. Though the belief she of old reposed in herself, as one able to 
reserve whatsoever she would under her mantel of pride, is beaten down; 
though she has no assurance that what she is to those around her, she will 
remain another day; it is not her nature, when envious eyes are looking on, 
to yield or to droop. They say of her, that she has lately grown more 
handsome and more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of her that she's 
beauty nough - tsetup Shopofwomen - but rather larming kind - 
remindingmanfact - inconvenient woman - who will 
getoutofbedandbawthstablishment - Shakespeare.
Mr Tulkinghorn says nothing; looks nothing. Now, as heretofore, he is to be 
found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat loosely twisted into 
its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from the Peerage and making no 
sign. Of all men he is still the last who might be supposed to have any 
influence upon my Lady. Of all women she is still the last who might be 
supposed to have any dread of him.
One thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his 
turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to throw it 
off.
It is morning in the great world; afternoon according to the little sun. 
The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing in the 
hall; and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like overblown 
sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of seed in their 
tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has fallen asleep for 
the good of the country, over the report of a Parliamentary committee. My 
Lady sits in the room in which she gave audience to the young man of the 
name of Guppy. Rosa is with her, and has been writing for her and reading 
to her. Rosa is now at work upon embroidery, or some such pretty thing; and 
as she bends her head over it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the 
first time today.
"Rosa."
The pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious my Lady 
is, looks puzzled and surprised.
"See to the door. Is it shut?"
Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised.
"I am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust your 
attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I will not 
disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in you. Say nothing to any 
one of what passes between us."

The timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be trustworthy.
"Do you know," Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her chair 
nearer; "do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from what I am to 
any one?"
"Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you really 
are."
"You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!"
She says it with a kind of scorn - though not of Rosa - and sits brooding, 
looking dreamily at her.
"Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you suppose 
your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to me, makes it 
any pleasure to me to have you near me?"
"I don't know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my heart, I 
wish it was so."
"It is so, little one."
The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure, by the dark expression 
on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an explanation.
"And if I were to say today, Go! Leave me! I should say what would give me 
great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very solitary."
"My Lady! Have I offended you?"
"In nothing. Come here."
Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady's feet. My Lady, with that 
motherly touch of the famous Ironmaster night, lays her hand upon her dark 
hair, and gently keeps it there.
"I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy, and that I would make you 
so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I can not. There are 
reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part, rendering it 
far better for you that you should not remain here. You must not remain 
here. I have determined that you shall not. I have written to the father of 
your lover, and he will be here today. All this I have done for your sake."
The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses, and says what shall she do, 
what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses her on the 
cheek, and makes no other answer.
"Now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be beloved and happy!"
"Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes thought - forgive my being so free - that 
you are not happy."
"I!"
"Will you be more so, when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think again. 
Let me stay a little while!"
"I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my own. It 
is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now - not what I shall 
be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my confidence. Do so much 
for my sake, and thus all ends between us!"
She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion, and leaves the 
room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the staircase, she 
is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indifferent as if all passion, 
feeling, and interest, had been worn out in the earlier ages of the world, 
and had perished from its surface with its other departed monsters.
Mercury has announced Mr Rouncewell, which is the cause of her appearance. 
Mr Rouncewell is not in the library; but she repairs to the library. Sir 
Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him first.
"Sir Leicester, I am desirous - but you are engaged."
O dear no! Not at all. Only Mr Tulkinghorn.
Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him for a 
moment.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will you allow me to retire?"
With a look that plainly says, "You know you have the power to remain if 
you will," she tells him it is not necessary, and moves towards a chair. Mr 
Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his clumsy bow, and 
retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her and the fading light 
of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls upon her, and he darkens 
all before her. Even so does he darken her life.
It is a dull street under the best conditions; where the two long rows of 
houses stare at each other with that severity, that half a dozen of its 
greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared into stone, rather than 
originally built in that material. It is a street of such dismal grandeur, 
so determined not to condescend to liveliness, that the doors and windows 
hold a gloomy state of their own in black paint and dust, and the echoing 
mews behind have a dry and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to 
stable the stone charges of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work 
entwines itself over the flights of steps in this awful street; and, from 
these petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the 
upstart gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which bold 
boys aspire to throw their friends' caps (its only present use), retains 
its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of departed oil. 
Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals in a little absurd 
glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an oyster, blinks and sulks at 
newer lights every night, like its high and dry master in the House of 
Lords.
Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair, could 
wish to see through the window in which Mr Tulkinghorn stands. And yet - 
and yet - she sends a look in that direction, as if it were her heart's 
desire to have that figure removed out of the way.
Sir Leicester begs his Lady's pardon. She was about to say?
"Only that Mr Rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment), and 
that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am tired to 
death of the matter."
"What can I do - to - assist?" demands Sir Leicester, in some considerable 
doubt.
"Let us see him here, and have done with it. Will you tell them to send him 
up?"
"Mr Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request," says Sir 
Leicester to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business term, 
"request the iron gentleman to walk this way."
Mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces him. 
Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person, graciously.
"I hope you are well, Mr Rouncewell. Be seated. (My solicitor, Mr 
Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr Rouncewell," Sir Leicester 
skillfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, "was desirous to 
speak with you. Hem!"
"I shall be very happy," returns the iron gentleman, "to give my best 
attention to anything Lady Dedlock does me the honour to say."
As he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon him is 
less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant supercilious air 
makes a cold atmosphere about her; and there is nothing in her bearing, as 
there was before, to encourage openness.
"Pray, sir," says Lady Dedlock, listlessly, "may I be allowed to inquire 
whether anything has passed between you and your son, respecting your son's 
fancy?"
It is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look upon him, 
as she asks this question.
"If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I said, when I had the pleasure of 
seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son to conquer that - 
fancy." The ironmaster repeats her expression with a little emphasis.
"And did you?"
"O! of course I did."
Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper. The 
iron gentleman having said that he would do it, was bound to do it. No 
difference in this respect between the base metals and the precious. Highly 
proper.
"And pray has he done so?"
"Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear not. 
Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we sometimes couple an 
intention with our - our fancies, which renders them not altogether easy to 
throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest."
Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish 
meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr Rouncewell is perfectly 
good-humoured and polite; but, within such limits, evidently adapts his 
tone to his reception.
"Because," proceeds my Lady, "I have been thinking of the subject - which 
is tiresome to me."
"I am very sorry, I am sure."
"And also of what Sir Leicester said upon it, in which I quite concur;" Sir 
Leicester flattered: "and if you cannot give us the assurance that this 
fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion that the girl had better 
leave me."
"I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedlock. Nothing of the kind."
"Then she had better go."
"Excuse me, my Lady," Sir Leicester considerately interposes, "but perhaps 
this may be doing an injury to the young woman, which she has not merited. 
Here is a young woman," says Sir Leicester, magnificently laying out the 
matter with his right hand, like a service of plate, "whose good fortune it 
is to have attracted the notice and favour of an eminent lady, and to live, 
under the protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various 
advantages which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very 
great - I believe unquestionably very great, sir - for a young woman in 
that station of life. The question then arises, should that young woman be 
deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune, simply because she 
has;" Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but dignified inclination of his 
head towards the ironmaster, winds up his sentence; "has attracted the 
notice of Mr Rouncewell's son? Now, has she deserved this punishment? Is 
this just towards her? Is this our previous understanding?"
"I beg your pardon," interposes Mr Rouncewell's son's father. "Sir 
Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray 
dismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so 
unimportant - which is not to be expected - you would recollect that my 
first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining here."
Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from consideration? O! Sir Leicester is bound 
to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him through such a 
family, or he really might have mistrusted their report of the iron 
gentleman's observations.
"It is not necessary," observes my Lady, in her coldest manner, before he 
can do anything but breathe amazedly, "to enter into these matters on 
either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever to say 
against her; but she is so far insensible to her many advantages and her 
good fortune, that she is in love - or supposes she is, poor little fool - 
and unable to appreciate them."
Sir Leicester begs to observe, that wholly alters the case. He might have 
been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and reasons in support of her 
view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman had better go.
"As Sir Leicester observed, Mr Rouncewell, on the last occasion, when we 
were fatigued by this business," Lady Dedlock languidly proceeds, "we 
cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under present 
circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here, and had better go. I have 
told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back to the village, or would 
you like to take her with you, or what would you prefer?"
"Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly - "
"By all means."
" - I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of the 
incumbrance, and remove her from her present position."
"And to speak as plainly," she returns, with the same studied carelessness, 
"so should I. Do I understand that you will take her with you?"
The iron gentleman makes an iron bow.
"Sir Leicester, will you ring?" Mr Tulkinghorn steps forward from his 
window and pulls the bell. "I had forgotten you. Thank you." He makes his 
usual bow, and goes quietly back again. Mercury, swift responsive, appears, 
receives instructions whom to produce, skims away, produces the aforesaid, 
and departs.
Rosa has been crying, and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the 
ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with her 
near the door ready to depart.
"You are taken charge of, you see," says my Lady, in her weary manner, "and 
are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a very good 
girl, and you have nothing to cry for."
"She seems after all," observes Mr Tulkinghorn, loitering a little forward 
with his hands behind him, "as if she were crying at going away."
"Why, she is not well-bred, you see," returns Mr Rouncewell with some 
quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer to retort 
upon; "and she is an inexperienced little thing, and knows no better. If 
she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no doubt."
"No doubt," is Mr Tulkinghorn's composed reply.
Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Lady, and that she was 
happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Lady, and that she thanks 
my Lady over and over again. "Out, you silly little puss!" says the 
ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily; "have a 
spirit, if you're fond of Wat!" My Lady merely waves her off with 
indifference, saying, "There, there, child. You are a good girl. Go away!" 
Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the subject, and 
retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr Tulkinghorn, an indistinct 
form against the dark street now dotted with lamps, looms in my lady's 
view, bigger and blacker than before.
"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock," says Mr Rouncewell, after a pause of a 
few moments, "I beg to take my leave, with an apology for having again 
troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome subject. I can 
very well understand, I assure you, how tiresome so small a matter must 
have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of my dealing with it, it is 
only because I did not at first quietly exert my influence to take my young 
friend here away, without troubling you at all. But it appeared to me - I 
dare say magnifying the importance of the thing - that it was respectful to 
explain to you how the matter stood, and candid to consult your wishes and 
convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the polite 
world."
Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these 
remarks. "Mr Rouncewell," he returns, "do not mention it. Justifications 
are unnecessary, I hope, on either side."
"I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; and if I may by way of a last word, 
revert to what I said before of my mother's long connection with the 
family, and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out this 
little instance here on my arm, who shows herself so affectionate and 
faithful in parting, and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done something 
to awaken such feelings - though of course Lady Dedlock, by her heartfelt 
interest and her genial condescension, has done much more!"
If he means this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points it, 
however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of speech, though 
in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim room where my Lady sits. 
Sir Leicester stands to return his parting salutation, Mr Tulkinghorn again 
rings. Mercury takes another flight, and Mr Rouncewell and Rosa leave the 
house.
Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr Tulkinghorn still standing in 
his window with his hands behind him, and my Lady still sitting with his 
figure before her, closing up her view of the night as well as of the day. 
She is very pale. Mr Tulkinghorn observing it as she rises to retire, 
thinks, "Well she may be! The power of this woman is astonishing. She has 
been acting a part the whole time." But he can act a part too - his one 
unchanging character - and as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty 
pairs of eyes, each fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester's pair, should 
find no flaw in him.
Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room today. Sir Leicester is whipped in 
to the rescue of the Doodle Party, and the discomfiture of the Coodle 
Faction. Lady Dedlock asks, on sitting down to dinner, still deadly pale 
(and quite an illustration of the debilitated cousin's text), whether he is 
gone out? Yes. Whether Mr Tulkinghorn is gone yet? No. Presently she asks 
again, is he gone yet? No. What is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing 
letters in the library. Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that.
But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is reported as 
sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive him for a word or 
two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now. He comes now, 
apologising for intruding, even by her permission, while she is at table. 
When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to dispense with such 
mockeries.
"What do you want, sir?"
"Why, Lady Dedlock," says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little distance 
from her, and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up and down, up 
and down; "I am rather surprised by the course you have taken."
"Indeed?"
"Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure from 
our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position, Lady Dedlock. 
I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I don't approve of it."
He stops in his rubbing, and looks at her, with his hands on his knees. 
Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an indefinable 
freedom in his manner, which is new, and which does not escape this woman's 
observation.
"I do not quite understand you."
"O yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock, we must 
not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl."
"Well, sir?"
"And you know - and I know - that you have not sent her away for the 
reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as much as 
possible from - excuse my mentioning it as a matter of business - any 
reproach and exposure that impend over yourself."
"Well, sir?"
"Well, Lady Dedlock," returns the lawyer, crossing his legs, and nursing 
the uppermost knee, "I object to that, I consider that a dangerous 
proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary, and calculated to awaken 
speculation, doubt, rumour, I don't know what, in the house. Besides, it is 
a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly what you were before. 
Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it is to me, that you have been 
this evening very different from what you were before. Why, bless my soul, 
Lady Dedlock, transparently so!"
"If, sir," she begins, "in my knowledge of my secret - " But he interrupts 
her.
"Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of 
business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your secret. 
Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in trust for Sir 
Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady Dedlock, we should 
not be here, holding this conversation."
"That is very true. If, in my knowledge of the secret, I do what I can to 
spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her 
when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney Wold) from the 
taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I have taken. Nothing 
in the world, and no one in the world, could shake it, or could move me." 
This she says with great deliberation and distinctness, and with no more 
outward passion than himself. As for him, he methodically discusses his 
matter of business, as if she were any insensible instrument used in 
business.
"Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock," he returns, "you are not to be 
trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and according to 
the literal fact; and, that being the case, you are not to be trusted."
"Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same point, 
when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?"
"Yes," says Mr Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the hearth. 
"Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred to the girl; 
but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both the letter and the 
spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any action on your part, 
founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt about that. As to sparing 
the girl, of what importance or value is she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is 
a family name compromised. One might have supposed that the course was 
straight on - over everything, neither to the right nor to the left, 
regardless of all considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading 
everything under foot."
She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes, and looks at him. 
There is a stern expression on her face, and a part of her lower lip is 
compressed under her teeth. "This woman understands me," Mr Tulkinghorn 
thinks, as she lets her glance fall again. "She cannot be spared. Why 
should she spare others?"
For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner, but 
has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk it. She 
rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it, shading her 
face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness or excite 
compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. "This woman," thinks Mr 
Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark object closing up her 
view, is a "study."
He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She, too, studies 
something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak; appearing indeed 
so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until midnight, that even he is 
driven upon breaking silence.
"Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview 
remains; but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your sense 
and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring it void, 
and taking my own course."
"I am quite prepared."
Mr Tulkinghorn inclines his head. "That is all I have to trouble you with, 
Lady Dedlock."
She stops him as he is moving out of the room, by asking, "This is the 
notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you."
"Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because the 
contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed. But 
virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely in a 
lawyer's mind."
"You intend to give me no other notice?"
"You are right. No."
"Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester tonight?"
"A home question!" says Mr Tulkinghorn, with a slight smile, and cautiously 
shaking his head at the shaded face. "No, not tonight."
"Tomorrow?"
"All things considered, I had better decline answering that question, Lady 
Dedlock. If I were to say. If I were to say I don't know when, exactly, you 
would not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be tomorrow. I 
would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no expectations 
which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you good evening."
She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks silently 
to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open it.
"Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were writing in 
the library. Are you going to return there?"
"Only for my hat. I am going home."
She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and 
curious; and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch, but is 
inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a splendid clock 
upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not often are, for its 
accuracy. "And what do you say? Mr Tulkinghorn inquires, referring to it. 
"What do you say?"
If it said now, "Don't go home!" What a famous clock, hereafter, if it said 
tonight of all the nights that it has counted off, to this old man of all 
the young and old men who have ever stood before it,. "Don't go home!" With 
its sharp clear bell it strikes three-quarters after seven, and ticks on 
again. "Why, you are worse than I thought you," says Mr Tulkinghorn, 
muttering reproof to his watch. "Two minutes wrong? At this rate you won't 
last my time." What a watch to return good for evil, if it ticked in answer 
"Don't go home!"
He passes out into the streets, and walks on, with his hands behind him, 
under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries, 
difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured up 
within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of the very 
bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraphed family secrets to 
him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to whisper "Don't go home!"
Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar and 
jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing shop-lights 
lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the crowd pressing him 
on; he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and nothing meets him, murmuring 
"Don't go home!" Arrived at last in his dull room, to light his candles, 
and look round and up, and see the Roman pointing from the ceiling, there 
is no new significance in the Roman's hand tonight, or in the flutter of 
the attendant groups to give him the late warning, "Don't come here!"
It is a moonlight night; but the moon, being past the full, is only now 
rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining as they 
shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as he has of late 
been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them. Her soul is turbulent 
within her; she is sick at heart and restless. The large rooms are too 
cramped and close. She cannot endure their restraint, and will walk alone 
in a neighbouring garden.
Too capricious and imperious in all she does, to be the cause of much 
surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman, loosely 
muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with the key. Having 
opened the garden gate, he delivers the key into his Lady's hand at her 
request, and is bidden to go back. She will walk there some time, to ease 
her aching head. She may be an hour; she may be more. She needs no further 
escort. The gate shuts upon its spring with a clash, and, he leaves her 
passing on into the dark shade of some trees.
A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr 
Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar, and in opening and shutting those 
resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He looks up 
casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large moon, what 
multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.
A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and 
stillness seem to proceed from her, that influence even crowded places full 
of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-
summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter 
and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky, with 
the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in 
gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh 
and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring 
weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it 
flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, 
where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from 
these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like 
skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of 
rising grounds, rich in corn-field, windmill and steeple, and where it 
mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the 
deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her 
spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only 
him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some rest. 
Its steeples and towers, and its one great dome, grow more ethereal; its 
smoky house-tops lose their grossness, in the pale effulgence; the noises 
that arise from the streets are fewer and are softened, and the footsteps 
on the pavements pass more tranquilly away. In these fields of Mr 
Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that 
have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until 
they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight 
night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, 
vibrating.
What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?
The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some windows and 
doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a loud report, and 
echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so a man says who was 
passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the neighbourhood, who bark 
vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the road. While the dogs are yet 
barking and howling - there is one dog howling like a demon - the church-
clocks, as if they were startled too, begin to strike. The hum from the 
streets, likewise, seems to swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before 
the last clock begins to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, 
the fine night, the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at 
peace again.
Has Mr Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet, and his 
door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed, to bring him out of his 
shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of him. What power of 
cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man out of his immoveable 
composure?
For many years, the persistent Roman has been pointing with no particular 
meaning from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has any new meaning in 
him tonight. Once pointing, always pointing - like any Roman, or even 
Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt, in his impossible 
attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long. Moonlight, darkness, 
dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly pointing, and no one minds 
him.
But, a little after the coming of the day, come people to clean the rooms, 
And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not expressed before, or 
the foremost of them goes wild; for, looking up at his outstretched hand, 
and looking down at what is below it, that person shrieks and flies. The 
others, looking in as the first one looked, shriek and fly too, and there 
is an alarm in the street.
What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber, and 
people unaccustomed to it, enter, and treading softly, but heavily, carry a 
weight into the bedroom, and lay it down. There is whispering and wondering 
all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing of steps, and 
careful noting of the disposition of every article of furniture. All eyes 
look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, "If he could only tell what he 
saw!"
He is pointing at a table, with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a glass 
upon it, and two candles that were blown out suddenly, soon after being 
lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair, and at a stain upon the ground 
before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These objects lie 
directly within his range. An excited imagination might suppose that there 
was something in them so terrific, as to drive the rest of the composition, 
not only the attendant big-legged boys, but the clouds and flowers and 
pillars too - in short, the very body and soul of Allegory, and all the 
brains it has - stark mad. It happens surely, that every one who comes into 
the darkened room and looks at these things, looks up at the Roman, and 
that he is invested in all eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a 
paralysed dumb witness.
So, it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly 
stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be covered, 
so hard to be got out; and that the Roman, pointing from the ceiling, shall 
point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him, with far greater 
significance than he ever had in Mr Tulkinghorn's time, and with a deadly 
meaning. For, Mr Tulkinghorn's time is over for evermore; and the Roman 
pointed at the murderous hand uplifted against his life, and pointed 
helplessly at him, from night to morning, lying face downward on the floor, 
shot through the heart.


Chapter 49

Dutiful Friendship

A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr Joseph 
Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present bassoon-player. 
An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration of a birthday in the 
family.
It is not Mr Bagnet's birthday. Mr Bagnet merely distinguishes that epoch 
in the musical instrument business, by kissing the children with an extra 
smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after dinner, and 
wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is thinking about it, - 
a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so by his mother having 
departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely revert to their father, 
but seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all 
the stock of filial affection into their mother's name. Mr Bagnet is one of 
these. Perhaps his excited appreciation of the merits of the old girl, 
causes him usually to make the noun-substantive, Goodness, of the feminine 
gender.
It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions are 
kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the bounds of 
happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich's last birthday, Mr Bagnet 
certainly did, after observing upon his growth and general advancement, 
proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on the changes wrought by time, 
to examine him in the catechism; accomplishing with extreme accuracy the 
questions number one and two, What is your name? and who gave you that 
name? but there failing in the exact precision of his memory, and 
substituting for number three, the question And how do you like that name? 
which he propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying 
and improving, as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a 
specialty on that particular birthday, and not a generic solemnity.
It is the old girl's birthday; and that is the greatest holiday and reddest-
letter day in Mr Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is always 
commemorated according to certain forms, settled and prescribed by Mr 
Bagnet some years since. Mr Bagnet being deeply convinced that to have a 
pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest pitch of imperial luxury, 
invariably goes forth himself very early in the morning of this day to buy 
a pair; he is, as invariably taken in by the vendor, and installed in the 
possession of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with 
these triumphs of toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton 
handkerchief (essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites 
Mrs Bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs 
Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying Fowls, Mr Bagnet 
instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment, amidst general 
amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the old girl shall do 
nothing all day long, but sit in her very best gown, and be served by 
himself and the young people. As he is not illustrious for his cookery, 
this may be supposed to be a matter of state rather than enjoyment on the 
old girl's part; but she keeps her state with all imaginable cheerfulness.
On this present birthday, Mr Bagnet has accomplished the usual 
preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry which, if there be 
any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff, to be prepared 
for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by their unlooked-for 
production; he is himself directing the roasting of the poultry; and Mrs 
Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers itching to prevent what she sees 
going wrong, sits in her gown of ceremony, an honoured guest.
Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving as 
beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these young 
scullions Mrs Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake of the head, 
or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.
"At half-after one." Says Mr Bagnet. "To the minute. They'll be done."
Mrs Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a stand-still before the 
fire, and beginning to burn.
"You shall have a dinner, old girl," says Mr Bagnet. "Fit for a queen."
Mrs Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception of her 
son betrays so much uneasiness of spirit, that he is impelled by the 
dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the matter? - thus 
standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the fowls than before, 
and not affording the least hope of a return to consciousness. Fortunately, 
his elder sister perceives the cause of the agitation in Mrs Bagnet's 
breast, and with an admonitory poke recalls him. The stopped fowls going 
round again, Mrs Bagnet closes her eyes, in the intensity of her relief.
"George will look us up," says Mr Bagnet. "At half-after four. To the 
moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This afternoon?"
"Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I begin 
to think. Just about that, and no less," returns Mrs Bagnet, laughing and 
shaking her head.
"Old girl," says Mr Bagnet. "Never mind. You'd be as young as ever you was. 
If you wasn't younger. Which you are. As everybody knows."
Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is sure 
to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it will be.
"Do you know, Lignum," says Mrs Bagnet, casting a glance on the tablecloth, 
and winking "salt!" at Malta with her right eye, and shaking the pepper 
away from Quebec with her head; "I begin to think George is in the roving 
way again."
"George," returns Mr Bagnet, "will never desert. And leave his old comrade. 
In the lurch. Don't be afraid of it."
"No, Lignum. No. I don't say he will. I don't think he will. But if he 
could get over his money-trouble of his, I believe he would be off."
Mr Bagnet asks why?
"Well," returns his wife, considering. "George seems to me to be getting 
not a little impatient and restless. I don't say but what he's as free as 
ever. Of course he must be free, or he wouldn't be George; but he smarts, 
and seems put out."
"He's extra-drilled," says Mr Bagnet. "By a lawyer. Who would put the devil 
out."
"There's something in that," his wife assents; "but so it is, Lignum."
Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity under 
which Mr Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of his mind to 
the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry humour of the fowls in 
not yielding any gravy, and also by the made-gravy acquiring no flavour, 
and turning out of a flaxen complexion. With a similar perverseness, the 
potatoes crumble off forks in the process of peeling, upheaving from their 
centres in every direction, as if they were subject to earthquakes. The 
legs of the fowls, too, are longer than could be desired, and extremely 
scaly. Overcoming these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr Bagnet 
at last dishes, and they sit down at table; Mrs Bagnet occupying the 
guest's place at his right hand.
It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year, for 
two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of finer 
tendon and ligament that it is in the nature of poultry to possess, is 
developed in these specimens in the singular form of guitar-strings. Their 
limbs appear to have struck roots into their breasts and bodies, as aged 
trees strike roots into the earth. Their legs are so hard, as to encourage 
the idea that they must have devoted the greater part of their long and 
arduous lives to pedestrian exercises, and the walking of matches. But Mr 
Bagnet, unconscious of these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs Bagnet 
eating a most severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that 
good old girl would not cause him a moment's disappointment on any day, 
least of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her 
digestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drumsticks without being 
of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to understand.
The old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the 
repast, in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept, and 
the dinner-service washed up and polished in the back yard. The great 
delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply themselves to 
these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of their mother, and 
skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens, inspire the highest 
hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the present. The same causes 
lead to a confusion of tongues, a clattering of crockery, a rattling of tin 
mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an expenditure of water, all in excess; 
while the saturation of the young ladies themselves is almost too moving a 
spectacle for Mrs Bagnet to look upon, with the calmness proper to her 
position. At last the various cleansing processes are triumphantly 
completed; Quebec and Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, 
tobacco, and something to drink, are placed upon the table; and the old 
girl enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this 
delightful entertainment.
When Mr Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very near 
to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr Bagnet announces,
"George! Military time."
It is George; and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl (whom he 
kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for Mr Bagnet. 
"Happy returns to all!" says Mr George.
"But, George, old man?" cries Mrs Bagnet, looking at him curiously. "What's 
come to you?"
"Come to me?"
"Ah! you are so white, George - for you - and look so shocked. Now, don't 
he, Lignum?"
"George," says Mr Bagnet, "tell the old girl. What's the matter."
"I didn't know I looked white," says the trooper, passing his hand over his 
brow, "and I didn't know I looked shocked, and I'm sorry I do. But the 
truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died yesterday afternoon, 
and it has rather knocked me over."
"Poor creetur!" says Mrs Bagnet, with a mother's pity. "Is he gone? Dear, 
dear!"
"I didn't mean to say anything about it, for it's not birthday talk, but 
you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should have roused 
up in a minute," says the trooper, making himself speak more gaily, "but 
you're so quick, Mrs Bagnet."
"You're right. The old girl," says Mr Bagnet. "Is as quick. As powder."
"And what's more, she's the subject of the day, and we'll stick to her," 
cries Mr George. "See here, I have brought a little brooch along with me. 
It's a poor thing, you know, but it's a keepsake. That's all the good it 
is, Mrs Bagnet."
Mr George produces his present, which is greeted with admiring leapings and 
clappings by the young family, and with a species of reverential admiration 
by Mr Bagnet. "Old girl," says Mr Bagnet. "Tell him my opinion of it."
"Why, it's a wonder, George!" Mrs Bagnet exclaims. "It's the beautifullest 
thing that ever was seen!"
"Good!" says Mr Bagnet. "My opinion."
"It's so pretty, George," cries Mrs Bagnet, turning it on all sides, and 
holding it out at arm's length, "that it seems too choice for me."
"Bad!" says Mr Bagnet. "Not my opinion."
"But whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow," says Mrs 
Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure, and her hand stretched out to 
him; "and though I have been a cross-grained soldier's wife to you 
sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in reality, as ever 
can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for good luck, if you will, 
George."
The children close up to see it done, and Mr Bagnet looks over young 
Woolwich's head to see it done, with an interest so maturely wooden, yet so 
pleasantly childish, that Mrs Bagnet cannot help laughing in her airy way, 
and saying, "O, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap you are!" But the 
trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand shakes, he is nervous, and it 
falls off. "Would any one believe this?" says he, catching it as it drops, 
and looking round. "I am so out of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like 
this!"
Mrs Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a pipe; 
and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the trooper to be 
inducted into his usual snug place, and the pipes to be got into action. 
"If that don't bring you round, George," says she, "just throw your eye 
across here at your present now and then, and the two together must do it."
"You ought to do it of yourself," George answers; "I know that very well, 
Mrs Bagnet. I'll tell you how, one way and another, the blues have got to 
be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. 'Twas dull work to see him 
dying as he did, and not be able to help him."
"What do you mean, George? You did help him. You took him under your roof."
"I helped him so far, but that's little. I mean, Mrs Bagnet, there he was, 
dying without ever having been taught much more than to know his right hand 
from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped out of that."
"Ah, poor creetur!" says Mrs Bagnet.
"Then," says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his heavy 
hand over his hair, "that brought up Gridley in a man's mind. His was a bad 
case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up in a man's mind 
with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And to think of that 
rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end in his corner, hard, 
indifferent, taking everything so evenly - it made flesh and blood tingle, 
I do assure you."
"My advice to you," returns Mrs Bagnet, "is to light your pipe, and tingle 
that way. It's wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the health 
altogether."
"You're right," says the trooper, "and I'll do it!"
So, he does it: though still with an indignant gravity that impresses the 
young Bagnets, and even causes Mr Bagnet to defer the ceremony of drinking 
Mrs Bagnet's health; always given by himself, on these occasions, in a 
speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies having composed what Mr 
Bagnet is in the habit of calling "the mixtur," and George's pipe being now 
in a glow, Mr Bagnet considers it his duty to proceed to the toast of the 
evening. He addresses the assembled company in the following terms.
"George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day's march. 
And you won't find such another. Here's towards her!"
The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs Bagnet returns thanks in a 
neat address of corresponding brevity. This model composition is limited to 
the three words "And wishing yours!" which the old girl follows up with a 
nod at everybody in succession, and a well-regulated swig of the mixture. 
This she again follows up, on the present occasion, by the wholly 
unexpected exclamation, "Here's a man!"
Here is a man, much to the astonishment of the little company, looking in 
at the parlour door. He is a sharp-eyed man - a quick keen man - and he 
takes in everybody's look at him, all at once, individually and 
collectively, in a manner that stamps him a remarkable man.
"George," says the man, nodding, "how do you find yourself?"
"Why, it's Bucket!" cries Mr George.
"Yes," says the man, coming in and closing the door. "I was going down the 
street here, when I happened to stop and look in at the musical instruments 
in the shop window - a friend of mine is in wants of a second-hand 
wiolinceller, of a good tone - and I saw a party enjoying themselves, and I 
thought it was you in the corner; I thought I couldn't be mistaken. How 
goes the world with you, George, at the present moment? Pretty smooth? And 
with you, ma'am? And with you, governor? And Lord!" says Mr Bucket, opening 
his arms, "here's children too! You may do anything with me, if you only 
show me children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who your 
father and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!"
Mr Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr George, and taken 
Quebec and Malta on his knees. "You pretty dears," says Mr Bucket, "give us 
another kiss; it's the only thing I'm greedy in. Lord bless you, how 
healthy you look! And what may be the ages of these two, ma'am? I should 
put 'em down at the figures of about eight and ten."
"You're very near, sir," says Mrs Bagnet.
"I generally am near," returns Mr Bucket, "being so fond of children. A 
friend of mine has had nineteen of 'em, ma'am, all by one mother, and she's 
still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much so as yourself, but, 
upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do you call these, my darling?" 
pursues Mr Bucket, pinching Malta's cheek. "These are peaches, these are. 
Bless your heart! And what do you think about father? Do you think father 
could recommend a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr Bucket's 
friend, my dear? My name's Bucket. Ain't that a funny name?"
These blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs Bagnet forgets 
the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr Bucket, and 
waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive so pleasant a 
character under any circumstances, but she tells him that as a friend of 
George's she is particularly glad to see him this evening, for George has 
not been in his usual spirits.
"Not in his usual spirits?" exclaims Mr Bucket. "Why, I never heard of such 
a thing! What's the matter, George? You don't intend to tell me you've been 
out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for? You haven't got 
anything on your mind, you know?"
"Nothing particular," returns the trooper.
"I should think not," rejoins Mr Bucket. "What could you have on your mind, 
you know! And have these pets got anything on their minds, eh? Not they; 
but they'll be upon the minds of some of the young fellows, some of these 
days, and make 'em precious low-spirited. I ain't much of a prophet, but I 
can tell you that, ma'am."
Mrs Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr Bucket has a family of his own.
"There, ma'am," says Mr Bucket. "Would you believe it? No, I haven't. My 
wife, and a lodger, constitute my family. Mrs Bucket is as fond of children 
as myself, and as wishful to have 'em; but no. So it is. Worldly goods are 
divided unequally, and man must not repine. What a very nice back-yard, 
ma'am! Any way out of that yard, now?"
There is no way out of that yard.
"Ain't there really?" says Mr Bucket. "I should have thought there might 
have been. Well, I don't know as I ever saw a back yard that took my fancy 
more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No, I see there's no way 
out. But what a very good-proportioned yard it is!"
Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr Bucket returns to his chair next 
his friend Mr George, and pats Mr George affectionately on the shoulder.
"How are your spirits, now, George?"
"All right now," returns the trooper.
"That's your sort!" says Mr Bucket. "Why should you ever have been 
otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to be 
out of spirits. That ain't a chest to be out of spirits, is it, ma'am? And 
you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George; what could you 
have on your mind!"
Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety of his 
conversational powers, Mr Bucket twice or thrice repeats it to the pipe he 
lights, and with a listening face that is particularly his own. But the sun 
of his sociality soon recovers from this brief eclipse, and shines again.
"And this is brother, is it, my dears?" says Mr Bucket, referring to Quebec 
and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich. "And a nice 
brother he is - half brother I mean to say. For he's too old to be your 
boy, ma'am."
"I can certify at all events, that he is not anybody else's," returns Mrs 
Bagnet, laughing.
"Well, you do surprise me! Yet he's like you, there's no denying. Lord, 
he's wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the brow, you know, 
there his father comes out!" Mr Bucket compares the faces with one eye shut 
up, while Mr Bagnet smokes in stolid satisfaction.
This is an opportunity for Mrs Bagnet to inform him, that the boy is 
George's godson.
"George's godson, is he?" rejoins Mr Bucket, with extreme cordiality. I 
must shake hands over again with George's godson. Godfather and godson do 
credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of him, ma'am? Does 
he show any turn for any musical instrument?"
Mr Bagnet suddenly interposes, "Plays the Fife. Beautiful."
"Would you believe it, governor," says Mr Bucket, struck by the 
coincidence, "that when I was a boy I played the fife myself? Not in a 
scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you! British 
Grenadiers - there's a tune to warm an Englishman up? Could you give us 
British Grenadiers, my fine fellow?"
Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call upon 
young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs the stirring 
melody: during which performance Mr Bucket, much enlivened, beats time, and 
never fails to come in sharp with the burden, "British Gra-a-anadeers!" In 
short, he shows so much musical taste, that Mr Bagnet actually takes his 
pipe from his lips to express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr Bucket 
receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly: confessing how that he did 
once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, 
and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends: that he is asked 
to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies, 
and gives them "Believe me if all those endearing young charms." This 
ballad, he informs Mrs Bagnet, he considers to have been his most powerful 
ally in moving the heart of Mrs Bucket when a maiden, and inducing her to 
approach the altar - Mr Bucket's own words are, to come up to the scratch.
This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the evening, 
that Mr George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure on his 
entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of him. He is so 
friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to get on with, that 
it is something to have made him known there. Mr Bagnet becomes, after 
another pipe, so sensible of the value of his acquaintance, that he 
solicits the honour of his company on the old girl's next birthday. If 
anything can more closely cement and consolidate the esteem which Mr Bucket 
has formed for the family, it is the discovery of the nature of the 
occasion. He drinks to Mrs Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, 
engages himself for that day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a 
memorandum of the day in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and 
breathes a hope that Mrs Bucket and Mrs Bagnet may before then become, in a 
manner, sisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private 
ties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that sphere 
that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the confines of 
domestic bliss.
It is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn, should 
remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an 
acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the subject 
of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits to walk home 
with him. He is interested in his very boots; and observes even them 
attentively, as Mr George sits smoking cross-legged in the chimney corner.
At length, Mr George rises to depart. At the same moment Mr Bucket, with 
the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the children 
to the last, and remembers the commission he has undertaken for an absent 
friend.
"Respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor - could you recommend 
me such a thing?"
"Scores," says Mr Bagnet.
"I am obliged to you," returns Mr Bucket, squeezing his hand. "You're a 
friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a regular dab at it. 
Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel, and the rest of the big-wigs, like 
a thorough workman. And you needn't," says Mr Bucket, in a considerate and 
private voice, "you needn't commit yourself to too low a figure, governor. 
I don't want to pay too large a price for my friend; but I want you to have 
your proper percentage, and be remunerated for your loss of time. That is 
but fair. Every man must live, and ought to it."
Mr Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl, to the effect that they have 
found a jewel of price.
"Suppose I was to give you a look in, say at half-arter ten tomorrow 
morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few wiolincellers of a 
good tone?" says Mr Bucket.
Nothing easier. Mr and Mrs Bagnet both engage to have the requisite 
information ready, and even hint to each other at the practicability of 
having a small stock collected there for approval.
"Thank you," says Mr Bucket, "thank you. Good night, ma'am. Good night, 
governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for one of the 
pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life."
They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he has 
given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions of good-
will on both sides. "Now, George, old boy," says Mr Bucket, taking his arm 
at the shop door, "come along.'" As they go down the little street, and the 
Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them, Mrs Bagnet remarks to the 
worthy Lignum that Mr Bucket "almost clings to George like, and seems to be 
really fond of him."
The neighbouring streets being narrow and ill paved, it is a little 
inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr George therefore 
soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr Bucket, who cannot make up his mind to 
relinquish his friendly hold, replies. "Wait half a minute, George. I 
should wish to speak to you first." Immediately afterwards, he twists him 
into a public-house and into a parlour, where he confronts him, and claps 
his own back against the door.
"Now, George," says Mr Bucket. "Duty is duty, and friendship is friendship. 
I never want the two to clash, if I can help it. I have endeavoured to make 
things pleasant tonight, and I put it to you whether I have done it or not. 
You must consider yourself in custody, George."
"Custody? What for?" returns the trooper, thunderstruck.
"Now, George," says Mr Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case upon him 
with his fat forefinger, "duty, as you know very well, is one thing, and 
conversation is another. It's my duty to inform you that any observations 
you may make will be liable to be used against you. Therefore, George, be 
careful what you say. You don't happen to have heard of a murder!"
"Murder!"
"Now, George," says Mr Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an impressive 
state of action, "bear in mind what I've said to you. I ask you nothing. 
You've been in low spirits this afternoon. I say, you don't happen to have 
heard of a murder."
"No. Where has there been a murder?"
"Now, George," says Mr Bucket, "don't you go and commit yourself. I'm a 
going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields - gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was shot last night. 
I want you for that."
The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out upon 
his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face,
"Bucket! It's not possible that Mr Tulkinghorn has been killed and that you 
suspect me?"
"George," returns Mr Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, "it is certainly 
possible, because it's the case. This deed was done last night at ten 
o'clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten o'clock, and you'll 
be able to prove it no doubt."
"Last night! Last night?" repeats the trooper, thoughtfully. Then it 
flashes upon him. "Why, great Heaven, I was there last night!"
"So I have understood, George," returns Mr Bucket, with great deliberation. 
"So I have understood. Likewise you've been very often there. You've been 
seen hanging about the place, and you've been heard more than once in a 
wrangle with him, and it's possible - I don't say it's certainly so, mind 
you, but it's possible - that he may have been heard to call you a 
threatening, murdering, dangerous fellow."
The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all, if he could speak.
"Now, George," continues Mr Bucket, putting his hat upon the table, with an 
air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise, "My wish is, 
as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant. I tell you plainly 
there's a reward out, of a hundred guineas, offered by Sir Leicester 
Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always been pleasant together; but I have 
got a duty to discharge; and if that hundred guineas is to be made, it may 
as well be made by me as by another man. On all of which accounts, I should 
hope it was clear to you that I must have you, and that I'm damned if I 
don't have you. Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?"
Mr George has recovered himself, and stands up like a soldier. "Come," he 
says; "I am ready."
"George," continues Mr Bucket, "wait a bit!" With his upholsterer manner, 
as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes from his pocket a 
pair of handcuffs. "This is a serious charge, George, and such is my duty."
The trooper flushes angrily, and hesitates a moment; but holds out his two 
hands, clasped together, and says, "There! Put them on!"
Mr Bucket adjusts them in a moment. "How do you find them? Are they 
comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as is 
consistent with my duty, and I've got another pair in my pocket." This 
remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman, anxious to execute an 
order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his customer. "They'll do 
as they are? Very well! Now, you see George;" he takes a cloak from a 
corner, and begins adjusting it about the trooper's neck; "I was mindful of 
your feelings when I come out, and brought this on purpose. There! Who's 
the wiser?"
"Only I," returns the trooper; "but as I know it, do me one more good turn, 
and pull my hat over my eyes."
"Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain't it a pity? It looks so."
"I can't look chance men in the face with these things on," Mr George 
hurriedly replies. "Do for God's sake, pull my hat forward."
So strongly entreated, Mr Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and 
conducts his prize into the streets; the trooper marching on as steadily as 
usual, though with his head less erect; and Mr Bucket steering him with his 
elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.


Chapter 50

Esther's Narrative

It happened that when I came home from Deal, I found a note from Caddy 
Jellyby (as well always continued to call her), informing me that her 
health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse, and that she 
would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to see her. It was 
a note of a few lines, written from the couch on which she lay, and 
inclosed to me in another from her husband, in which he seconded her 
entreaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now the mother, and I the 
godmother, of such a poor little baby - such a tiny old-faced mite, with a 
countenance that seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a 
little lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin. It would 
lie in this attitude all day, with its bright specks of eyes open, 
wondering (as I used to imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. 
Whenever it was moved it cried; but at all other times it was so patient, 
that the sole desire of its life appeared to be, to lie quiet and think. It 
had curious little dark veins in its face, and curious little dark marks 
under its eyes, like faint remembrances of poor Caddy's inky days; and 
altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous little 
sight.
But it was enough for Caddy that she was used to it. The projects with 
which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther's education, and little 
Esther's marriage, and even for her own old age, as the grandmother of 
little Esther's little Esthers, were so prettily expressive of devotion to 
this pride of her life, that I should be tempted to recall some of them, 
but for the timely remembrance that I am getting on irregularly as it is.
To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me, which had been 
strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago, when she had lain 
asleep with her head in my lap. She almost - I think I must say quite - 
believed that I did her good whenever I was near her. Now, although this 
was such a fancy of the affectionate girl's that I am almost ashamed to 
mention it, still it might have all the force of a fact when she was really 
ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my Guardian's consent, post-haste; 
and she and Prince made so much of me, that there never was anything like 
it.
Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It was a 
very easy journey; for I had only to rise a little earlier in the morning, 
and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters before leaving 
home. But when I had made these three visits, my Guardian said to me, on my 
return at night:
"Now, little woman, little woman, this will never do. Constant dropping 
will wear away a stone, and constant coaching will wear out a Dame Durden. 
We will go to London for a while, and take possession of our old lodgings."
"Not for me, dear Guardian," said I, "for I never feel tired;" which was 
strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request.
"For me then," returned my Guardian; "or for Ada, or for both of us. It is 
somebody's birthday tomorrow, I think."
"Truly I think it is," said I, kissing my darling, who would be twenty-one 
tomorrow.
"Well," observed my Guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously, "that's a 
great occasion, and will give my fair cousin some necessary business to 
transact in assertion of her independence, and will make London a more 
convenient place for all of us. So to London we will go. That being 
settled, there is another thing - how have you left Caddy?"
"Very unwell, Guardian. I fear it will be some time before she regains her 
health and strength."
"What do you call some time, now?" asked my Guardian, thoughtfully.
"Some weeks, I am afraid."
"Ah!" He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets, 
showing that he had been thinking as much. "Now what do you say about her 
doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?"
I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary; but that 
Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his opinion to 
be confirmed by some one.
"Well, you know," returned my Guardian quickly, "there's Woodcourt."
I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment, all 
that I had had in my mind in connection with Mr Woodcourt seemed to come 
back and confuse me.
"You don't object to him, little woman?"
"Object to him, Guardian? Oh no!"
"And you don't think the patient would object to him?"
So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a great 
reliance on him, and to like him very much. I said that he was no stranger 
to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind attendance on 
Miss Flite.
"Very good," said my Guardian. "He has been here today, my dear, and I will 
see him about it tomorrow."
I felt, in this short conversation - though I did not know how, for she was 
quiet, and we interchanged no look - that my dear girl well remembered how 
merrily she had clasped me round the waist, when no other hands than 
Caddy's had brought me the little parting token. This caused me to feel 
that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that I was going to be the 
mistress of Bleak House; and that if I avoided that disclosure any longer, 
I might become less worthy in my own eyes of its master's love. Therefore, 
when we went upstairs and had waited listening until the clock struck 
twelve, in order that only I might be the first to wish my darling all good 
wishes on her birthday, and to take her to my heart, I set before her, just 
as I had set before myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John, and 
the happy life that was in store for me. If ever my darling were fonder of 
me at one time than at another in all our intercourse, she was surely 
fondest of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it, and so 
comforted by the sense of having done right, in casting this last idle 
reservation away, that I was ten times happier than I had been before. I 
had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago; but now that it was 
gone, I felt as if I understood its nature better.
Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in half an 
hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone away. Mr 
Woodcourt dined with us, to celebrate my darling's birthday; and we were as 
pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us that Richard's 
absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that day I was for some 
weeks - eight or nine as I remember - very much with Caddy; and thus it 
fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than any other since we had 
first come together, except the time of my own illness. She often came to 
Caddy's; but our function there was to amuse and cheer her, and we did not 
talk in our usual confidential manner. Whenever I went home at night, we 
were together; but Caddy's rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to 
nurse her.
With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love, and her home 
to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying, so 
uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid of giving 
trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her husband and the 
comforts of old Mr Turveydrop; I had never known the best of her until now. 
And it seemed so curious that her pale face and helpless figure should be 
lying there day after day, where dancing was the business of life; where 
the kit and the apprentices began early every morning in the ball-room, and 
where the untidy little boy waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the 
afternoon.
At Caddy's request, I took the supreme direction of her apartment, trimmed 
it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more airy and more 
cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every day, when we were in 
our neatest array, I used to lay my small small namesake in her arms, and 
sit down to chat or work, or read to her. It was at one of the first of 
these quiet times that I told Caddy about Bleak House.
We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all, we had Prince, who in his 
hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit softly down, 
with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very little child. Whatever 
Caddy's condition really was, she never failed to declare to Prince that 
she was all but well - which I, Heaven forgive me, never failed to confirm. 
This would put Prince in such good spirits, that he would sometimes take 
the kit from his pocket and play a chord or two to astonish the baby - 
which I never knew it to do in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never 
noticed it at all.
Then there was Mrs Jellyby. She would come occasionally with her usual 
distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her grandchild, as 
if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan on its native 
shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as untidy, she would say, 
"Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do today?" And then would sit amiably 
smiling, and taking no notice of the reply; or would sweetly glide off into 
a calculation of the number of letters she had lately received and 
answered, or of the coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would 
always do with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to 
be disguised.
Then there was old Mr Turveydrop, who was from morning to night and from 
night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the baby cried, 
it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him uncomfortable. If the 
fire wanted stirring in the night, it was surreptitiously done lest his 
rest should be broken. If Caddy required any little comfort that the house 
contained, she first carefully discussed whether he was likely to require 
it, too. In return for this consideration, he would come into the room once 
a day, all but blessing it - showing a condescension, and a patronage, and 
a grace of manner, in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered presence, 
from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known better) to have 
been the benefactor of Caddy's life.
"My Caroline" he would say, making the nearest approach that he could to 
bending over her. "Tell me that you are better today."
"O much better, thank you, Mr Turveydrop," Caddy would reply.
"Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not quite 
prostrated by fatigue?" Here he would crease up his eyelids, and kiss his 
fingers to me; though I am happy to say he had ceased to be particular in 
his attentions, since I had been so altered.
"Not at all," I would assure him.
"Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson. We must 
spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My dear 
Caroline;" he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite generosity 
and protection; "want for nothing, my love. Frame a wish and gratify it, my 
daughter. Everything this house contains, everything my room contains, is 
at your service, my dear. Do not," he would sometimes add, in a burst of 
Deportment, "even allow my simple requirements to be considered, if they 
should at any time interfere with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities 
are greater than mine."
He had established such a long prescriptive right to this Deportment (his 
son's inheritance from his mother), that I several times knew both Caddy 
and her husband to be melted to tears by these affectionate self-
sacrifices.
"Nay, my dears," he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy's thin arm 
about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though not by the 
same process; "Nay, nay! I have promised never to leave ye. Be dutiful and 
affectionate towards me, and I ask no other return. Now, bless ye! I am 
going to the Park."
He would take the air there, presently, and get an appetite for his hotel 
dinner. I hope I do old Mr Turveydrop no wrong; but I never saw any better 
traits in him than these I faithfully record, except that he certainly 
conceived a liking for Peepy, and would take the child out walking with 
great pomp - always, on those occasions, sending him home before he went to 
dinner himself, and occasionally with a halfpenny in his pocket. But, even 
this disinterestedness was attended with no inconsiderable cost, to my 
knowledge; for before Peepy was sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand 
with the professor of Deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the 
expense of Caddy and her husband, from top to toe.
Last of our visitors, there was Mr Jellyby. Really when he used to come in 
of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she was, and then sit 
down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt to say anything 
more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling about, doing any 
little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as if with an intention 
of helping by a great exertion; but he never got any further. His sole 
occupation was to sit with his head against the wall, looking hard at the 
thoughtful baby; and I could not quite divest my mind of a fancy that they 
understood one another.
I have not counted Mr Woodcourt among our visitors, because he was now 
Caddy's regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his care; but he 
was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he took, that it is 
not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal of Mr Woodcourt during 
this time, though not so much as might be supposed; for, knowing Caddy to 
be safe in his hands, I often slipped home at about the hours when he was 
expected. We frequently met, notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to 
myself now; but I still felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he 
still was sorry for me I believed. He helped Mr Badger in his professional 
engagements, which were numerous; and had as yet no settled projects for 
the future.
It was when Caddy began to recover, that I began to notice a change in my 
dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me; because I 
observed it in many slight particulars, which were nothing in themselves, 
and only became something when they were pieced together. But I made it 
out, by putting them together, that Ada was not so frankly cheerful with me 
as she used to be. Her tenderness for me was as loving and true as ever; I 
did not for a moment doubt that; but there was a quiet sorrow about her 
which she did not confide to me, and in which I traced some hidden regret.
Now I could not understand this; and I was so anxious for the happiness of 
my own pet, that it caused me some uneasiness, and set me thinking often. 
At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this something from me, lest it 
should make me unhappy too, it came into my head that she was a little 
grieved - for me - by what I had told her about Bleak House.
How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don't know. I had no idea 
that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not grieved for 
myself; I was quite contented and quite happy. Still, that Ada might be 
thinking - for me, though I had abandoned all such thoughts - of what once 
was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy to believe, that I believed 
it.
What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show her 
that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and busy as 
possible; and that, I had tried to be all along. However, as Caddy's 
illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home duties - 
though I had always been there in the morning to make my Guardian's 
breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed, and said there must be two 
little women, for his little woman was never missing - I resolved to be 
doubly diligent and gay. So I went about the house, humming all the tunes I 
knew; and I sat working and working in a desperate manner, and I talked and 
talked, morning noon and night.
And still there was the same shade between me and my darling.
"So, Dame Trot," observed my Guardian shutting up his book, one night when 
we were all three together; "so, Woodcourt has restored Caddy Jellyby to 
the full enjoyment of life again?"
"Yes, I said; "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers, is to be made 
rich, Guardian."
"I wish it was," he returned, "with all my heart."
So did I too, for that matter. I said so.
"Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew, if we knew how. Would we not, 
little woman?"
I laughed as I worked, and replied that I was not sure about that, for it 
might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be many who 
could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herself, and many others.
"True," said my Guardian. "I had forgotten that. But we would agree to make 
him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with tolerable 
peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home, and his own 
household gods - and household goddess too, perhaps?"
That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that.
"To be sure," said my Guardian. "All of us. I have a great regard for 
Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him delicately 
about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an independent man, with 
that just kind of pride which he possesses. And yet I would be glad to do 
it if I might, or if I knew how. He seems half inclined for another voyage. 
But that appears like casting such a man away."
"It might open a new world to him," said I.
"So it might little woman," my Guardian assented. "I doubt if he expects 
much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he sometimes feels 
some particular disappointment, or misfortune, encountered in it. You never 
heard of anything of that sort?"
I shook my head.
"Humph," said my Guardian. "I am mistaken, I dare say."
As there was a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl's 
satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked which 
was a favourite with my Guardian.
"And do you think Mr Woodcourt will make another voyage?" I asked him, when 
I had hummed it quietly all through.
"I don't quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was likely 
at present that he will give a long trial to another country."
"I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him wherever 
he goes," said I; "and though they are not riches, he will never be the 
poorer for them, Guardian, at least."
"Never, little woman," he replied.
I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my Guardian's chair. 
That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was now. I 
looked up at Ada, who was sitting opposite; and I saw, as she looked at me, 
that her eyes were filled with tears, and that tears were falling down her 
face. I felt that I had only to be placid and merry once for all to 
undeceive my dear, and set her loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I 
had nothing to do but to be myself.
So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder - how little thinking what 
was heavy on her mind! - and I said she was not quite well, and put my arm 
about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own room, and when 
she might perhaps have told me what I was so unprepared to hear, I gave her 
no encouragement to confide in me; I never thought she stood in need of it.
"O my dear good Esther," said Ada, "if I could only make up my mind to 
speak to you and my cousin John, when you are together!"
"Why, my love!" I remonstrated. "Ada? why should you not speak to us!"
Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart.
"You surely don't forget, my beauty," said I, smiling, "what quiet old-
fashioned people we are, and how I have settled down to be the discreetest 
of dames? You don't forget how happily and peacefully my life is all marked 
out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you don't forget by what a noble 
character, Ada. That can never be."
"No, never, Esther."
"Why, then, my dear," said I, "there can be nothing amiss - and why should 
you not speak to us!"
"Nothing amiss, Esther?" returned Ada. "O when I think of all these years, 
and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old relations among us, 
and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!"
I looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to answer, 
otherwise than by cheering her; and so I turned off into many little 
recollections of our life together, and prevented her from saying more. 
When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned to my Guardian to 
say good night; and then I came back to Ada, and sat near her for a little 
while.
She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a little 
changed. I had thought so, more than once lately. I could not decide, even 
looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was changed; but 
something in the familiar beauty of her face looked different to me. My 
Guardian's old hopes of her and Richard arose sorrowfully in my mind, and I 
said to myself, "she has been anxious about him," and I wondered how that 
love would end.
When I had come home from Caddy's while she was ill, I had often found Ada 
at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had never known what 
it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her, which was not quite 
closed. I did not open the drawer; but I still rather wondered what the 
work could be, for it was evidently nothing for herself.
And I noticed as I kissed my dear, that she lay with one hand under her 
pillow so that it was hidden.
How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me. How much less 
amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own 
cheerfulness and contentment, as to think that it only rested with me to 
put my dear girl right, and set her mind at peace!
But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next day, 
to find that there was still the same shade between me and my darling.


Chapter 51

Enlightened

When Mr Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to Mr 
Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For he never once, from the moment when I 
entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his promise. 
He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred trust, and he was 
ever true to it in that spirit.
He found Mr Vholes in his office, and informed Mr Vholes of his agreement 
with Richard, that he should call there to learn his address.
"Just so, sir," said Mr Vholes. "Mr C's address is not a hundred miles from 
here, sir, Mr C's address is not a hundred miles from here. Would you take 
a seat, sir."
Mr Woodcourt thanked Mr Vholes, but he had no business with him beyond what 
he had mentioned.
"Just so, sir. I believe, sir," said Mr Vholes, still quietly insisting on 
the seat by not giving the address, "that you have influence with Mr C. 
Indeed I am aware that you have."
"I was not aware of it myself," returned Mr Woodcourt; "but I suppose you 
know best."
"Sir," rejoined Mr Vholes, self-contained, as usual, voice and all, "it is 
a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of my 
professional duty, to study and to understand a gentleman who confides his 
interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be wanting, sir, if I 
know it. I may, with the best intentions, be wanting in it without knowing 
it; but not if I know it, sir."
Mr Woodcourt again mentioned the address.
"Give me leave, sir," said Mr Vholes. "Bear with me for a moment. Sir, Mr C 
is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play without - need I say 
what?"
"Money, I presume?"
"Sir," said Mr Vholes, "to be honest with you (honesty being my golden 
rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I generally lose), 
money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr C's game I express to 
you no opinion, no opinion. It might be highly impolitic in Mr C, after 
playing so long and so high, to leave off; it might be the reverse. I say 
nothing. No, sir," said Mr Vholes, bringing his hand flat down upon his 
desk, in a positive manner, "nothing."
"You seem to forget," returned Mr Woodcourt, "that I ask you to say 
nothing, and have no interest in anything you say."
"Pardon me, sir?" retorted Mr Vholes, "you do yourself an injustice. No, 
sir! Pardon me! You shall not - shall not in my office, if I know it - do 
yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in everything, 
that relates to your friend. I know human nature much better, sir, than to 
admit for an instant that a gentleman of your appearance is not interested 
in whatever concerns his friend."
"Well," replied Mr Woodcourt, "that may be. I am particularly interested in 
his address."
("The number, sir,") said Mr Vholes, parenthetically, ("I believe I have 
already mentioned.) If Mr C is to continue to play for this considerable 
stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are funds in hand at 
present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. But, for the onward 
play, more funds must be provided; unless Mr C is to throw away what he has 
already ventured - which is wholly and solely a point for his 
consideration. This, sir, I take the opportunity of stating openly to you, 
as the friend of Mr C. Without funds, I shall always be happy to appear and 
act for Mr C, to the extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out 
of the estate: not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without 
wronging some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls; or my venerable 
father, who is entirely dependent on me - in the Vale of Taunton; or some 
one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly if you 
please) to wrong no one."
Mr Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it.
"I wish, sir," said Mr Vholes, "to leave a good name behind me. Therefore, 
I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of Mr C, how Mr C is 
situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire. If I 
undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I do it, and I earn what I get. 
I am here for that purpose. My name is painted on the door outside, with 
that object."
"And Mr Carstone's address, Mr Vholes?"
"Sir," returned Mr Vholes, "as I believe I have already mentioned, it is 
next door. On the second story you will find Mr C's apartments. Mr C 
desires to be near his professional adviser; and I am far from objecting, 
for I court inquiry."
Upon this, Mr Woodcourt wished Mr Vholes good day, and went in search of 
Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now but too 
well.
He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished; much as I had found him in 
his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was not writing, 
but was sitting with a book before him, from which his eyes and thoughts 
were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing open, Mr Woodcourt was 
in his presence for some moments without being perceived; and he told me 
that he never could forget the haggardness of his face, and the dejection 
of his manner, before he was aroused from his dream.
"Woodcourt, my dear fellow!" cried Richard, starting up with extended 
hands, "you come upon my vision like a ghost."
"A friendly one," he replied, "and only waiting, as they say ghosts do, to 
be addressed. How does the mortal world go?" They were seated now, near 
together.
"Badly enough, and slowly enough," said Richard; "speaking at least for my 
part of it."
"What part is that?"
"The Chancery part."
"I never heard," returned Mr Woodcourt, shaking his head, "of its going 
well yet."
"Nor I," said Richard, moodily. "Who ever did?"
He brightened again in a moment, and said, with his natural openness:
"Woodcourt, I should be sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained 
by it in your estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long 
time. I have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable 
of nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out of 
the net into which my destiny has worked me; but I think not, though I dare 
say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard, a very different 
opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid I have wanted an 
object; but I have an object now - or it has me - and it is too late to 
discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of me."
"A bargain," said Mr Woodcourt. "Do as much by me in return."
"Oh! You," returned Richard, "you can pursue your art for its own sake; and 
can put your hand upon the plough, and never turn; and can strike a purpose 
out of anything. You, and I, are very different creatures."
He spoke regretfully, and lapsed for a moment into his weary condition.
"Well, well!" he cried, shaking it off, "everything has an end. We shall 
see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?"
"Ay! indeed I will." They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in deep 
earnestness. I can answer, for one of them, with my heart of hearts.
"You come as a godsend," said Richard, "for I have seen nobody here yet but 
Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to mention, for once 
and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You can hardly make the best 
of me if I don't. You know, I dare say, that I have an attachment to my 
cousin Ada?"
Mr Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him.
"Now pray," returned Richard, "don't think me a heap of selfishness. Don't 
suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over this 
miserable Chancery suit, for my own rights and interests alone. Ada's are 
bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works for both of us. 
Do think of that!"
He was so very solicitous on this head, that Mr Woodcourt gave him the 
strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.
"You see," said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of lingering 
on the point, though it was offhand and unstudied, "to an upright fellow 
like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I cannot bear the 
thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see Ada righted, 
Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to right her, as well 
as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to extricate her, as well 
as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!"
Afterwards, when Mr Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he was so 
very much impressed by the strength of Richard's anxiety on this point, 
that in telling me generally of his first visit to Symond's Inn, he 
particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had had before, that my 
dear girl's little property would be absorbed by Mr Vholes, and that 
Richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this. It was just as 
I began to take care of Caddy, that the interview took place; and I now 
return to the time when Caddy had recovered, and the shade was still 
between me and my darling.
I proposed to Ada, that morning, that we should go and see Richard. It a 
little surprised me to find that she hesitated, and was not so radiantly 
willing as I had expected.
"My dear," said I, "you have not had any difference with Richard since I 
have been so much away?"
"No, Esther."
"Not heard of him perhaps?" said I.
"Yes, I have heard of him," said Ada.
Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make my 
darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself, I said? No, Ada thought I 
had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada thought she had 
better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go now. Well, I could not 
understand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love in her face!
We were soon equipped, and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of 
chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days when 
everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the dust rose 
at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise about itself, 
or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place 
in the rugged streets; and I thought there were more funerals passing along 
the dismal pavements, than I had ever seen before.
We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were going to inquire in a shop, 
when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. "We are not likely to 
be far out, my love, if we go in that direction," said I. So to Chancery 
Lane we went; and there, sure enough, we saw it written up. Symond's Inn.
We had next to find out the number. "Or Mr Vholes's office will do," I 
recollected, "for Mr Vholes's office is next door." Upon which Ada said, 
perhaps that was Mr Vholes's office in the corner there. And it really was.
Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was for going to the 
one, and my darling was for going to the other; and my darling was right 
again. So, up we went to the second story, where we came to Richard's name 
in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.
I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the handle 
and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table covered with dusty 
bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own 
mind. Wherever I looked, I saw the ominous words that ran in it, repeated. 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. "If you had come a 
little earlier," he said, "you would have found Woodcourt here. There never 
was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to look in between 
whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do would be thinking about 
not being able to come. And he is so cheery, so fresh, so sensible, so 
earnest, so - everything that I am not, that the place brightens whenever 
he comes, and darkens whenever he goes again."
"God bless him," I thought, "for his truth to me!"
"He is not so sanguine, Ada," continued Richard, casting his dejected look 
over the bundles of papers, "as Vholes and I are usually; but he is only an 
outsider, and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into them, and he has 
not. He can't be expected to know much of such a labyrinth."
As his look wandered over the papers again, and he passed his two hands 
over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes appeared, how 
dry his lips were, and how his fingernails were all bitten away.
"Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?" said I.
"Why, my dear Minerva," answered Richard, with his old gay laugh, "it is 
neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines here, you may 
lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in an open spot. But 
it's well enough for the time. It's near the offices, and near Vholes."
"Perhaps," I hinted, "a change from both - "
" - Might do me good?" said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the 
sentence. "I shouldn't wonder! But it can only come in one way now - in one 
of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or 
the suitor. But it shall be the suit, the suit, my dear girl!"
These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to him. 
Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not see it.
"We are doing very well," pursued Richard. "Vholes will tell you so. We are 
really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest. Vholes knows 
all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them everywhere. We have 
astonished them already. We shall rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my 
words!"
His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his despondency; it 
was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to 
be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and 
unsustainable, that it had long touched me to the heart. But the commentary 
upon it now indelibly written in his handsome face, made it far more 
distressing than it used to be. I say indelibly; for I felt persuaded that 
if the fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his 
brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, 
self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him, would have 
remained upon his features to the hour of his death.
"The sight of our dear little woman," said Richard: Ada still remaining 
silent and quiet: "is so natural to me, and her compassionate face is so 
like the face of old days - "
Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.
" - So exactly like the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial 
voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever 
changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a little; 
that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I - don't quite 
despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently, 
and walking across the room, "so tired!"
He took a few turns up and down, and sunk upon the sofa. "I get," he 
repeated gloomily, "so tired. It is such weary, weary work!"
He was leaning on his arm, saying these words in a meditative voice, and 
looking at the ground, when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, kneeled 
down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on his head, 
clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me. O, what a 
loving and devoted face I saw!
"Esther, dear," she said very quietly, "I am not going home again.
A light shone in upon me all at once.
"Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have been 
married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I shall never 
go home any more!" With those words my darling drew his head down on her 
breast, and held it there. And if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing 
but death could change, I saw it then before me.
"Speak to Esther, my dearest," said Richard, breaking the silence 
presently. "Tell her how it was."
I met her before she could come to me, and folded her in my arms. We 
neither of us spoke; but with her cheek against my own, I wanted to hear 
nothing. "My pet," said I. "My love. My poor, poor girl!" I pitied her so 
much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that I had upon me was to 
pity her so much.
"Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?"
"My dear," said I, "to doubt it for a moment, is to do him a great wrong. 
And as to me!" - why, as to me, what had I to forgive!
I dried my sobbing darling's eyes, and sat beside her on the sofa, and 
Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so different 
night when they had first taken me into their confidence, and had gone on 
in their own wild happy way, they told me between them how it was.
"All I had, was Richard's," Ada said; "and Richard would not take it, 
Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!"
"And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame Durden," said 
Richard, "that how could we speak to you at such a time! And besides, it 
was not a long-considered step. We went out one morning and were married."
"And when it was done, Esther," said my darling, "I was always thinking how 
to tell you, and what to do for the best. And sometimes I thought you ought 
to know it directly; and sometimes I thought you ought not to know it and 
keep it from my cousin John; and I could not tell what to do, and I fretted 
very much."
How selfish I must have been, not to have thought of this before! I don't 
know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of them, and so 
glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much, and yet I felt a 
kind of pride in their loving one another. I never had experienced such 
painful and pleasurable emotion at one time; and in my own heart I did not 
know which predominated. But I was not there to darken their way; I did not 
do that.
When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her wedding ring 
from her bosom, and kissed it and put it on. Then I remembered last night, 
and told Richard that ever since her marriage she had worn it at night when 
there was no one to see. Then Ada blushingly asked me how did I know that, 
my dear? Then I told Ada how I had seen her hand concealed under her 
pillow, and had little thought why, my dear. Then they began telling me how 
it was, all over again; and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish 
again, and to hide my plain old face as much as I could, lest I should put 
them out of heart.
Thus the time went on, until it became necessary for me to think of 
returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then my 
darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me by every 
dear name she could think of, and saying what should she do without me! Nor 
was Richard much better; and as for me I should have been the worst of the 
three, if I had not severely said to myself, "Now, Esther, if you do, I'll 
never speak to you again!"
"Why, I declare," said I, "I never saw such a wife. I don't think she loves 
her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness' sake." But 
I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over her I don't know 
how long.
"I give this dear young couple notice," said I, "that I am only going away 
to come back tomorrow; and that I shall be always coming backwards and 
forwards, until Symond's Inn is tired of the sight of me. So I shall not 
say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use of that, you know, when I 
am coming back so soon!"
I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered for 
one more look of the precious face, which it seemed to rive my heart to 
turn from.
So I said (in a merry bustling manner) that unless they gave me some 
encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that liberty; 
upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through her tears, and I 
folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it one last kiss, and 
laughed, and ran away.
And when I got downstairs, O how I cried! It almost seemed to me that I had 
lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without her, and it was 
so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing her there, that I could 
get no comfort for a little while, as I walked up and down in a dim corner, 
sobbing and crying.
I came to myself by-and-by, after a little scolding, and took a coach home. 
The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a short time 
before, and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was then dead, though 
I did not know it. My Guardian had gone out to inquire about him, and did 
not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I cried a little again; though, on 
the whole, I don't think I behaved so very, very ill.
It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss of my 
darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after years. But my 
mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which I had left her, and 
I pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one, and I so longed to 
be near her, and taking some sort of care of her, that I determined to go 
back in the evening, only to look up at her windows.
It was foolish, I dare say; but it did not then seem at all so to me, and 
it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my confidence, and 
we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the new strange home of my 
dear girl, and there was a light behind the yellow blinds. We walked past 
cautiously three or four times, looking up; and narrowly missed 
encountering Mr Vholes, who came out of his office while we were there, and 
turned his head to look up too, before going home. The sight of his lank 
black figure, and the lonesome air of that nook in the dark, were 
favourable to the state of my mind. I thought of the youth and love and 
beauty of my dear girl, shut up in such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as 
if it were a cruel place.
It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might safely 
steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light foot, not 
distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the way. I listened 
for a few moments; and in the musty rotting silence of the house, believed 
that I could hear the murmur of their young voices. I put my lips to the 
hearse-like panel of the door, as a kiss for my dear, and came quietly down 
again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the visit.
And it really did me good; for, though nobody but Charley and I knew 
anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the separation 
between Ada and me, and had brought us together again for those moments. I 
went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change, but all the better for 
that hovering about my darling.
My Guardian had come home, and was standing thoughtfully by the dark 
window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat; but he 
caught the light upon my face as I took mine.
"Little woman," said he. "You have been crying."
"Why, yes, Guardian," said I, "I am afraid I have been a little. Ada has 
been in such distress, and is so very sorry, Guardian."
I put my arm on the back of his chair; and I saw in his glance that my 
words, and my look at her empty place, had prepared him.
"Is she married, my dear?"
I told him all about it, and how her first entreaties had referred to his 
forgiveness.
"She has no need of it," said he. "Heaven bless her and her husband!" But 
just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. "Poor girl, poor 
girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!"
Neither of us spoke after that; until he said with a sigh, "Well, well, my 
dear! Bleak House is thinning fast."
"But its mistress remains, Guardian." Though I was timid about saying it, I 
ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken. "She will do 
all she can to make him happy," said I.
"She will succeed, my love!"
The letter had made no difference between us, except that the seat by his 
side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old bright 
fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old way, and said 
again, "She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak House is thinning 
fast, O little woman!"
I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was rather 
disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had meant to be, 
since the letter and the answer.


Chapter 52

Obstinacy

But one other day had intervened, when, early in the morning as we were 
going to breakfast, Mr Woodcourt came in haste with the astounding news 
that a terrible murder had been committed, for which Mr George had been 
apprehended and was in custody. When he told us that a large reward was 
offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the murderer's apprehension, I did not 
in my first consternation understand why; but a few more words explained to 
me that the murdered person was Sir Leicester's lawyer, and immediately my 
mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance.
This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched and 
distrusted, and who had long watched and distrusted her; one for whom she 
could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in him a 
dangerous and secret enemy; appeared so awful, that my first thoughts were 
of her. How appalling to hear of such a death, and be able to feel no pity! 
How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had sometimes even wished the 
old man away, who was so swiftly hurried out of life!
Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always felt 
when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could scarcely hold 
my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the conversation, until 
I had had a little time to recover. But when I came to myself, and saw how 
shocked my Guardian was; and found that they were earnestly speaking of the 
suspected man, and recalling every favourable impression we had formed of 
him, out of the good we had known of him; my interest and my fears were so 
strongly aroused in his behalf that I was quite set up again.
"Guardian, you don't think it possible that he is justly accused?"
"My dear, I can't think so. This man whom we have seen so open-hearted and 
compassionate; who, with the might of a giant, has the gentleness of a 
child; who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived, and is so simple and 
quiet with it; this man justly accused of such a crime? I can't believe it. 
It's not that I don't or I won't. I can't!"
"And I can't," said Mr Woodcourt. "Still, whatever we believe or know of 
him, we had better not forget that some appearances are against him. He 
bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He has openly mentioned 
it in many places. He is said to have expressed himself violently towards 
him, and he certainly did about him, to my knowledge. He admits that he was 
alone, on the scene of the murder, within a few minutes of its commission. 
I sincerely believe him to be as innocent of any participation in it, as I 
am; but these are all reasons for suspicion falling upon him."
"True," said my Guardian; and he added, turning to me, "it would be doing 
him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth in any of 
these respects."
I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to others, 
the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew withal (I could 
not help saying) that their weight would not induce us to desert him in his 
need.
"Heaven forbid!" returned my Guardian. "We will stand by him, as he himself 
stood by the two poor creatures who are gone." He meant Mr Gridley and the 
boy, to both of whom Mr George had given shelter.
Mr Woodcourt then told us that the trooper's man had been with him before 
day, after wandering about the streets all night like a distracted 
creature. That one of the trooper's first anxieties was that we should not 
suppose him guilty. That he had charged his messenger to represent his 
perfect innocence, with every solemn assurance he could send us. That Mr 
Woodcourt had only quieted the man by undertaking to come to our house very 
early in the morning, with these representations. He added that he was now 
upon his way to see the prisoner himself.
My Guardian said, directly, he would go too. Now, besides that I liked the 
retired soldier very much, and that he liked me, I had that secret interest 
in what had happened, which was only known to my Guardian. I felt as if it 
came close and near to me. It seemed to become personally important to 
myself that the truth should be discovered, and that no innocent people 
should be suspected; for suspicion, once run wild, might run wilder.
In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with them. My 
Guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went.
It was a large prison, with many courts and passages so like one another, 
and so uniformly paved, that I seemed to gain a new comprehension, as I 
passed along, of the fondness that solitary prisoners, shut up among the 
same staring walls from year to year, have had - as I have read - for a 
weed, or a stray blade of grass. In an arched room by himself, like a 
cellar upstairs; with walls so glaringly white, that they made the massive 
iron window-bars and iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they 
were: we found the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a 
bench there, and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.
When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread, and 
there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced, putting out 
my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.
"This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen," said he, 
saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath. "And now I 
don't so much care how it ends."
He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his 
soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard.
"This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in," said 
Mr George, "but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of it." As he 
handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat down; which 
seemed to give him great satisfaction.
"I thank you, miss," said he.
"Now, George," observed my Guardian, "as we require no new assurances on 
your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours."
"Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not innocent of 
this crime, I couldn't look at you and keep my secret to myself, under the 
condescension of the present visit. I feel the present visit very much. I 
am not one of the eloquent sort, but I feel it, Miss Summerson and 
gentlemen, deeply."
He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest, and bent his head to us. 
Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great amount of 
natural emotion by these simple means.
"First," said my Guardian, "can we do anything for your personal comfort, 
George?"
"For which, sir?" he inquired, clearing his throat.
"For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want, that would lessen 
the hardship of this confinement?"
"Well, sir," replied Mr George, after a little cogitation, "I am equally 
obliged to you; but tobacco being against the rules, I can't say that there 
is."
"You will think of many little things perhaps, by-and-by. Whenever you do, 
George, let us know."
"Thank you, sir. Howsoever," observed Mr George, with one of his sunburnt 
smiles, "a man who has been knocking about the world in a vagabond kind of 
way as long as I have, gets on well enough in a place like the present, so 
far as that goes."
"Next, as to your case," observed my Guardian.
"Exactly so, sir," returned Mr George, folding his arms upon his breast 
with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity.
"How does it stand now?"
"Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to understand 
that he will probably apply for a series of remands from time to time until 
the case is more complete. How it is to be made more complete, I don't 
myself see; but I dare say Bucket will manage it somehow."
"Why, Heaven save us, man!" exclaimed my Guardian, surprised into his old 
oddity and vehemence, "you talk of yourself as if you were somebody else!"
"No offence, sir," said Mr George. "I am very sensible of your kindness. 
But I don't see how an innocent man is to make up his mind to this kind of 
thing without knocking his head against the walls, unless he takes it in 
that point of view."
"That is true enough to a certain extent," returned my Guardian, softened. 
"But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take ordinary precautions to 
defend himself."
"Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the magistrates, 
'Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as yourselves; what has been 
stated against me in the way of facts, is perfectly true; I know no more 
about it.' I intend to continue stating that, sir. What more can I do? It's 
the truth."
"But the mere truth won't do," rejoined my Guardian.
"Won't it, indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!" Mr George good-
humouredly observed.
"You must have a lawyer," pursued my Guardian. "We must! engage a good one 
for you."
"I ask your pardon, sir," said Mr George, with a step backward. "I am 
equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything of 
that sort."
"You won't have a lawyer?"
"No, sir." Mr George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. "I thank 
you all the same, sir, but - no lawyer!"
"Why not?"
"I don't take kindly to the breed," said Mr George. "Gridley didn't. And - 
if you'll excuse my saying so much - I should hardly have thought you did 
yourself, sir."
"That's Equity," my Guardian explained, a little at a loss; "that's Equity, 
George."
"Is it, indeed, sir?" returned the trooper, in his offhand manner. "I am 
not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general way I 
object to the breed."
Unfolding his arms, and changing his position, he stood with one massive 
hand upon the table, and the other on his hip, as complete a picture of a 
man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever I saw. It was in 
vain that we all three talked to him, and endeavoured to persuade him; he 
listened with that gentleness which went so well with his bluff bearing, 
but was evidently no more shaken by our representations than his place of 
confinement was.
"Pray think, once more, Mr George," said I. "Have you no wish in reference 
to your case?"
"I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss," he returned, "by court-
martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware. If you will 
be so good as to favour me with your attention for a couple of minutes, 
miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain myself as clearly as I can."
He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he were 
adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and after a 
moment's reflection went on.
"You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody, and brought 
here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My shooting-gallery 
is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property as I have - 'tis small -
 is turned this way and that, till it don't know itself; and (as aforesaid) 
here I am! I don't particular complain of that. Though I am in these 
present quarters through no immediately preceding fault of mine, I can very 
well understand that if I hadn't gone into the vagabond way in my youth, 
this wouldn't have happened. It has happened. Then comes the question how 
to meet it."
He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment, with a good-humoured look, and 
said apologetically, "I am such a short-winded talker that I must think a 
bit." Having thought a bit, he looked up again, and resumed.
"How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer, and 
had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wish to rake up his ashes, but he 
had, what I should call if he was living, a Devil of a tight hold of me. I 
don't like his trade the better for that. If I had kept clear of his trade, 
I should have kept outside this place. But that's not what I mean. Now 
suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had discharged into his body any 
one of those pistols recently fired off, that Bucket has found at my place, 
and, dear me! might have found there any day since it has been my place. 
What should I have done as soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer."
He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts, and did not resume 
until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what purpose opened 
I will mention presently.
"I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often read 
in the newspapers), 'my client says nothing, my client reserves his defence 
- my client this, that, and t'other.' Well; 'tis not the custom of that 
breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to think that other men 
do. Say, I am innocent, and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to 
believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not? 
Act as if I was; - shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep 
circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off 
perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or 
would I rather be hanged in my own way - if you'll excuse my mentioning 
anything so disagreeable to a lady?"
He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further necessity to 
wait a bit.
"I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don't intend 
to say," looking round upon us, with his powerful arms akimbo and his dark 
eyebrows raised, "that I am more partial to being hanged than another man. 
What I say is, I must come off clear and full or not at all. Therefore, 
when I hear stated against me what is true, I say it's true; and when they 
tell me, 'whatever you say will be used,' I tell them I don't mind that; I 
mean it to be used. If they can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, 
they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if 
they are, it's worth nothing to me."
Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table, and 
finished what he had to say.
"I thank you, miss, and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, and 
many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the matter, as 
it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt broadsword kind of a 
mind. I have never done well in life, beyond my duty as a soldier; and if 
the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as I have sown. When I 
got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer - it don't take a 
rover, who has knocked about so much as myself, so very long to recover 
from a crash - I worked my way round to what you find me now. As such, I 
shall remain. No relations will be disgraced by me, or made unhappy for me, 
and - and that's all I've got to say."
The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less 
prepossessing appearance at first sight, and a weather-tanned bright-eyed 
wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance, had been exceedingly 
attentive to all Mr George had said. Mr George had received them with a 
familiar nod and a friendly look, but without any more particular greeting 
in the midst of his address. He now shook them cordially by the hand, and 
said, "Miss Summerson and gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Joseph 
Bagnet. And this is his wife, Mrs Bagnet."
Mr Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs Bagnet dropped us a 
curtsey.
"Real good friends of mine they are," said Mr George. "It was at their 
house I was taken."
"With a second-hand wiolinceller," Mr Bagnet put in, twitching his head 
angrily. "Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object to."
"Mat," said Mr George, "you have heard pretty well all I have been saying 
to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your approval?"
Mr Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. "Old girl," 
said he. "Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval."
"Why, George," exclaimed Mrs Bagnet, who had been unpacking her basket, in 
which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea and sugar, and a 
brown loaf, "you ought to know it don't. You ought to know it's enough to 
drive a person wild to hear you. You won't be got off this way, and you 
won't be got off that way - what do you mean by such picking and choosing? 
It's stuff and nonsense, George."
"Don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs Bagnet," said the trooper, 
lightly.
"Oh! Bother your misfortunes!" cried Mrs Bagnet, if they don't make you 
more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my life to 
hear a man talk folly, as I have been to hear you talk this day to the 
present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks should hinder you 
from having a dozen lawyers, if the gentleman recommended them to you."
"This is a very sensible woman," said my Guardian. "I hope you will 
persuade him, Mrs Bagnet."
"Persuade him, sir?" she returned. "Lord bless you, no. You don't know 
George. Now, there!" Mrs Bagnet left her basket to point him out with both 
her bare brown hands. "There he stands! As self-willed and as determined a 
man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human creature under Heaven, out of 
patience! You could as soon take up and shoulder an eight-and-forty pounder 
by your own strength, as turn that man, when he has got a thing into his 
head, and fixed it there. Why, don't I know him!" cried Mrs Bagnet. "Don't 
I know you, George! You don't mean to set up for a new character with me, 
after all these years, I hope?"
Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband, who 
shook his head at the trooper several times, as a silent recommendation to 
him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs Bagnet looked at me; and I understood, 
from the play of her eyes, that she wished me to do something, though I did 
not comprehend what.
"But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years," said Mrs 
Bagnet, as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork, looking at me 
again; "and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well as I do, they'll 
give up talking to you too. If you are not too headstrong to accept of a 
bit of dinner, here it is."
"I accept it with many thanks," returned the trooper.
"Do you though indeed?" said Mrs Bagnet, continuing to grumble on good-
humouredly. "I'm sure I'm surprised at that. I wonder you don't starve in 
your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps you'll set your mind 
upon that, next." Here she again looked at me: and I now perceived, from 
her glances at the door and at me, by turns, that she wished us to retire, 
and to await her following us, outside the prison. Communicating this by 
similar means to my Guardian, and Mr Woodcourt, I rose.
"We hope you will think better of it, Mr George," said I; "and we shall 
come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable."
"More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can't find me," he returned.
"But more persuadable we can, I hope," said I. "And let me entreat you to 
consider that the clearing up of this mystery, and the discovery of the 
real perpetrator of this deed, may be of the last importance to others 
besides yourself."
He heard me respectfully, but without much heeding these words, which I 
spoke, a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he was 
observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure, which seemed 
to catch his attention all at once.

"'Tis curious," said he. "And yet I thought so at the time!"
My Guardian asked him what he meant.
"Why, sir," he answered, "when my ill-fortune took me to the dead man's 
staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like Miss 
Summerson's go by me in the dark, that I had half a mind to speak to it."
For an instant, I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since, and 
hope I shall never feel again."
"It came downstairs as I went up," said the trooper, "and crossed the 
moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep fringe to 
it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject, excepting that 
Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment, that it came into my head."
I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after this: it 
is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon me from the 
first of following the investigation, was, without my distinctly daring to 
ask myself any question, increased; and that I was indignantly sure of 
there being no possibility of a reason for my being afraid.
We three went out of the prison, and walked up and down at some short 
distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not waited 
long, when Mr and Mrs Bagnet came out too, and quickly joined us.
There was a tear in each of Mrs Bagnet's eyes, and her face was flushed and 
hurried. "I didn't let George see what I thought about it, you know, miss," 
was her first remark when she came up; "but he's in a bad way, poor old 
fellow!"
"Not with care and prudence, and good help," said my Guardian.
"A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir," returned Mrs Bagnet, 
hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak; "but I am uneasy 
for him. He has been so careless, and said so much that he never meant. The 
gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as Lignum and me do. And 
then such a number of circumstances have happened bad for him, and such a 
number of people will be brought forward to speak against him, and Bucket 
is so deep."
"With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a boy." 
Mr Bagnet added, with great solemnity.
"Now, I tell you, miss," said Mrs Bagnet; "and when I say miss, I mean all! 
Just come into the corner of the wall, and I'll tell you!"
Mrs Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place, and was at first too 
breathless to proceed; occasioning Mr Bagnet to say, "Old girl! Tell 'em!"
"Why then, miss," the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her bonnet 
for more air, "you could as soon move Dover Castle as move George on this 
point, unless you had got a new power to move him with. And I have got it!"
"You are a jewel of a woman," said my Guardian. "Go on!"
"Now, I tell you miss," she proceeded, clapping her hands in her hurry and 
agitation a dozen times in every sentence, "that what he says concerning no 
relations is all bosh. They don't know of him, but he does know of them. He 
has said more to me at odd times than to anybody else, and it warn't for 
nothing that he once spoke to my Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling 
mothers' heads. For fifty pounds he had seen his mother that day. She's 
alive, and must be brought here straight!"
Instantly Mrs Bagnet put some pins into her mouth, and began pinning up her 
skirts all round, a little higher than the level of her grey cloak; which 
she accomplished with surprising dispatch and dexterity.
"Lignum," said Mrs Bagnet, "you take care of the children, old man, and 
give me the umbrella! I'm away to Lincolnshire, to bring that old lady 
here."
"But, bless the woman!" cried my Guardian, with his hand in his pocket, 
"how is she going? What money has she got?"
Mrs Bagnet made another application to her skirts, and brought forth a 
leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings, and which 
she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
"Never you mind for me, miss, I'm a soldier's wife, and accustomed to 
travelling in my own way. Lignum, old boy," kissing him, "one for yourself; 
three for the children. Now, I'm away into Lincolnshire after George's 
mother!"
And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another lost 
in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a sturdy pace, 
and turned the corner, and was gone.
"Mr Bagnet," said my Guardian. "Do you mean to let her go in that way?"
"Can't help it," he returned. "Made her way home once. From another quarter 
of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella. Whatever the old 
girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says, I'll do it. She does it."
"Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks," rejoined my Guardian, 
"and it is impossible to say more for her."
"She's Colour-Serjeant of the Nonpareil Battalion," said Mr Bagnet, looking 
at us over his shoulder, as he went his way also. "And there's not such 
another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained."


Chapter 53

The Track

Mr Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together under 
existing circumstances. When Mr Bucket has a matter of this pressing 
interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems to rise to the 
dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it whispers 
information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins him to secrecy; he rubs 
it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent; he shakes it before a guilty 
man, and it charms him to his destruction. The Augurs of the Detective 
Temple invariably, predict, that when Mr Bucket and that finger are much in 
conference, a terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the whole 
a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the follies of 
mankind, Mr Bucket pervades a vast number of houses, and strolls about an 
infinity of streets; to outward appearance rather languishing for want of 
an object. He is in the friendliest condition towards his species, and will 
drink with most of them. He is free with his money, affable in his manners, 
innocent in his conversation - but, through the placid stream of his life, 
there glides an undercurrent of forefinger.
Time and place cannot bind Mr Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he is here 
today and gone tomorrow - but, very unlike man indeed, he is here again the 
next day. This evening he will be casually looking into the iron 
extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's house in town; and 
tomorrow morning he will be walking on the leads at Chesney Wold, where 
erst the old man walked whose ghost is propitiated with a hundred guineas. 
Drawers, desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, Mr Bucket examines. A 
few hours afterwards, he and the Roman will be alone together, comparing 
forefingers.
It is likely that these occupations are irreconcileable with home 
enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr Bucket at present does not go home. 
Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs Bucket - a lady 
of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved by 
professional exercise might have done great things, but which has paused at 
the level of a clever amateur - he holds himself aloof from that dear 
solace. Mrs Bucket is dependent on their lodger (fortunately an amiable 
lady in whom she takes an interest) for companionship and conversation.
A great crowd assembles in Lincoln's Inn Fields on the day of the funeral. 
Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in person; strictly speaking, 
there are only three other human followers, that is to say, Lord Doodle, 
William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a make-weight), but 
the amount of inconsolable carriages is immense. The Peerage contributes 
more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. 
Such is the assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels, that the 
Heralds' College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a 
blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes, with 
silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and three 
bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of woe. All 
the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and if that dead 
old man of the rusty garb, be not beyond a taste in horseflesh (which 
appears impossible), it must be highly gratified this day.
Quiet among the undertakers, and the equipages, and the calves of so many 
legs all steeped in grief, Mr Bucket sits concealed in one of the 
inconsolable carriages, and at his ease surveys the crowd through the 
lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd - as for what not? - and 
looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage, now from the 
other, now up at the house windows, now along the people's heads, nothing 
escapes him.
"And there you are, my partner, eh?" says Mr Bucket to himself, 
apostrophising Mrs Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of the 
deceased's house.
"And so you are. And so you are! And very well indeed you are looking, Mrs 
Bucket!"
The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of its 
assemblage to be brought out. Mr Bucket, in the foremost emblazoned 
carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice a hair's breadth 
open while he looks.
And it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is still 
occupied with Mrs B. "There you are, my partner, eh?" he murmuringly 
repeats. "And our lodger with you. I'm taking notice of you, Mrs Bucket; I 
hope you're all right in your health, my dear!"
Not another word does Mr Bucket say; but sits with most attentive eyes, 
until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought down - Where are 
all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did they fly with him on that 
sudden journey? - and until the procession moves, and Mr Bucket's view is 
changed. After which, he composes himself for an easy ride; and takes note 
of the fittings of the carriage, in case he should ever find such knowledge 
useful.
Contrast enough between Mr Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage, and Mr 
Bucket shut up in his. Between the immeasurable track of space beyond the 
little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed sleep which jolts so 
heavily over the stones of the streets, and the narrow track of blood which 
keeps the other in the watchful state expressed in every hair of his head! 
But it is all one to both; neither is troubled about that.
Mr Bucket sits out the procession, in his own easy manner, and glides from 
the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself arrives. He 
makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock's, which is at present a sort of home to 
him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all hours, where he is always 
welcome and made much of, where he knows the whole establishment, and walks 
in an atmosphere of mysterious greatness.
No knocking or ringing for Mr Bucket. He has caused himself to be provided 
with a key, and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is crossing the hall, 
Mercury informs him, "Here's another letter for, you, Mr Bucket, come by 
post," and gives it him.
"Another one, eh?" says Mr Bucket.
If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity as to 
Mr Bucket's letters, that wary person is not the man to gratify it. Mr 
Bucket looks at him, as if his face were a vista of some miles in length, 
and he were leisurely contemplating the same.
"Do you happen to carry a box?" says Mr Bucket.
Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker.
"Could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?" says Mr Bucket. "Thankee. It 
don't matter what it is; I'm not particular as to the kind. Thankee!"
Having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from somebody 
downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable show of tasting 
it, first with one side of his nose and then with the other, Mr Bucket, 
with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right sort, and goes on, 
letter in hand.
Now, although Mr Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within the 
larger one, with the face of a man who receives some scores of letters 
every day, it happens that much correspondence is not incidental to his 
life. He is no great scribe; rather handling his pen like the pocket-staff 
he carries about with him always convenient to his grasp; and discourages 
correspondence with himself in others, as being too artless and direct a 
way of doing delicate business. Further, he often sees damaging letters 
produced in evidence, and has occasion to reflect that it was a green thing 
to write them. For these reasons he has very little to do with letters, 
either as sender or receiver. And yet he has received a round half dozen, 
within the last twenty-four hours.
"And this," says Mr Bucket, spreading it out on the table, "is in the same 
hand, and consists of the same two words."
What two words?
He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book of fate 
to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly written in each, 
"Lady Dedlock."
"Yes, yes," says Mr Bucket. "But I could have made the money without this 
anonymous information."
Having put the letters in his book of Fate, and girdled it up again, he 
unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is brought upon a 
goodly tray, with a decanter of sherry. Mr Bucket frequently observes, in 
friendly circles where there is no restraint, that he likes a toothful of 
your fine old brown East Inder sherry better than anything you can offer 
him. Consequently he fills and empties his glass, with a smack of his lips; 
and is proceeding with his refreshment, when an idea enters his mind.
Mr Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room and the 
next, and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is sinking low. 
Mr Bucket's eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the room, alights upon 
a table where letters are usually put as they arrive. Several letters for 
Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr Bucket draws near, and examines the 
directions. "No," he says, "there's none in that hand. It's only me as is 
written to. I can break it to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, tomorrow."
With that, he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite; and after 
a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Leicester has received 
him there these several evenings past, to know whether he has anything to 
report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the funeral), and 
Volumnia, are in attendance.
Mr Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three people. A 
bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to Volumnia, and a bow 
of recognition to the debilitated cousin; to whom it airily says, "You are 
a swell about town, and you know me, and I know you." Having distributed 
these little specimens of his tact, Mr Bucket rubs his hands.
"Have you anything new to communicate, officer?" inquires Sir Leicester. 
"Do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?"
"Why - not tonight, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
"Because my time," pursues Sir Leicester, "is wholly at your disposal, with 
a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law."
Mr Bucket coughs, and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as though 
he would respectfully observe, "I do assure you, you're a pretty creetur. 
I've seen hundreds worse-looking at your time of life, I have indeed."
The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanising 
influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes, and 
meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr Bucket prices that decoration 
in his mind, and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia is writing 
poetry.
"If I have not," pursues Sir Leicester, "in the most emphatic manner, 
adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious case, 
I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of rectifying any 
omission I may have made. Let no expense be a consideration. I am prepared 
to defray all charges. You can incur none, in pursuit of the object you 
have undertaken, that I shall hesitate for a moment to bear."
Mr Bucket made Sir Leicester's bow again, as a response to this liberality.
"My mind," Sir Leicester adds, with generous warmth, "has not, as may be 
easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. 
It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full of indignation 
tonight, after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains 
of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent."
Sir Leicester's voice trembles, and his grey hair stirs upon his head. 
Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused.
"I declare," he says, "I solemnly declare, that until this crime is 
discovered, and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as if 
there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a large 
portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last day of his 
life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table and slept under 
my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck down within an hour 
of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he may have been followed 
from my house, watched at my house, even first marked because of his 
association with my house - which may have suggested his possessing greater 
wealth, and being altogether of greater importance than his own retiring 
demeanour would have indicated. If I cannot, with my means, and my 
influence, and my position, bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to 
light, I fail in the assertion of my respect for that gentleman's memory, 
and of my fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me."
While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness, 
looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr Bucket 
glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might be, but for 
the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.
"The ceremony of today," continues Sir Leicester, "strikingly illustrative 
of the respect in which my deceased friend;" he lays a stress on the word, 
for death levels all distinctions; "was held by the flower of the land, 
has, I say, aggravated the shock I have received from this most horrible 
and audacious crime. If it were my brother who had committed it, I would 
not spare him."
Mr Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he was 
the trustiest and dearest person!
"You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss," replies Mr Bucket, 
soothingly, "no doubt. He was calculated to be a deprivation, I'm sure he 
was."
Volumnia gives Mr Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive mind 
is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she lives; that 
her nerves are unstrung forever; and that she has not the least expectation 
of smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a cocked-hat for that redoubtable 
old general at Bath, descriptive of her melancholy condition.
"It gives a start to a delicate female," says Mr Bucket, sympathetically, 
"but it'll wear off."
Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are going 
to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether he had any 
accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law? And a great deal 
more to the like artless purpose.
"Why you see, miss," returns Mr Bucket, bringing the finger into persuasive 
action - and such is his natural gallantry, that he had almost said, my 
dear; "it ain't easy to answer those questions at the present moment. Not 
at the present moment. I've kept myself on this case, Sir Leicester 
Dedlock, Baronet," whom Mr Bucket takes into the conversation in right of 
his importance, "morning, noon, and night. But for a glass or two of 
sherry, I don't think I could have had my mind so much upon the stretch as 
it has been. I could answer your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that 
has been traced. And I hope that he may find it;" Mr Bucket again looks 
grave; "to his satisfaction."
The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler'll be executed - zample. Thinks 
more interest's wanted - get man hanged presentime - than get man place ten 
thousand a year. Hasn't a doubt - zample - far better hang wrong fler than 
no fler.
"You know life, you know, sir," says Mr Bucket, with a complimentary 
twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, "and you can confirm what I've 
mentioned to this lady. You don't want to be told, that, from information I 
have received, I have gone to work. You're up to what a lady can't be 
expected to be up to. Lord! especially in your elevated station of society, 
miss," says Mr Bucket, quite reddening at another narrow escape from my 
dear.
"The officer, Volumnia," observes Sir Leicester, "is faithful to his duty, 
and perfectly right."
Mr Bucket murmurs, "Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
"In fact, Volumnia," proceeds Sir Leicester, "it is not holding up a good 
model for imitation, to ask the officer any such questions as you have put 
to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he acts upon his 
responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist in making the laws, 
to impede or interfere with those who carry them into execution. Or," says 
Sir Leicester, somewhat sternly, for Volumnia was going to cut in before he 
had rounded his sentence; "or who vindicate their outraged majesty."
Volumnia with all humility explains that she has not merely the plea of 
curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in general), 
but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for the darling 
man whose loss they all deplore.
"Very well, Volumnia," returns Sir Leicester. "Then you cannot be too 
discreet."
Mr Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this lady, 
with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case as pretty 
well complete. It is a beautiful case - a beautiful case - and what little 
is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able to supply in a few hours."
"I am very glad indeed to hear it," says Sir Leicester. "Highly creditable 
to you."
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr Bucket, very seriously, "I 
hope it may at one and the same time do me credit, and prove satisfactory 
to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see, miss," Mr Bucket 
goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, "I mean from my point of view. 
As considered from other points of view, such cases will always involve 
more or less unpleasantness. Very strange things comes to our knowledge in 
families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, 
quite."
Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so.
"Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families," 
says Mr Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside. "I have had the 
honour of being employed in high families before; and you have no idea - 
come, I'll go so far as to say not even you have any idea, sir," this to 
the debilitated cousin, "what games goes on!"
The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a prostration 
of boredom, yawns, "Vayli" - being the used-up for "very likely."
Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here majestically 
interposes with the words, "Very good. Thank you!" and also with a wave of 
his hand, implying not only that there is an end of the discourse, but that 
if high families fall into low habits they must take the consequences. "You 
will not forget, officer," he adds, with condescension, "that I am at your 
disposal when you please."
Mr Bucket (still grave) inquires if tomorrow morning, now, would suit, in 
case he should be as for'ard as he expects to be? Sir Leicester replies, 
"All times are alike to me." Mr Bucket makes his three bows, and is 
withdrawing, when a forgotten point occurs to him.
"Might I ask, by the bye," he says, in a low voice, cautiously returning, 
"who posted the Reward-bill on the staircase."
"I ordered it to be put up there," replies Sir Leicester.
"Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if I was 
to ask you why?"
"Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think it 
cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I wish my 
people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the determination to 
punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the same time, officer, if 
you in your better knowledge of the subject see any objection - "
Mr Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not be 
taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws: closing the door on 
Volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her remarking that that 
charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue Chamber.
In his fondness for society, and his adaptability to all grades, Mr Bucket 
is presently standing before the hallfire - bright and warm on the early 
winter night - admiring Mercury.
"Why, you're six foot two, I suppose?" says Mr Bucket.
"Three," says Mercury.
"Are you so much? But then, you see, you're broad in proportion, and don't 
look it. You're not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain't. Was you ever 
modelled now?" Mr Bucket asks, conveying the expression of an artist into 
the turn of his eye and head.
Mercury never was modelled.
"Then you ought to be, you know," says Mr Bucket; "and a friend of mine 
that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy Sculptor, would stand 
something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for the marble. My 
Lady's out, ain't she?"
"Out to dinner."
"Goes out pretty well every day, don't she?"
"Yes."
"Not to be wondered at!" says Mr Bucket. "Such a fine woman as her, so 
handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on a dinner-
table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the same way of 
life as yourself?"
Answer in the negative.
"Mine was," says Mr Bucket. "My father was first a page, then a footman, 
then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived universally 
respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath that he considered 
service the most honourable part of his career, and so it was. I've a 
brother in service, and a brother-in-law. My Lady a good temper?"
Mercury replies, "As good as you can expect."
"Ah!" says Mr Bucket, "a little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord! What can 
you anticipate when they're so handsome as that? And we like 'em all the 
better for it, don't we?"
Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom small-
clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a man of 
gallantry, and can't deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a violent ringing 
at the bell. "Talk of the angels," says Mr Bucket. "Here she is!"
The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still very 
pale, she is dressed in slight mourning, and wears two beautiful bracelets. 
Either their beauty, or the beauty of her arms, is particularly attractive 
to Mr Bucket. He looks at them with an eager eye, and rattles something in 
his pocket - halfpence perhaps.
Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the other 
Mercury who has brought her home.
"Mr Bucket, my Lady."
Mr Bucket makes a leg, and comes forward, passing his familiar demon over 
the region of his mouth.
"Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?"
"No, my Lady, I've seen him!"
"Have you anything to say to me?"
"Not just at present, my Lady."
"Have you made any new discoveries?"
"A few, my Lady."
This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps upstairs 
alone. Mr Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot, watches her as she 
goes up the steps the old man came down to his grave; past murderous groups 
of statuary, repeated with their shadowy weapons on the wall; past the 
printed bill, which she looks at going by; out of view.
"She's a lovely woman, too, she really is," says Mr Bucket, coming back to 
Mercury. "Don't look quite healthy, though."
Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from headaches.
Really? That's a pity! Walking, Mr Bucket would recommend for that. Well, 
she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two hours, when she 
has them bad. By night, too.
"Are you sure you're quite so much as six foot three?" asks Mr Bucket, 
"begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?"
Not a doubt about it.
"You're so well put together that I shouldn't have thought it. But the 
household troops, though considered fine men, are built so straggling. - 
Walks by night, does she? When it's moonlight, though?"
O yes. When it's moonlight! Of course. O, of course! Conversational and 
acquiescent on both sides.
"I suppose you ain't in the habit of walking, yourself?" says Mr Bucket. 
"Not much time for it, I should say?"
Besides which, Mercury don't like it. Prefers carriage exercise.
"To be sure," says Mr Bucket. "That makes a difference. Now I think of it," 
says Mr Bucket, warming his hands, and looking pleasantly at the blaze, 
"she went out walking, the very night of this business."
"To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way."
"And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it."
"I didn't see you," says Mercury.
"I was rather in a hurry," returns Mr Bucket, "for I was going to visit a 
aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea - next door but two to the old original 
Bun House - ninety year old the old lady is, a single woman, and got a 
little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the time. Let's see. What 
time might it be? It wasn't ten."
"Half-past nine."
"You're right. So it was. And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady was 
muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?"
"Of course she was."
Of course she was. Mr Bucket must return to a little work he has to get on 
with upstairs; but he must shake hands with Mercury in acknowledgment of 
his agreeable conversation, and will he - this is all he asks - will he, 
when he has a leisure half-hour, think of bestowing it on that Royal 
Academy Sculptor, for the advantage of both parties?


Chapter 54

Springing A Mine

Refreshed by sleep, Mr Bucket rises betimes in the morning, and prepares 
for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt and a wet 
hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony, he lubricates 
such thin locks as remain to him after his life of severe study, Mr Bucket 
lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a foundation to work upon, 
together with tea, eggs, toast, and marmalade, on a corresponding scale. 
Having much enjoyed these strengthening matters, and having held subtle 
conference with his familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury "just 
to mention quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's 
ready for me, I'm ready for him." A gracious message being returned, that 
Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr Bucket in the library 
within ten minutes, Mr Bucket repairs to that apartment; and stands before 
the fire, with his finger on his chin, looking at the blazing coals.
Thoughtful Mr Bucket is; as a man may be, with weighty work to do; but 
composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face, he might be a 
famous whist-player for a large stake - say a hundred guineas certain - 
with the game in his hand, but with a high reputation involved in his 
playing his hand out to the last card, in a masterly way. Not in the least 
anxious or disturbed is Mr Bucket when Sir Leicester appears; but he eyes 
the baronet aside as he comes slowly to his easy chair, with that observant 
gravity of yesterday, in which there might have been yesterday, but for the 
audacity of the idea, a touch of compassion.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later than 
my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation, and the 
indignation from which I have recently suffered, have been too much for me. 
I am subject to - gout;" Sir Leicester was going to say indisposition, and 
would have said it to anybody else, but Mr Bucket palpably knows all about 
it; "and recent circumstances have brought it on."
As he takes his seat with some difficulty, and with an air of pain, Mr 
Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large hands on the 
library table.
"I am not aware, officer," Sir Leicester observes, raising his eyes to his 
face, "whether you wish us to be alone; but that is entirely as you please. 
If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would be interested - "
"Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr Bucket, with his head 
persuasively on one side, and his forefinger pendant at one ear like an 
earring, "we can't be too private, just at present. You will presently see 
that we can't be too private. A lady, under any circumstances, and 
especially in Miss Dedlock's elevated station of society, can't but be 
agreeable to me; but speaking without a view to myself, I will take the 
liberty of assuring you that I know we can't be too private."
"That is enough."
"So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr Bucket resumes, "that I 
was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in the door."
"By all means." Mr Bucket skilfully and softly takes that precaution; 
stooping on his knee for a moment, from mere force of habit, so to adjust 
the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in from the outer-side.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening, that I 
wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed it, 
and collected proof against the person who did this crime."
"Against the soldier?"
"No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier."
Sir Leicester looks astounded, and inquires, "Is the man in custody?"
Mr Bucket tells him, after a pause, "It was a woman."
Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates, "Good 
Heaven!"
"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr Bucket begins, standing over him 
with one hand spread out on the library table, and the forefinger of the 
other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare you for a train of 
circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say that will, give you a 
shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you are a gentleman; and I know 
what a gentleman is, and what a gentleman is capable of. A gentleman can 
bear a shock, when it must come, boldly and steadily. A gentleman can make 
up his mind to stand up against almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. If there's a blow to be inflicted on you, you 
naturally think of your family. You ask yourself, how would all them 
ancestors of yours, away to Julius Caesar - not to go beyond him at present 
- have borne that blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne 
it well; and you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family 
credit. That's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, Sir Leicester 
Dedlock, Baronet."
Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair, and grasping the elbows, sits 
looking at him with a stony face.
"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr Bucket, "thus preparing you, let 
me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment, as to anything having 
come to my knowledge. I know so much about so many characters, high and 
low, that a piece of information more or less, don't signify a straw. I 
don't suppose there's a move on the board that would surprise me; and as to 
this or that move having taken place, why my knowing it is no odds at all; 
any possible move whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a 
probable move according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be put out of 
the way, because of my knowing anything of your family affairs."
"I thank you for your preparation," returns Sir Leicester, after a silence, 
without moving hand, foot, or feature; "which I hope is not necessary, 
though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so good as to go on. 
Also;" Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow of his figure; "also to 
take a seat, if you have no objection."
None at all. Mr Bucket brings a chair, and diminishes his shadow. "Now, Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come to the point. 
Lady Dedlock - "
Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat, and stares at him fiercely. Mr 
Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.
"Lady Dedlock, you see, she's universally admired. That's what her Ladyship 
is; she's universally admired," says Mr Bucket.
"I would greatly prefer, officer," Sir Leicester returns, stiffly, "my 
Lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion."
"So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock Baronet, but - it's impossible."
"Impossible?"
Mr Bucket shakes his relentless head.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What I have 
got to say, is about her Ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns on."
"Officer," retorts Sir Leicester, with a fiery eye, and a quivering lip, 
"you know your duty. Do your duty; but be careful not to overstep it. I 
would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring my Lady's name into 
this communication upon your responsibility - upon your responsibility. My 
Lady's name is not a name for common persons to trifle with!"
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say; and no more."
"I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!"
Glancing at the angry eyes which now avoid him, and at the angry figure 
trembling from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr Bucket feels his 
way with his forefinger, and in a low voice proceeds.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that the 
deceased Mr Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and suspicions of Lady 
Dedlock."
"If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir - which he never did - I would 
have killed him myself!" exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his hand upon the 
table. But, in the very heat and fury of the act, he stops, fixed by the 
knowing eyes of Mr Bucket, whose forefinger is slowly going, and who, with 
mingled confidence and patience, shakes his head.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn was deep and close; and 
what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning, I can't quite take 
upon myself to say. But I know from his lips, that he long ago suspected 
Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the sight of some handwriting - 
in this very house, and when you yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, were 
present - the existence, in great poverty, of a certain person, who had 
been her lover before you courted her, and who ought to have been her 
husband;" Mr Bucket stops, and deliberately repeats, "ought to have been 
her husband; not a doubt about it. I know from his lips, that when that 
person soon afterwards died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his 
wretched lodging, and his wretcheder grave, alone and in secret. I know 
from my own inquiries, and through my eyes and ears, that Lady Dedlock did 
make such visit, in the dress of her own maid; for the deceased Mr 
Tulkinghorn employed me to reckon up her Ladyship - if you'll excuse my 
making use of the term we commonly employ - and I reckoned her up, so far, 
completely. I confronted the maid, in the chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
with a witness who had been Lady Dedlock's guide; and there couldn't be the 
shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown to 
her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the way a 
little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday, by saying that very 
strange things happened even in high families sometimes. All this, and 
more, has happened in your own family, and to and through your own Lady. 
It's my belief that the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries 
to the hour of his death; and that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood 
between them upon the matter, that very night. Now, only you put that to 
Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and ask her Ladyship whether, 
even after he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the 
intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black 
mantle with a deep fringe to it."
Sir Leicester sits like a statute, gazing at the cruel finger that is 
probing the life-blood of his heart.
"You put that to her Ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from me, 
Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her Ladyship makes any difficulty 
about admitting of it, you tell her that's it no use; that Inspector Bucket 
knows it, and knows that she passed the soldier as you called him (though 
he's not in the army now), and knows that she knows she passed him, on the 
staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, why do I relate all this?"
Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a single 
groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By-and-by, he takes his hands 
away; and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, though there is no 
more colour in his face than in his white hair, that Mr Bucket is a little 
awed by him. Something frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above 
its usual shell of haughtiness; and Mr Bucket soon detects an unusual 
slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, 
which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now 
breaks silence; soon, however, controlling himself to say, that he does not 
comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr 
Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this 
distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible 
intelligence.
"Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr Bucket, "put it to her 
Ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her Ladyship, if you think right, from 
Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You'll find, or I'm much mistaken, that 
the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn had the intention of communicating the whole to 
you, as soon as he considered it ripe; and further, that he had given her 
Ladyship so to understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it on 
the very morning when I examined the body! You don't know what I'm going to 
say and do, five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester Dedlock, 
Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might wonder why I 
hadn't done it, don't you see?"
True. Sir Leicester, avoiding with some trouble, those obtrusive sounds, 
says, "True." At this juncture, a considerable noise of voices is heard in 
the hall. Mr Bucket, after listening, goes to the library-door, softly 
unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he draws in his head, and 
whispers, hurriedly, but composedly, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this 
unfortunate family affair has taken air, as I expected it might; the 
deceased Mr Tulkinghorn being cut down so sudden. The chance to hush it, is 
to let in these people, now in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind 
sitting quiet - on the family account - while I reckon 'em up? And would 
you just throw in a nod, when I seem to ask you for it?"
Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, "Officer. The best you can, the best 
you can!" and Mr Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of the 
forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly die away. He 
is not long in returning, a few paces a-head of Mercury, and a brother 
deity also powdered and in peach-blossom smalls, who bear between them a 
chair in which is an incapable old man. Another man and two women come 
behind. Directing the pitching of the chair, in an affable and easy manner, 
Mr Bucket dismisses the Mercuries, and locks the door again. Sir Leicester 
looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy stare.
"Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says Mr Bucket, in a 
confidential voice. "I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I am; and 
this," producing the tip of his convenient little staff from his breast 
pocket, "is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir Leicester Dedlock, 
Baronet. Well! You do see him; and, mind you, it ain't every one as is 
admitted to that honour. Your name, old gentleman, is Smallweed; that's 
what your name is; I know it well."
"Well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cried Mr Smallweed, in a shrill 
loud voice.
"You don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts Mr 
Bucket, with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.
"No!"
"Why, they killed him," says Mr Bucket, "on account of his having so much 
cheek. Don't you get into the same position, because it isn't worthy of 
you. You ain't in the habit of conversing with a deaf person, are you?"
"Yes," snarls Mr Smallweed, "my wife's deaf."
"That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain't here, 
just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I'll not only be 
obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit," says Mr Bucket. "This other 
gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?"
"Name of Chadband," Mr Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a much 
lower key.
"Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says Mr Bucket, 
offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it. Mrs Chadband, no 
doubt?"
"And Mrs Snagsby," Mr Smallweed introduces.
"Husband a law-stationer, and friend of my own," says Mr Bucket. "Love him 
like a brother! - Now, what's up?"
"Do you mean what business have we come upon?" Mr Smallweed asks, a little 
dashed by the suddenness of this turn!
"Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it's all about in presence of 
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come!"
Mr Smallweed, beckoning Mr Chadband, takes a moment's counsel with him in a 
whisper. Mr Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of oil from the 
pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says aloud, "Yes. You 
first!" and retires to his former place.
"I was the client and friend of Mr Tulkinghorn," pipes Grandfather 
Smallweed, then; "I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he was 
useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was own 
brother to a brimstone magpie - leastways Mrs Smallweed. I come into 
Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all his effects. They was 
all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters belonging to a 
dead-and-gone lodger, as was hid away at the back of a shelf in the side of 
Lady Jane's bed - his cat's bed. He hid all manner of things away, 
everywheres. Mr Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and got 'em, but I looked 'em over 
first. I'm a man of business, and I took a squint at 'em. They was letters 
from the lodger's sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that's not a 
common name, Honoria, is it? There's no lady in this house that signs 
Honoria, is there? O no, I don't think so! O no, I don't think so! And not 
in the same hand, perhaps? O no, I don't think so!"
Here Mr Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his 
triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "O, dear me! O Lord! I'm shaken all to 
pieces!"
"Now, when you're ready," says Mr Bucket, after awaiting his recovery, "to 
come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, here the 
gentleman sits, you know."
"Haven't I come to it, Mr Bucket?" cries Grandfather Smallweed. "Isn't the 
gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon and his ever affectionate 
Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come, then, I want to know where 
those letters are. That concerns me, if it don't concern Sir Leicester 
Dedlock. I will know where they are. I won't have 'em disappear so quietly. 
I handed 'em over to my friend and solicitor, Mr Tulkinghorn; not to 
anybody else."
"Why he paid you for them, you know, and handsome, too," says Mr Bucket.
"I don't care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell you what 
we want - what we all here want, Mr Bucket. We want more painstaking and 
search-making into this murder. We know where the interest and the motive 
was, and you have not done enough. If George the vagabond dragoon had any 
hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean 
as well as any man."
"Now, I tell you what," says Mr Bucket, instantaneously altering his 
manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination 
to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am going to have my case spoilt, or 
interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time, by any 
human being in creation. You want more painstaking and search-making? You 
do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don't know the right time 
to stretch it out, and put it on the arm that fired that shot?
Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is that he 
makes no idle boast, that Mr Smallweed begins to apologise. Mr Bucket, 
dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.
"The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the murder. 
That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers; and I shouldn't 
wonder if you was to read something about it before long, if you look 
sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say to you on that 
subject. Now about those letters. You want to know who's got 'em. I don't 
mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the packet?"
Mr Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr Bucket 
produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it as the same.
"What have you got to say next?" asks Mr Bucket. "Now, don't open your 
mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it."
"I want five hundred pound."
"No, you don't; you mean fifty," says Mr Bucket, humorously.
It appears, however, that Mr Smallweed means five hundred.
"That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider 
(without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business," says Mr 
Bucket; Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head; "and you ask me to 
consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it's an unreasonable 
proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than that. Hadn't you 
better say two fifty?"
Mr Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.
"Then," says Mr Bucket, "let's hear Mr Chadband. Lord! Many a time I've 
heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he was in all 
respects, as ever I come across!"
Thus invited, Mr Chadband steps forth, and, after a little sleek smiling, 
and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands, delivers himself as 
follows:
"My friends, we are now - Rachael my wife, and I - in the mansions of the 
rich and great. Why are we now in the mansions of the rich and great, my 
friends? Is it because we are invited? Because we are bidden to feast with 
them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to 
play the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then 
why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and 
doe we require corn, and wine, and oil - or, what is much the same thing, 
money - for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends."
"You're a man of business, you are," returns Mr Bucket, very attentive; 
"and consequently you're going on to mention what the nature of your secret 
is. You are right. You couldn't do better."
"Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love," says Mr Chadband, with a 
cunning eye, "proceed untoe it. Rachael, my wife, advance!"
Mrs Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband into 
the background, and confronts Mr Bucket with a hard frowning smile.
"Since you want to know what we know," says she, "I'll tell you. I helped 
to bring up Miss Hawdon, her Ladyship's daughter. I was in the service of 
her Ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her Ladyship 
brought upon her, and gave out, even to her Ladyship, that the child was 
dead - she was very nearly so - when she was born. But she's alive, and I 
know her." With these words, and a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the 
word "Ladyship," Mrs Chadband folds her arms, and looks implacably at Mr 
Bucket.
"I suppose now," returns that officer, "you will be expecting a twenty-
pound note, or a present of about that figure?"
Mrs Chadband merely laughs, and contemptuously tells him he can "offer" 
twenty pence.
"My friend the law-stationer's good lady over there," says Mr Bucket, 
luring Mrs Snagsby forward with the finger. "What may your game be, ma'am?"
Mrs Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from stating 
the nature of her game: but by degrees it confusedly comes to light, that 
she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom Mr Snagsby has 
habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in darkness, and whose 
chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been the sympathy of the late Mr 
Tulkinghorn; who showed so much commiseration for her, on one occasion of 
his calling in Cook's Court in the absence of her perjured husband, that 
she has of late habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it 
appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs Snagsby's 
peace. There is Mr Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as 
open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, 
under the influence - no doubt - of Mr Snagsby's suborning and tampering. 
There is There was Mr Weevle, friend of Mr Guppy, who lived mysteriously up 
a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was Krook, deceased; 
there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo, deceased; and they were "all 
in it." In what, Mrs Snagsby does not with particularity express; but she 
knows that Jo was Mr Snagsby's son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken 
it," and she followed Mr Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, 
and if he was not his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has 
been, for some time back, to follow Mr Snagsby to and fro, and up and down, 
and to piece suspicious circumstances together - and every circumstance 
that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this way she has pursued 
her object of detecting and confounding her false husband, night and day. 
Thus did it come to pass that she brought the Chadbands and Mr Tulkinghorn 
together, and conferred with Mr Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr Guppy, and 
helped to turn up the circumstances in which the present company are 
interested, casually, by the wayside; being still, and ever, on the great 
high road that is to terminate in Mr Snagsby's full exposure and a 
matrimonial separation. All this, Mrs Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the 
friend of Mrs Chadband, and the follower of Mr Chadband, and the mourner of 
the late Mr Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, 
with very possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible; 
having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the one 
mentioned; and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own dense 
atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her mill of 
jealousy.
While this exordium is in hand - and it takes some time - Mr Bucket, who 
has seen through the transparency of Mrs Snagsby's vinegar at a glance, 
confers with his familiar demon, and bestows his shrewd attention on the 
Chadbands and Mr Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock remains immoveable, with 
the same icy surface upon him: except that he once or twice looks towards 
Mr Bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind.
"Very good," says Mr Bucket. "Now I understand you, you know; and, being 
deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this little 
matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the 
statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. Now I won't allude to 
conspiring to extort money, or anything of that sort, because we are men 
and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant. But 
I will tell you what I do wonder at; I am surprised that you should think 
of making a noise below in the hall. It was so opposed to your interests. 
That's what I look at."
"We wanted to get in," pleads Mr Smallweed.
"Why, of course, you wanted to get in," Mr Bucket assents with 
cheerfulness: "but for a old gentleman at your time of life - what I call 
truly venerable, mind you! - with his wits sharpened, as I have no doubt 
they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which occasions all his 
animation to mount up into his head - not to consider that if he don't keep 
such a business as the present as close as possible it can't be worth a mag 
to him, is so curious! You see your temper got the better of you; that's 
where you lost ground," says Mr Bucket, in an argumentative and friendly 
way.
"I only said I wouldn't go, without one of the servants came up to Sir 
Leicester Dedlock," returns Mr Smallweed.
"That's it! That's where your temper got the better of you. Now, you keep 
it under another time, and you'll make money by it. Shall I ring for them 
to carry you down?"
"When are we to hear more of this?" Mrs Chadband sternly demands.
"Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful sex 
is!" replies Mr Bucket, with gallantry. "I shall have the pleasure of 
giving you a call tomorrow or next day - not forgetting Mr Smallweed and 
his proposal of two fifty."
"Five hundred!" exclaims Mr Smallweed.
"All right! Nominally five hundred;" Mr Bucket has his hand on the bell-
rope; "shall I wish you good day for the present, on the part of myself and 
the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating tone.
Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, and the 
party retire as they came up. Mr Bucket follows them to the door; and, 
returning, says with an air of serious business: -
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not to 
buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought up myself; 
and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that little pickled 
cucumber of a Mrs Snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation, 
and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if 
she had meant it. Mr Tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his 
hand, and could have drove 'em his own way, I haven't a doubt; but he was 
fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs over 
the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and 
such is life. The cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, 
and the water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended."
Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open; and he 
looks intently at Mr Bucket, as Mr Bucket refers to his watch.
"The party to be apprehended is now in this house," proceeds Mr Bucket, 
putting up his watch with a steady hand, and with rising spirits, "and I'm 
about to take her into custody in your presence. Sir Leicester Dedlock, 
Baronet, don't you say a word, nor yet stir. There'll be no noise, and no 
disturbance at all. I'll come back in the course of the evening if 
agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet your wishes respecting this 
unfortunate family matter, and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now 
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the 
apprehension at present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, 
from first to last."
Mr Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts the 
door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense of a 
minute or two, the door slowly opens, and a French woman enters. 
Mademoiselle Hortense.
The moment she is in the room, Mr Bucket claps the door to, and puts his 
back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to turn; and 
then, for the first time, she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in his chair.
"I ask your pardon," she mutters hurriedly. "They tell me there was no one 
here."
Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr Bucket. 
Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face, and she turns deadly pale.
"This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock," says Mr Bucket, nodding at her. 
"This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks back."
"What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?" returns 
Mademoiselle, in a jocular strain.
"Why, my angel," returns Mr Bucket, "we shall see."
Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face, which 
gradually changes into a smile of scorn. "You are very mysterieuse. Are you 
drunk?"
"Tolerable sober, my angel," returns Mr Bucket.
"I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife. Your wife 
have left me, since some minutes. They tell me downstairs that your wife is 
here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What is the intention of this 
fool's play, say then?" Mademoiselle demands, with her arms composedly 
crossed, but with something in her dark cheek beating like a clock.
Mr Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.
"Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!" cries Mademoiselle, with a toss of 
her head and a laugh. - "Leave me to pass downstairs, great pig." With a 
stamp of her foot, and a menace.
"Now, Mademoiselle," says Mr Bucket, in a cool determined way, "you go and 
sit down upon that sofy."
"I will not sit down upon nothing," she replies, with a shower of nods.
"Now, Mademoiselle," repeats Mr Bucket, making no demonstration, except 
with the finger; "you sit down upon that sofy."
"Why?"
"Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't need 
to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a foreigner, 
if I can. If I can't, I must be rough; and there's rougher ones outside. 
What I am to be, depends on you. So I recommend you, as a friend, afore 
another half a blessed moment has passed over your head, to go and sit down 
upon that sofy."
Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice, while that something 
in her cheek beats fast and hard, "You are a Devil."
"Now, you see," Mr Bucket proceeds approvingly "you're comfortable, and 
conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of your sense 
to do. So I'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this, Don't you talk 
too much. You're not expected to say anything here, and you can't keep too 
quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the less you Parlay, the better, you 
know." Mr Bucket is very complacent over this French explanation.
Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth, and her black eyes 
darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid state, with her 
hands clenched - and her feet too, one might suppose - muttering, "O, you 
Bucket, you are a Devil!"
"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," says Mr Bucket, and from this time 
forth the finger never rests, "this young woman, my lodger, was her 
Ladyship's maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this young woman, 
besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate against her Ladyship 
after being discharged - "
"Lie!" cries Mademoiselle. "I discharge myself."
"Now, why don't you take my advice?" returns Mr Bucket, in an impressive, 
almost in an imploring tone. "I'm surprised at the indiscreetness you 
commit. You'll say something that'll be used against you, you know. You're 
sure to come to it. Never you mind what I say, till it's given in evidence. 
It's not addressed to you."
"Discharge, too!" cries Mademoiselle, furiously, "by her Ladyship! Eh, my 
faith, a pretty Ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by remaining with 
a Ladyship so infame!"
"Upon my soul I wonder at you!" Mr Bucket remonstrates. "I thought the 
French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female going on 
like that, before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!"
"He is a poor abused!" cries Mademoiselle. "I spit upon his house, upon his 
name, upon his imbecility," all of which she makes the carpet represent. 
"Oh, that he is a great man! O yes, superb! O heaven! Bah!"
"Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr Bucket, "this intemperate 
foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established a 
claim upon Mr Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion I told 
you of, at his chambers; though she was liberally paid for her time and 
trouble."
"Lie!" cries Mademoiselle. "I ref-use his money altogezzer."
("If you will Parlay, you know," says Mr Bucket, parenthetically, "you must 
take the consequences.) Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir Leicester 
Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this deed and blinding 
me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house, in that capacity, at 
the time that she was hovering about the chambers of the deceased Mr 
Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half 
frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer."
"Lie!" cries Mademoiselle. "All lie!"
"The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you know 
under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close with your 
attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case was entrusted 
to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the papers, and everything. 
From information I received (from a clerk in the same house) I took George 
into custody, as having been seen hanging about there, on the night, and at 
very nigh the time, of the murder; also, as having been overheard in high 
words with the deceased on former occasions - even threatening him, as the 
witness made out. If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the 
first I believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly No; but he 
might be, notwithstanding; and there was enough against him to make it my 
duty to take him, and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!"
As Mr Bucket bends forward in some excitement - for him - and inaugurates 
what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his forefinger in the air, 
Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes upon him with a dark frown, and 
sets her dry lips closely and firmly together.
"I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night, and found this 
young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs Bucket. She had made a mighty 
show of being fond of Mrs Bucket from her first offering herself as our 
lodger, but that night she made more than ever - in fact overdid it. 
Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of 
the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn. By the living Lord it flashed upon me, as I 
sat opposite to her at the table and saw her with a knife in her hand, that 
she had done it!"
Mademoiselle is hardly audible, in straining through her teeth and lips the 
words "You are a Devil."
"Now where," pursues Mr Bucket, had she been on the night of the murder? 
She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have since found, 
both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an artful customer to deal 
with, and that proof would be very difficult; and I laid a trap for her - 
such a trap as I never laid yet, and such a venture as I never made yet. I 
worked it out in my mind while I was talking to her at supper. When I went 
upstairs to bed, our house being small and this young woman's ears sharp, I 
stuffed the sheet into Mrs Bucket's mouth that she shouldn't say a word of 
surprise, and told her all about it. - My dear, don't you give your mind to 
that again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles." Mr Bucket, 
breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon Mademoiselle, and laid his 
heavy hand upon her shoulder.
"What is the matter with you now?" she asks him.
"Don't you think any more," returns Mr Bucket, with admonitory finger, "of 
throwing yourself out of window. That's what's the matter with me. Come! 
Just take my arm. You needn't get up; I'll sit down by you. Now, take my 
arm, will you. I'm a married man, you know; you're acquainted with my wife. 
Just take my arm."
Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound, she 
struggles with herself and complies.
"Now we're all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case could 
never have been the case it is, but for Mrs Bucket, who is a woman in fifty 
thousand - in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw this young woman off 
her guard, I have never set foot in our house since; though I've 
communicated with Mrs Bucket, in the baker's loaves and in the milk, as 
often as required. My whispered words to Mrs Bucket, when she had the sheet 
in her mouth were, 'My dear, can you throw her off continually with natural 
accounts of my suspicions against George, and this, and that, and t'other? 
Can you do without rest, and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you 
undertake to say, She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be 
my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than 
from death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I 
have got her, if she did this murder?' Mrs Bucket says to me, as well as 
she could speak, on account of the sheet, 'Bucket, I can!' And she has 
acted up to it glorious!"
"Lies!" Mademoiselle interposes. "All lies, my friend!"
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out under 
these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous young woman 
would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right? I was right. What 
does she try to do? Don't let it give you a turn? To throw the murder on 
her Ladyship."
Sir Leicester rises from his chair, and staggers down again.
"And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here, which 
was done a' purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir Leicester 
Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards you, and look at 
the letter sent to me, each with the two words, Lady Dedlock, in it. Open 
the one directed to yourself, which I stopped this very morning, and read 
the three words, Lady Dedlock, Murderess, in it. These letters have been 
falling about like a shower of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs 
Bucket, from her spy-place, having seen them all written by this young 
woman? What do you say to Mrs Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured 
the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets, and what not? What do 
you say to Mrs Bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this 
young woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?" Mr Bucket asks, triumphant in 
his admiration of his lady's genius.
Two things are especially observable, as Mr Bucket proceeds to a 
conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful 
right of property in Mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosphere she 
breathes seems to narrow and contract about her, as if a close net, or a 
pall, were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure.
"There's no doubt that her Ladyship was on the spot at the eventful 
period," says Mr Bucket; "and my foreign friend here saw her, I believe 
from the upper part of the staircase. Her Ladyship and George and my 
foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's heels. But that don't 
signify any more, so I'll not go into it. I found the wadding of the pistol 
with which the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the 
printed description of your house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you'll 
say, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is 
so thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the rest 
of that leaf, and when Mrs Bucket puts the pieces together and finds the 
wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer street."
"These are very long lies," Mademoiselle interposes. "You prose great deal. 
Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking always?"
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," proceeds Mr Bucket, who delights in a 
full title, and does violence to himself when he dispenses with any 
fragment of it, "the last point in the case which I am now going to 
mention, shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never doing a 
thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday, without her 
knowledge, when she was looking at the funeral, in company with my wife, 
who planned to take her there; and I had so much to convict her, and I saw 
such an expression in her face, and my mind so rose against her malice 
towards her Ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bringing 
down what you may call retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger 
hand with less experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last 
night, when her Ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come 
home, looking - why, Lord! a man might almost say like Venus rising from 
the ocean, it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being 
charged with a murder of which she was innocent, that I felt quite to want 
to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester Dedlock, 
Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here proposed to Mrs 
Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that they should go, per buss, 
a little ways into the country, and take tea at a very decent house of 
entertainment. Now, near that house of entertainment there's a piece of 
water. At tea, my prisoner got up to fetch her pocket-handkercher from the 
bedroom where the bonnets was; she was rather a long time gone, and came 
back a little out of wind. As soon as they came home this was reported to 
me by Mrs Bucket, along with her observations and suspicious. I had the 
piece of water dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, 
and the pocket-pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen 
hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and hold 
it steady, and I sha'n't hurt you!"
In a trice Mr Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. "That's one," says Mr 
Bucket. "Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!"
He rises; she rises too. "Where," she asks him, darkening her large eyes 
until their drooping lids almost conceal them - and yet they stare, "where 
is your false, your treacherous and cursed wife?"
"She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr Bucket. "You'll see 
her there, my dear."
"I would like to kiss her?" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-
like.
"You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr Bucket.
"I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her, limb from 
limb."
"Bless you, darling," says Mr Bucket, with the greatest composure; "I'm 
fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity 
against one another, when you do differ. You don't mind me half so much, do 
you?"
"No. Though you are a Devil still."
"Angel and devil by turns, eh?" cries Mr Bucket. "But I am in my regular 
employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy. I've been lady's 
maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to the bonnet? There's a 
cab at the door."
Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes 
herself perfectly neat in one shake, and looks, to do her justice, 
uncommonly genteel.
"Listen then, my angel," says she, after several sarcastic nods. "You are 
very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?"
Mr Bucket answers, "Not exactly."
"That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you make a 
honourable lady of Her?"
"Don't be so malicious," says Mr Bucket.
"Or a haughty gentleman of Him?" cries Mademoiselle, referring to Sir 
Leicester with ineffable disdain. "Eh! O then regard him! The poor infant! 
Ha! ha! ha!"
"Come, come, why this is worse Parlaying than the other," says Mr Bucket. 
"Come along!"
"You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me. It is 
but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu you old man, 
grey. I pity you, and I des-pise you!"
With these last words, she snaps her teeth together, as if her mouth closed 
with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr Bucket gets her out, but 
he accomplishes that feat in a manner peculiar to himself; enfolding and 
pervading her like a cloud, and hovering away with her as if he were a 
homely Jupiter, and she the object of his affections.
Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude as though he were 
still listening, and his attention were still occupied. At length he gazes 
round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises unsteadily to his 
feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps, supporting himself by 
the table. Then he stops; and, with more of those inarticulate sounds, 
lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at something.
Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, the 
noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, 
officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heirlooms, thousands 
of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. But if such 
shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow 
which he can name with something like distinctness even yet, and to which 
alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair, and his extended arms.
It is she, in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a 
main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish 
thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired, honoured, and set up for the 
world to respect. It is she, who, at the core of all the constrained 
formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living 
tenderness and love, susceptible as nothing else is of being struck with 
the agony he feels. He sees her, almost to the exclusion of himself; and 
cannot bear to look upon her cast down from the high place she has graced 
so well.
And, even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his 
suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like distinctness 
in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of mourning and 
compassion rather than reproach.


Chapter 55

Flight

Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow, as 
just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep preparatory 
to his field-day, when, through the night and along the freezing wintry 
roads, a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire, making its way towards 
London.
Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and a 
glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide night-
landscape, turning the moon paler; but, as yet, such things are non-
existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected. Preparations are 
afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and 
their not yet united piers desolately look at one another over roads and 
streams, like brick and mortar couples with an obstacle to their union; 
fragments of embankments are thrown up, and left as precipices with 
torrents of rusty carts and barrows tumbling over them; tripods of tall 
poles appear on hill-tops, where there are rumours of tunnels; everything 
looks chaotic, and abandoned in fell hopelessness. Along the freezing 
roads, and through the night, the post-chaise makes its way without a 
railroad on its mind.
Mrs Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits within the 
chaise; and by her side sits Mrs Bagnet with her grey cloak and umbrella. 
The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as being exposed to the 
weather, and a primitive sort of perch more in accordance with her usual 
course of travelling; but Mrs Rouncewell is too thoughtful of her comfort 
to admit of her proposing it. The old lady cannot make enough of the old 
girl. She sits, in her stately manner, holding her hand, and, regardless of 
its roughness, puts it often to her lips. "You are a mother, my dear soul," 
says she many times, "and you found out my George's mother!"
"Why, George," returns Mrs Bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am, and 
when he said at our house to my Woolwich, that of all the things my 
Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the comfortablest 
would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line into his mother's face, 
or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt sure, from his way, that 
something fresh had brought his own mother into his mind. I had often known 
him say to me, in past times, that he had behaved bad to her."
"Never, my dear!" returns Mrs Rouncewell, bursting into tears "My blessing 
on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me, was my George! 
But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild, and went for a soldier. 
And I know he waited at first, in letting us know about himself, till he 
should rise to be an officer; and when he didn't rise, I know he considered 
himself beneath us, and wouldn't be a disgrace to us. For he had a lion 
heart, had my George, always from a baby!"
The old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls, all in 
a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay good-humoured 
clever lad he was; how they all took to him, down at Chesney Wold; how Sir 
Leicester took to him when he was a young gentleman; how the dogs took to 
him; how even the people, who had been angry with him, forgave him the 
moment he was gone, poor boy. And now to see him after all, and in a prison 
too! And the broad stomacher heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned 
figure bends under its load of affectionate distress.
Mrs Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves the old 
housekeeper to her emotions for a little while - not without passing the 
back of her hand across her own motherly eyes - and presently chirps up in 
her cheery manner:
"So I says to George when I goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be 
smoking his pipe outside), 'What ails you this afternoon, George, for 
gracious sake? I have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in 
season and out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so 
melancholy penitent.' 'Why, Mrs Bagnet,' says George, 'it's because I am 
melancholly and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.' 'What 
have you done, old fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs Bagnet,' says George, shaking 
his head, 'what I have done has been done this many a long year, and is 
best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to Heaven, it won't be for 
being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no more. Now, ma'am, when 
George says to me that it's best not tried to be undone now, I have my 
thoughts as I have often had before, and I draw it out of George how he 
comes to have such things on him that afternoon. Then George tells me that 
he has seen by chance, at the lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has 
brought his mother plain before him; and he runs on about that old lady 
till he quite forgets himself, and paints her picture to me as she used to 
be, years upon years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is 
this old lady he has seen? And George tells me it's Mrs Rouncewell, 
housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down at 
Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before that 
he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night, 'Lignum, 
that's his mother for five-and-for-ty pound!'"
All this Mrs Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least within the 
last four hours. Trilling it out, like a kind of bird; with a pretty high 
note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the hum of the wheels.
"Bless you, and thank you," says Mrs Rouncewell. "Bless you, and thank you, 
my worthy soul!"
"Dear heart!" cries Mrs Bagnet, in the most natural manner. "No thanks to 
me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so ready to pay 'em! 
And mind once more, ma'am, what you had best do on finding George to be 
your own son, is, to make him - for your sake - have every sort of help to 
put himself in the right, and clear himself of a charge of which he is as 
innocent as you or me. It won't do to have truth and justice on his side; 
he must have law and lawyers," exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded 
that the latter form a separate establishment, and have dissolved 
partnership with truth and justice for ever and a day.
"He shall have," says Mrs Rouncewell, "all the help that can be got for him 
in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and thankfully, to procure 
it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole family will do their best. I -
 I know something, my dear; and will make my own appeal, as his mother 
parted from him all these years, and finding him in a jail at last."
The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying this, her 
broken words, and her wringing of her hands, make a powerful impression on 
Mrs Bagnet, and would astonish her but that she refers them all to her 
sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs Bagnet wonders, too, why Mrs 
Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "My Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over 
and over again.
The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise comes 
rolling on through the early mist, like the ghost of a chaise departed. It 
has plenty of spectral company, in ghosts of trees and hedges, slowly 
vanishing and giving place to the realities of day. London reached, the 
travellers alight; the old housekeeper in great tribulation and confusion; 
Mrs Bagnet, quite fresh and collected - as she would be, if her next point, 
with no new equipage and outfit, were the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of 
Ascension, Hong Kong, or any other military station.
But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is confined, the old 
lady has managed to draw about her, with her lavender-coloured dress, much 
of the staid calmness which is its usual accompaniment. A wonderfully 
grave, precise, and handsome piece of old china she looks; though her heart 
beats fast, and her stomacher is ruffled more than even the remembrance of 
this wayward son has ruffled it these many years.
Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the act of 
coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to him to say 
nothing; assenting, with a nod, he suffers them to enter as he shuts the 
door.
So, George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be alone, 
does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old housekeeper looks at 
him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite enough for Mrs Bagnet's 
confirmation; even if she could see the mother and the son together, 
knowing what she knows, and doubt their relationship.
Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word betrays 
her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all unconscious, and only 
her fluttering hands give utterance to her emotions. But they are very 
eloquent; very, very eloquent. Mrs Bagnet understands them. They speak of 
gratitude, of joy, of grief, of hope; of inextinguishable affection, 
cherished with no return since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a 
better son loved less, and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and 
they speak in such touching language, that Mrs Bagnet's eyes brim up with 
tears, and they run glistening down her sun-brown face.
"George Rouncewell! O my dear child, turn and look at me!"
The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls down on 
his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether in the first 
association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands together as a child 
does when it says its prayers, and raising them towards her breast, bows 
down his head, and cries.
"My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite still, 
where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a man, too, 
grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he must be, if it 
pleased God he was alive!"
She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All that time 
the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the whitened wall, leans 
her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with her serviceable grey 
cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of old girls as she is.
"Mother," says the trooper, when they are more composed; "forgive me first 
of all, for I know my need of it."
Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has done 
it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these many years, 
that he was her beloved son George. She has never believed any ill of him, 
never. If she had died without this happiness - and she is an old woman 
now, and can't look to live very long - she would have blessed him with her 
last breath, if she had had her senses, as her beloved son George.
"Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my reward; but 
of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a purpose in me, too. When 
I left home I didn't care much, mother - I am afraid not a great deal - for 
leaving; and went away and 'listed, harum-scarum, making believe to think 
that I cared for nobody, no not I, and that nobody cared for me."
The trooper has dried his eyes, and put away his handkerchief: but there is 
an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of expressing himself 
and carrying himself, and the softened tone in which he speaks, interrupted 
occasionally by a half-stifled sob.
"So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had 'listed 
under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I thought I 
would write home next year, when I might be better off; and when that year 
was out I thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; 
and when that year was out again, perhaps I didn't think much about it. So 
on, from year to year, through a service of ten years, till I began to get 
older, and to ask myself why should I ever write?"
"I don't find any fault, child - but not to ease my mind, George? Not a 
word to your loving mother, who was growing older, too?"
This almost overturns the trooper afresh; but he sets himself up with a 
great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.
"Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small consolation 
then in hearing anything about me. There were you, respected and esteemed. 
There was my brother, as I read in chance north-country papers now and 
then, rising to be prosperous and famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, 
unsettled, not self-made like him, but self-unmade - all my earlier 
advantages thrown away, all my little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up 
but what unfitted me for most things that I could think of. What business 
had I to make myself known? After letting all that time go by me, what good 
could come of it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time 
(being a man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for 
me; and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your 
mind as it was."
The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head; and taking one of his powerful 
hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.
"No, I don't say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be so. I 
said just now what good could come of it? Well, my dear mother, some good 
might have come of it to myself - and there was the meanness of it. You 
would have sought me out; you would have purchased my discharge; you would 
have taken me down to Chesney Wold; you would have brought me and my 
brother and my brother's family together; you would all have considered 
anxiously how to do something for me, and set me up as a respectable 
civilian. But how could any of you feel sure of me, when I couldn't so much 
as feel sure of myself? How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and 
a discredit to you, an idle dragooning chap, who was an incumbrance and a 
discredit to himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my 
brother's children in the face, and pretend to set them an example - I, the 
vagabond boy, who had run away from home, and been the grief and 
unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No, George.' Such were my words, mother, 
when I passed this in review before me: 'You have made your bed. Now, lie 
upon it.'"
Mrs Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the old 
girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "I told you so!" 
The old girl relieves her feelings, and testifies her interest in the 
conversation, by giving the trooper a great poke between the shoulders with 
her umbrella; this action she afterwards repeats, at intervals, in a 
species of affectionate lunacy: never failing, after the administration of 
each of these remonstrances, to resort to the whitened wall and the grey 
cloak again.
"This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best amends 
was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I should have 
done it (though I have been to see you more than once down at Chesney Wold, 
when you little thought of me), but for my old comrade's wife here, who I 
find has been too many for me. But I thank her for it. I thank you for it, 
Mrs Bagnet, with all my heart and might."
To which Mrs Bagnet responds with two pokes.
And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear recovered 
boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy close of her life, 
and every fond name she can think of, that he must be governed by the best 
advice obtainable by money and influence; that he must yield up his case to 
the greatest lawyers that can be got; that he must act, in this serious 
plight, as he shall be advised to act; and must not be self-willed, however 
right, but must promise to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and 
suffering until he is released, or he will break her heart.
"Mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper, stopping 
her with a kiss; "tell me what I shall do, and I'll make a late beginning, 
and do it. Mrs Bagnet, you'll take care of my mother, I know?"
A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.
"If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr Jarndyce and Miss Summerson, she 
will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the best 
advice and assistance."
"And, George," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for your 
brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me - out in the world 
beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know much of it myself - and 
will be of great service."
"Mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?"
"Surely not, my dear."
"Then grant me this one great favour. Don't let my brother know."
"Not know what, my dear?"
"Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can't bear it; I can't make up my mind 
to it. He has proved himself so different from me, and has done so much to 
raise himself while I have been soldiering, that I haven't brass enough in 
my composition, to see him in this place and under this charge. How could a 
man like him be expected to have any pleasure in such a discovery? It's 
impossible. No, keep my secret from him, mother; do me a greater kindness 
than I deserve, and keep my secret from my brother, of all men."
"But not always, dear George?"
"Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all - though I may come to ask that 
too - but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it's ever broke to him that his 
Rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish," says the trooper, shaking 
his head very doubtfully, "to break it myself; and be governed, as to 
advancing or retreating, by the way in which he seems to take it."
As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth of it 
is recognised in Mrs Bagnet's face, his mother yields her implicit assent 
to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.
"In all other respects, my dear mother, I'll be as tractable and obedient 
as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am ready even for 
the lawyers. I have been drawing up," he glances at his writing on the 
table, "an exact account of what I knew of the deceased, and how I came to 
be involved in this unfortunate affair. It's entered, plain and regular, 
like an orderly-book; not a word in it but what's wanted for the facts. I 
did intend to read it, straight on end, whensoever I was called upon to say 
anything in my defence. I hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no 
longer a will of my own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give 
my promise not to have any."
Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time being on 
the wane, Mrs Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again the old lady 
hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the trooper holds her to his 
broad chest.
"Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs Bagnet?"
"I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some 
business there, that must be looked to directly," Mrs Rouncewell answers.
"Will you see my mother safe there, in a coach, Mrs Bagnet? But of course I 
know you will. Why should I ask it!"
Why indeed, Mrs Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.
"Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you. Kisses to 
Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the hand to Lignum, 
and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand pound in gold, my 
dear!" So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the old girl's tanned 
forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.
No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce Mrs 
Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping out 
cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion, and handing Mrs Rouncewell 
up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off; arriving soon 
afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family, and falling to washing the 
greens as if nothing had happened.
My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with the 
murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is looking at 
the spot where he stood upon the hearth, studying her so leisurely, when a 
tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs Rouncewell. What has brought Mrs 
Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?
"Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. O, my Lady, may I beg a word with you?"
What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? 
Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she 
falter in this manner, and look at her with such strange mistrust!
"What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath."
"O, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son - my youngest, who went away for 
a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison."
"For debt?"
"O no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful."
"For what is he in prison then?"
"Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as - as I am. 
Accused of the murder of Mr Tulkinghorn."
What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does she 
come so close? What is the letter that she holds?
"Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must have a 
heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I was in this 
family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But think of my dear son 
wrongfully accused."
"I do not accuse him."
"No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger. O Lady 
Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say it!"
What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the person she 
petitions, to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust? Her Lady's 
handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with fear.
"My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in my old 
age, and the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so solemn that 
I never heard the like in all these years. Night after night, as it has 
fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your rooms, but last night it was 
awfullest. And as it fell dark last night, my Lady, I got this letter."
"What letter is it?"
"Hush! Hush!" The housekeeper looks round, and answers in a frightened 
whisper: "My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don't believe what's 
written in it, I know it can't be true, I am sure and certain that it is 
not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a heart to pity me. If 
you know of anything that is not known to others, if you have any 
suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and any reason for keeping it in 
your own breast, O my dear Lady, think of me, and conquer that reason, and 
let it be known! This is the most I consider possible. I know you are not a 
hard lady, but you go your own way always, without help, and you are not 
familiar with your friends; and all who admire you - and all do - as a 
beautiful and elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves, 
who can't be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry 
reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray, O 
pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been passed in this 
family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to clear my son! My 
Lady, my good Lady," the old housekeeper pleads with genuine simplicity, "I 
am so humble in my place, and you are by nature so high and distant, that 
you may not think what I feel for my child; but I feel so much, that I have 
come here to make so bold as to beg and pray you not to be scornful of us, 
if you can do us any right or justice at this fearful time!"
Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter from 
her hand.
"Am I to read this?"
"When I am gone, my Lady, if you please; and then remembering the most that 
I consider possible."
"I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve, that can affect 
your son. I have never accused him."
"My Lady, you may pity him the more, under a false accusation, after 
reading the letter."
The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth she is 
not a hard lady naturally; and the time has been when the sight of the 
venerable figure sueing to her with such strong earnestness would have 
moved her to great compassion. But, so long accustomed to suppress emotion, 
and keep down reality; so long schooled for her own purposes, in that 
destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart, like 
flies in amber, and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and 
bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless; she had 
subdued even her wonder until now.
She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account of the 
discovery of the body, as it lay face downward on the floor, shot through 
the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with the word Murderess 
attached.
It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground, she 
knows not; but it lies where it fell, when a servant stands before her 
announcing a young man of the name of Guppy. The words have probably been 
repeated several times, for they are ringing in her head before she begins 
to understand them.
"Let him come in!"
He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from the 
floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr Guppy she is 
the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud, chilling state.
"Your Ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from one 
who has never been very welcome to your Ladyship - which he don't complain 
of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any particular 
reason on the face of things, why he should be; but I hope when I mention 
my motives to your Ladyship, you will not find fault with me," says Mr 
Guppy.
"Do so."
"Thank your Ladyship. I ought first to explain to your Ladyship," Mr Guppy 
sits on the edge of a chair, and puts his hat on the carpet at his feet, 
"that Miss Summerson, whose image as I formerly mentioned to your Ladyship 
was at one period of my life imprinted on my art until erased by 
circumstances over which I had no control, communicated to me, after I had 
the pleasure of waiting on your Ladyship last, that she particularly wished 
me to take no steps whatever in any matter at all relating to her. And Miss 
Summerson's wishes being to me a law (except as connected with 
circumstances over which I have no control), I consequently never expected 
to have the distinguished honour of waiting on your Ladyship again."
And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.
"And yet I am here now," Mr Guppy admits. "My object being to communicate 
to your Ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am here."
He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly.
"Nor can I," Mr Guppy returns, with a sense of injury upon him, "too 
particularly request your Ladyship to take particular notice that it's no 
personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no interested views of 
my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for my promise to Miss 
Summerson, and my keeping of it sacred, - I, in point of fact, shouldn't 
have darkened these doors again, but should have seen 'em further first."
Mr Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair with 
both hands.
"Your Ladyship will remember when I mention it, that the last time I was 
here, I run against a party very eminent in our profession, and whose loss 
we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time apply himself to 
cutting in against me in a way that I will call sharp practice, and did 
make it, at every turn and point, extremely difficult for me to be sure 
that I hadn't inadvertently led up to something contrary to Miss 
Summerson's wishes. Self-praise is no recommendation; but I may say for 
myself that I am not so bad a man of business neither."
Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr Guppy immediately withdraws 
his eyes from her face, and looks anywhere else.
"Indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea what that 
party was up to in combination with others, that until the loss which we 
all deplore, I was gravelled - an expression which your Ladyship, moving in 
the higher circles, will be so good as to consider tantamount to knocked 
over. Small likewise - a name by which I refer to another party, a friend 
of mine that your Ladyship is not acquainted with - got to be so close and 
double-faced that at times it wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his ed. 
However, what with the exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the 
help of a mutual friend by the name of Mr Tony Weevle (who is of a high 
aristocratic turn, and has your Ladyship's portrait always hanging up in 
his room), I have now reasons for an apprehension, as to which I come to 
put your Ladyship upon your guard. First, will your Ladyship allow me to 
ask you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don't 
mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss 
Barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower 
extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a Guy?"
"No!"
"Then I assure your Ladyship that such visitors have been here and have 
been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited at the 
corner of the square till they came out, and took half-an-hour's turn 
afterwards to avoid them."
"What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand you. 
What do you mean?"
"Your Ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no occasion 
for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my promise to Miss 
Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has dropped, and from what 
we have corkscrewed out of him) that those letters I was to have brought to 
your Ladyship were not destroyed when I supposed they were. That if there 
was anything to be blown upon, it is blown upon. That the visitors I have 
alluded to have been here this morning to make money of it. And that the 
money is made, or making."
Mr Guppy picks up his hat and rises.
"Your Ladyship, you know best, whether there's anything in what I say, or 
whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to Miss 
Summerson's wishes in letting things alone, and in undoing what I had begun 
to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In case I should be 
taking a liberty in putting your Ladyship on your guard when there's no 
necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should hope, to outlive my 
presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive your disapprobation. I now 
take my farewell of your Ladyship, and assure you that there's no danger of 
your ever being waited on by me again."
She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look; but when he has 
been gone a little while she rings her bell.
"Where is Sir Leicester?"
Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library, alone.
"Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"
Several on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them, which has 
been anticipated by Mr Guppy. Enough: he may go.
So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows 
his wrongs, her shame will be published - may be spreading while she thinks 
about it - and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so 
unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the 
murderess of her enemy.
Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often, wished him dead. Her 
enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes upon her, 
like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she recalls how she was 
secretly at his door that night, and how she may be represented to have 
sent her favourite girl away, so soon before, merely to release herself 
from observation, she shudders as if the hangman's hands were at her neck.
She has thrown herself upon the floor, and lies with her hair all wildly 
scattered, and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She rises up, 
hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks and moans. The 
horror that is upon her, is unutterable. If she really were the murderess, 
it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.
For, as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed, however 
subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been closed up by a 
gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing her from seeing any 
consequences beyond it; and as those consequences would have rushed in, in 
an unimagined flood, the moment the figure was laid low - which always 
happens when a murder is done; so, now she sees that when he used to be on 
the watch before her, and she used to think, "if some mortal stroke would 
but fall on this old man and take him from my way!" it was but wishing that 
all he held against her in his hand might be flung to the winds, and chance-
sown in many places. So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his 
death. What was his death but the keystone of a gloomy arch removed, and 
now the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and 
mangling piecemeal!
Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her, that from this 
pursuer, living or dead - obdurate and imperturbable before her in his well-
remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed, 
- there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she flies. The complication of 
her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; 
and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away, like 
a leaf before a mighty wind.
She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves them 
on her table.
"If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe that I am wholly 
innocent. Believe no other good of me; for I am innocent of nothing else 
that you have heard, or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me on 
that fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After he had left 
me, I went out, on pretence of walking in the garden where I sometimes 
walk, but really to follow him, and make one last petition that he would 
not protract the dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you 
do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next morning.
"I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his door, but there was 
no reply, and I came home.
"I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May you, in your just 
resentment, be able to forget the unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a 
most generous devotion - who avoids you, only with a deeper shame than that 
with which she hurries from herself - and who writes this last adieu!"
She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money, 
listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens and 
shuts the great door; flutters away, in the shrill, frosty wind.


Chapter 56

Pursuit

Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town-house stares at 
the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur, and gives no outward 
sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle, doors are battered 
at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers with skeleton throats, and 
peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly bloom upon them seen by daylight, 
when indeed these fascinating creatures look like Death and the Lady fused 
together, dazzle the eyes of men. Forth from the frigid Mews come easily 
swinging carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep 
sunk into downy hammercloths; and up behind mount luscious Mercuries, 
bearing sticks of state, and wearing cocked hats broadwise: a spectacle for 
the Angels.
The Dedlock town-house changes not externally, and hours pass before its 
exalted dulness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair, being subject 
to the prevalent complaint of boredom, and finding that disorder attacking 
her spirits with some virulence, ventures at length to repair to the 
library for change of scene. Her gentle tapping at the door producing no 
response, she opens it and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes possession.
The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the ancients, 
Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity, which impels her on all 
convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with a golden glass at 
her eye, peering into objects of every description. Certain it is that she 
avails herself of the present opportunity of hovering over her kinsman's 
letters and papers, like a bird; taking a short peck at this document, and 
a blink with her head on one side at that document, and hopping about from 
table to table, with her glass at her eye in an inquisitive and restless 
manner. In the course of these researches she stumbles over something; and 
turning her glass in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground 
like a felled tree.
Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of 
reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion. Servants 
tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors are sent for, 
and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not found. Nobody has 
seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her letter to Sir Leicester 
is discovered on her table; - but it is doubtful yet whether he has not 
received another missive from another world, requiring to be personally 
answered; and all the living languages, and all the dead, are as one to 
him.
They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put ice to 
his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit the day has ebbed 
away and it is night in his room, before his stertorous breathing lulls, or 
his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the candle that is occasionally 
passed before them. But when this change begins it goes on; and by and by 
he nods, or moves his eyes, or even his hand, in token that he hears and 
comprehends.
He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman; somewhat infirm, 
but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies upon his bed, 
an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself. His voice 
was rich and mellow: and he had so long been thoroughly persuaded of the 
weight and import to mankind of any word he said, that his words really had 
come to sound as if there were something in them. But now he can only 
whisper; and what he whispers sounds like what it is - mere jumble and 
jargon.
His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is the 
first fact he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it. After 
vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes signs for a 
pencil. So inexpressively, that they cannot at first understand him; it is 
his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants, and brings him a slate.
After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it, in a hand that is 
not his, "Chesney Wold?"
No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library, this 
morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to London, and is 
able to attend upon him.
"It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You will 
be much better tomorrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say so." This, 
with the tears coursing down her fair old face.
After making a survey of the room, and looking with particular attention 
all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes "My Lady."
"My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and don't know 
of your illness yet."
He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try to 
quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their looking 
at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate once more, and 
writes "My Lady. For God's sake, where?" And makes an imploring moan.
It is though better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady Dedlock's 
letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise. She opens it for 
him, and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it twice by a great 
effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be seen, and lies moaning. He 
passes into a kind of relapse, or into a swoon; and it is an hour before he 
opens his eyes, reclining on his faithful and attached old servant's arm. 
The doctors know that he is best with her; and, when not actively engaged 
about him, stand aloof.
The slate comes into requisition again; but the word he wants to write, he 
cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction, at this pass, 
are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad, in the necessity he 
feels for haste, and the inability under which he labours of expressing to 
do what, or to fetch whom. He has written the letter B, and there stopped. 
Of a sudden, in the height of his misery, he puts Mr before it. The old 
housekeeper suggests Bucket. Thank Heaven! That's his meaning.
Mr Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come up?
There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester's burning wish to 
see him, or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of every one 
but the housekeeper. It is speedily done; and Mr Bucket appears. Of all men 
upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his high estate to place his 
sole trust and reliance upon this man.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sorry to see you like this. I hope 
you'll cheer up. I'm sure you will, on account of the family credit."
Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hand, and looks intently in his face 
while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr Bucket's eye, as he 
reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is still glancing 
over the words, he indicates, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I understand 
you."
Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. "Full forgiveness. Find - " Mr Bucket 
stops his hand.
"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll find her. But my search after her 
must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost."
With the quickness of thought he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock's look 
towards a little box upon a table.
"Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it with one 
of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? To be sure. Take the notes 
out? So I will. Count 'em? That's soon done. Twenty and thirty's fifty, and 
twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twenty, and forty's one sixty. Take 'em 
for expenses? That I'll do, and render an account of course. Don't spare 
money? No, I won't."
The velocity and certainty of Mr Bucket's interpretation on all these heads 
is little short of miraculous. Mrs Rouncewell, who holds the light, is 
giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands, as he starts up, furnished 
for his journey.
"You're George's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, I believe?" 
says Mr Bucket, aside, with his hat already on, and buttoning his coat.
"Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother."
"So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well, then, 
I'll tell you something. You needn't be distressed no more. Your son's all 
right. Now don't you begin a-crying; because what you've got to do is to 
take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you won't do that by 
crying. As to your son, he's all right, I tell you; and he sends his loving 
duty, and hoping you're the same. He's discharged honourable; that's about 
what he is; with no more imputation on his character than there is on 
yours, and yours is a tidy one, I'll bet a pound. You may trust me, for I 
took your son. He conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; 
and he's a fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady, and you're a 
mother and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a 
caravan. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you've trusted to me, I'll go 
through with. Don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right or 
left; or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave, till I have found what I go 
in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on your part? Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you better, and these family 
affairs smoothed over - as, Lord! many other family affairs equally has 
been, and equally will be, to the end of time."
With this peroration, Mr Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out, looking 
steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night in quest of 
the fugitive.
His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock's rooms, and look all 
over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The rooms are in 
darkness now; and to see Mr Bucket with a wax-light in his hand, holding it 
above his head, and taking a sharp mental inventory of the many delicate 
objects so curiously at variance with himself, would be to see a sight, - 
which nobody does see, as he is particular to lock himself in.
"A spicy boudoir this," says Mr Bucket, who feels in a manner furbished up 
in his French by the blow of the morning. "Must have cost a sight of money. 
Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must have been hard put to it!"
Opening and shutting table-drawers, and looking into caskets and jewel-
cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors, and moralises 
thereon.
"One might suppose I was a moving in the fashionable circles, and getting 
myself up for Almack's," says Mr Bucket. "I begin to think I must be a 
swell in the Guards, without knowing it."
Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner drawer. 
His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can scarcely feel, they 
are so light and soft within it, comes upon a white handkerchief.
"Hum! Let's have a look at you," says Mr Bucket, putting down the light. 
"What should you be kept by yourself for? What's your motive? Are you her 
Ladyship's property, or somebody else's? You've got a mark upon you, 
somewheres or another, I suppose?"
He finds it as he speaks, "Esther Summerson."
"Oh!" says Mr Bucket, pausing with his finger at his ear. "Come, I'll take 
you."
He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has carried 
them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it, glides away after 
some five minutes in all, and passes into the street. With a glance upward 
at the dimly lighted windows of Sir Leicester's room, he sets off, full 
swing, to the nearest coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and 
directs to be driven to the Shooting Gallery. Mr Bucket does not claim to 
be a scientific judge of horses; but he lays out a little money on the 
principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of the 
subject in the remark, that when he see a horse as can go, he knows him.
His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering over the 
stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his keen eyes to bear 
on every slinking creature whom he passes in the midnight streets, and even 
on the lights in upper windows where people are going or gone to bed, and 
on all the turnings that he rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on 
the earth where the snow lies thin - for something may present itself to 
assist him, anywhere - he dashes to his destination at such a speed, that 
when he stops, the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.
"Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I'll be back."
He runs up the long wooden entry, and finds the trooper smoking his pipe.
"I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my lad. I 
haven't a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman. Miss Summerson 
that was here when Gridley died - that was the name, I know - all right! - 
where does she live?"
The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address near Oxford-
street.
"You won't repent it, George. Good night!"
He is off again with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by the 
frosty fire, staring at him open-mouthed; and gallops away again, and gets 
out in a cloud of steam again.
Mr Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed; rises 
from his book, on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell; and comes down to 
the door in his dressing-gown.
"Don't be alarmed, sir." In a moment his visitor is confidential with him 
in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the lock. 
"I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket. Look at that 
handkerchief, sir; Miss Esther Summerson's. Found it myself put away in a 
drawer of Lady Dedlock's, quarter of an hour ago. Not a moment to lose. 
Matter of life or death. You know Lady Dedlock?"
"Yes."
"There has been a discovery there, today. Family affairs have come out. Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit - apoplexy or paralysis - and 
couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been lost. Lady Dedlock 
disappeared this afternoon, and left a letter for him that looks bad. Run 
your eye over it. Here it is!"
Mr Jarndyce having read it, asks him what he thinks?
"I don't know. It looks like suicide. Anyways there's more and more danger, 
every minute, of its drawing to that. I'd give a hundred pound an hour to 
have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr Jarndyce, I am employed by 
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow her and find her - to save her, 
and take her his forgiveness. I have money and full power, but I want 
something else. I want Miss Summerson."
Mr Jarndyce in a troubled voice, repeats "Miss Summerson?"
"Now, Mr Jarndyce;" Mr Bucket has read his face with the greatest attention 
all along; "I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane heart, and under such 
pressing circumstances as don't often happen. If ever delay was dangerous, 
it's dangerous now; and if ever you couldn't afterwards forgive yourself 
for causing it, this is the time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, 
a hundred pound a-piece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock 
disappeared. I am charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all 
the rest that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion 
of murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to 
desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady, answering to 
the description of a young lady that she has a tenderness for - I ask no 
question, and I say no more than that - she will give me credit for being 
friendly. Let me come up with her, and he able to have the hold upon her of 
putting that young lady for'ard, and I'll save her and prevail with her if 
she is alive. Let me come up with her alone -a harder matter - and I'll do 
my best; but I don't answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it's 
getting on for one o'clock. When one strikes, there's another hour gone; 
and it's worth a thousand pound now, instead of a hundred."
This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot he questioned. 
Mr Jarndyce begs him to remain there, while he speaks to Miss Summerson. Mr 
Bucket says he will; but acting on his usual principle, does no such thing -
 following upstairs instead, and keeping his man in sight. So he remains, 
dodging and lurking about in the gloom of the staircase, while they confer. 
In a very little time, Mr Jarndyce comes down, and tells him that Miss 
Summerson will join him directly, and place herself under his protection, 
to accompany him where he pleases. Mr Bucket, satisfied, expresses high 
approval; and awaits her coming at the door.
There, he mounts a high tower in his mind, and looks out, far and wide. 
Many solitary figures he perceives, creeping through the streets; many 
solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks. But 
the figure that he seeks, is not among them. Other solitaries he perceives, 
in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by the 
river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tide, 
more solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention.
Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the 
handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able, with an enchanted 
power, to bring before him the place where she found it, and the night 
landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he 
descry her there? On the waste, where the brick-kilns are burning with a 
pale blue flare; where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the 
bricks are made, are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water 
are hard frozen, and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all 
day, looks like an instrument of human torture; - traversing this deserted 
blighted spot, there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, 
pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, 
from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is 
miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall, and out 
at the great door, of the Dedlock mansion.


Chapter 57

Esther's Narrative

I had gone to bed and fallen asleep, when my Guardian knocked at the door 
of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to speak to him 
and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or two of 
preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester Dedlock's. 
That my mother had fled. That a person was now at our door who was 
empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of affectionate 
protection and forgiveness, if he could possibly find her; and that I was 
sought for to accompany him, in the hope that my entreaties might prevail 
upon her, if his failed. Something to this general purpose I made out; but 
I was thrown into such a tumult of alarm, and hurry, and distress, that in 
spite of every effort I could make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, 
to myself, fully to recover my right mind until hours had passed.
But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley, or any 
one; and went down to Mr Bucket, who was the person entrusted with the 
secret. In taking me to him my Guardian told me this, and also explained 
how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr Bucket, in a low voice, by 
the light of my Guardian's candle, read to me, in the hall, a letter that 
my mother had left upon her table; and, I suppose within ten minutes of my 
having been aroused, I was sitting beside him, rolling swiftly through the 
streets.
His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me that 
a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without confusion, a 
few questions that he wished to ask me. These were, chiefly, whether I had 
had much communication with my mother (to whom he only referred as Lady 
Dedlock); when and where I had spoken with her last; and how she had become 
possessed of my handkerchief. When I had satisfied him on these points, he 
asked me particularly to consider - taking time to think - whether, within 
my knowledge, there was any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at 
all likely to confide, under circumstances of the last necessity. I could 
think of no one but my Guardian. But, by-and-by, I mentioned Mr Boythorn. 
He came into my mind, as connected with his old chivalrous manner of 
mentioning my mother's name; and with what my Guardian had informed me of 
his engagement to her sister, and his unconscious connection with her 
unhappy story.
My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation, that 
we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on again; and 
said to me, after considering within himself for a few moments, that he had 
made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite willing to tell me what his 
plan was, but I did not feel clear enough to understand it.
We had not driven very far from our lodgings, when we stopped in a bye 
street, at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr Bucket took me in 
and sat me in an armchair, by a bright fire. It was now past one, as I saw 
by the clock against the wall. Two police officers, looking in their 
perfectly neat uniform not at all like people who were up all night, were 
quietly writing at a desk; and the place seemed very quiet, altogether, 
except for some beating and calling out at distant doors underground, to 
which nobody paid any attention.
A third man in uniform, whom Mr Bucket called, and to whom he whispered his 
instructions, went out; and then the two others advised together, while one 
wrote from Mr Bucket's subdued dictation. It was a description of my mother 
that they were busy with; for Mr Bucket brought it to me when it was done, 
and read it in a whisper. It was very accurate indeed.
The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it out, and 
called in another man in uniform (there were several in an outer room) who 
took it up and went away with it. All this was done with the greatest 
despatch, and without the waste of a moment; yet nobody was at all hurried. 
As soon as the paper was sent out upon its travels, the two officers 
resumed their former quiet work of writing with neatness and care. Mr 
Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the soles of his boots, first one and 
then the other, at the fire.
"Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?" he asked me, as his eyes met 
mine. "It's a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out in."
I told him I cared for no weather, and was warmly clothed.
"It may be a long job," he observed; "but so that it ends well, never mind, 
miss."
"I pray to Heaven it may end well!" said I.
He nodded comfortingly. "You see, whatever you do, don't you go and fret 
yourself. You keep yourself cool, and equal for anything that may happen; 
and it'll be the better for you, the better for me, the better for Lady 
Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
He was really very kind and gentle; and as he stood before the fire warming 
his boots, and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a confidence in 
his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a quarter to two, when I 
heard horses' feet and wheels outside. "Now, Miss Summerson," said he, "we 
are off, if you please!"
He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out, and we 
found at the door a phaeton or barouche, with a postilion and post horses. 
Mr Bucket handed me in, and took his own seat on the box. The man in 
uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage, then handed him up a dark 
lantern at his request; and when he had given a few directions to the 
driver, we rattled away.
I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great 
rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets, that I soon lost all idea 
where we were; except that we had crossed and recrossed the river, and 
still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, water-side, dense neighbourhood 
of narrow thoroughfares, chequered by docks and basins, high piles of 
warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships. At length we stopped at the 
corner of a little slimy turning, which the wind from the river, rushing up 
it, did not purify; and I saw my companion, by the light of his lantern, in 
conference with several men, who looked like a mixture of police and 
sailors. Against the mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, 
on which I could discern the words, "Found Drowned;" and this, and an 
inscription about Drags, possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed 
forth in our visit to that place.
I had no need to remind myself that I was not there, by the indulgence of 
any feeling of mine, to increase the difficulties of the search, or to 
lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet; but what I 
suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still it was like 
the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long swollen sodden 
boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat, and whispered with Mr 
Bucket, who went away with him down some slippery steps - as if to look at 
something secret that he had to show. They came back, wiping their hands 
upon their coats, after turning over something wet; but thank God it was 
not what I feared!
After some further conference, Mr Bucket (whom everybody seemed to know and 
defer to) went in with the others at a door, and left me in the carriage; 
while the driver walked up and down by his horses, to warm himself. The 
tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it made; and I could hear it 
break at the end of the alley, with a little rush towards me. It never did 
so - and I thought it did so, hundreds of times, in what can have been at 
the most a quarter of an hour, and probably was less - but the thought 
shuddered through me that it would cast my mother at the horses' feet.
Mr Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant, darkened his 
lantern, and once more took his seat. "Don't you be alarmed, Miss 
Summerson, on account of our coming down here," he said, turning to me. "I 
only want to have everything in train, and to know that it is in train by 
looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!"
We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note of 
any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging from the 
general character of the streets. We called at another office or station 
for a minute, and crossed the river again. During the whole of this time, 
and during the whole search, my companion, wrapped up on the box, never 
relaxed in his vigilance a single moment; but, when we crossed the bridge 
he seemed, if possible, to be more on the alert than before. He stood up to 
look over the parapet; he alighted, and went back after a shadowy female 
figure that flitted past us; and he gazed into the profound black pit of 
water, with a face that made my heart die within me. The river had a 
fearful look, so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low 
flat lines of shore: so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of 
substance and shadow: so deathlike and mysterious. I have seen it many 
times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free from the 
impressions of that journey. In my memory, the lights upon the bridge are 
always burning dim; the cutting wind is eddying round the homeless woman 
whom we pass; the monotonous wheels are whirling on; and the light of the 
carriage lamps reflected back, looks palely in upon me - a face, rising out 
of the dreaded water.
Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at length from 
the pavement on to dark smooth roads, and began to leave the houses behind 
us. After a while, I recognised the familiar way to Saint Albans. At 
Barnet, fresh horses were ready for us, and we changed and went on. It was 
very cold indeed; and the open country was white with snow, though none was 
falling then.
"An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson," said Mr Bucket, 
cheerfully.
"Yes," I returned. "Have you gathered any intelligence?"
"None that can be quite depended on as yet," he answered; "but it's early 
times as yet."
He had gone into every late or early public-house where there was a light 
(there were not a few at that time, the road being then much frequented by 
drovers), and had got down to talk to the turnpike keepers. I had heard him 
ordering drink, and chinking money, and making himself agreeable and merry 
everywhere; but whenever he took his seat upon the box again, his face 
resumed its watchful steady look, and he always said to the driver in the 
same business tone, "Get on, my lad!"
With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o'clock and we were 
yet a few miles short of Saint Albans, when he came out of one of these 
houses and handed me in a cup of tea.
"Drink it, Miss Summerson, it'll do you good. You're beginning to get more 
yourself now, ain't you?"
I thanked him, and said I hoped so.
"You was what you may call stunned at first," he returned, "and Lord! no 
wonder. Don't speak loud, my dear. It's all right. She's on ahead."
I don't know what joyful exclamation I made, or was going to make, but he 
put up his finger, and I stopped myself.
"Passed through here on foot, this evening, about eight or nine. I heard of 
her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but couldn't make quite 
sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked her up at one place, and 
dropped her at another; but she's before us now, safe. Take hold of this 
cup and saucer, Ostler. Now, if you wasn't brought up to the butter trade, 
look out and see if you can catch half-a-crown in your t'other hand. One, 
two, three, and there you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!"
We were soon in Saint Albans, and alighted a little before day, when I was 
just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the night, and 
really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the carriage at the 
posting-house, and ordering fresh horses to be ready, my companion gave me 
his arm, and we went towards home.
"As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see," he observed, "I 
should like to know whether you've been asked for by any stranger answering 
the description, or whether Mr Jarndyce has. I don't much expect it, but it 
might be."
As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye - the day was 
now breaking - and reminded me that I had come down it one night, as I had 
reason for remembering, with my little servant and poor Jo: whom he called 
Toughey.
I wondered how he knew that.
"When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know," said Mr 
Bucket.
Yes, I remembered that too, very well.
"That was me," said Mr Bucket.
Seeing my surprise, he went on:
"I drove down in a gig that afternoon, to look after that boy. You might 
have heard my wheels when you came out to look after him yourself, for I 
was aware of you and your little maid going up, when I was walking the 
horse down. Making an inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard 
what company he was in; and was coming among the brick-fields to look for 
him, when I observed you bringing him home here."
"Had he committed any crime?" I asked.
"None was charged against him," said Mr Bucket, coolly lifting off his hat; 
"but I suppose he wasn't over particular. No. What I wanted him for, was in 
connection with keeping this very matter of Lady Dedlock quiet. He had been 
making his tongue more free than welcome, as to a small accidental service 
he had been paid for by the deceased Mr Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do at 
any sort of price, to have him playing those games. So having warned him 
out of London, I made an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now 
he was away, and go farther from it, and maintain a bright look out that I 
didn't catch him coming back again."
"Poor creature!" said I.
"Poor enough," assented Mr Bucket, "and trouble enough, and well enough 
away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on my back when 
I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure you."
I asked him why? "Why, my dear?" said Mr Bucket. "Naturally there was no 
end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a yard and a 
half of it, and a remnant over."
Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion at the 
time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me to 
understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me. With the 
same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of indifferent 
things, while his face was busy with the one object that he had in view. He 
still pursued this subject as we turned in at the garden gate.
"Ah!" said Mr Bucket. "Here we are, and a nice retired place it is. Puts a 
man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker tapping, that was known 
by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They're early with the kitchen 
fire, and that denotes good servants. But what you've always got to be 
careful of with servants, is, who comes to see 'em; you never know what 
they're up to, if you don't know that. And another thing, my dear. Whenever 
you find a young man behind the kitchen door, you give that young man in 
charge on suspicion of being secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful 
purpose."
We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely at the 
gravel for footprints, before he raised his eyes to the windows.
"Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room, when 
he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" he inquired, glancing at Mr 
Skimpole's usual chamber.
"You know Mr Skimpole!" said I.
"What do you call him again?" returned Mr Bucket, bending down his ear. 
"Skimpole, is it? I've often wondered what his name might be. Skimpole. Not 
John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?"
"Harold," I told him.
"Harold. Yes. He's a queer bird is Harold," - said Mr Bucket, eyeing me 
with great expression.
"He is a singular character," said I.
"No idea of money," observed Mr Bucket. - "He takes it though!"
I involuntarily returned for answer, that I perceived Mr Bucket knew him.
"Why, now I'll tell you, Miss Summerson," he rejoined. "Your mind will be 
all the better for not running on one point too continually, and I'll tell 
you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where Toughey was. I made 
up my mind, that night, to come to the door and ask for Toughey, if that 
was all; but, willing to try a move or so first if any such was on the 
board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at that window where I saw a 
shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I have had a look at him, thinks I, 
you're the man for me. So I smoothed him down a bit, about not wanting to 
disturb the family after they was gone to bed, and about it's being a thing 
to be regretted that charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and 
then, when I pretty well understood his ways, I said, I should consider a 
fypunnote well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without 
causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows in the 
gayest way, 'it's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my friend, because 
I'm a mere child in such matters, and have no idea of money.' Of course I 
understood what his taking it so easy meant; and being now quite sure he 
was the man for me, I wrapped the note round a little stone and threw it up 
to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and looks as innocent as you like, and 
says, 'But I don't know the value of these things. What am I to do with 
this?' 'Spend it, sir,' says I. 'But I shall be taken in,' he says, 'they 
won't give me the right change, I shall lose it, it's no use to me.' Lord 
you never saw such a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where 
to find Toughey, and I found him."
I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr Skimpole, towards my 
Guardian, and as passing the usual bounds of his childish innocence.
"Bounds, my dear?" returned Mr Bucket. "Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson, I'll 
give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful when you are 
happily married and have got a family about you. Whenever a person says to 
you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well 
after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if they can. 
Whenever a person proclaims to you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you 
consider that that person is only a crying off from being held accountable, 
and that you have got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am 
not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a 
company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this rule. 
Fast and loose in one thing. Fast and loose in everything. I never knew it 
fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution to the unwary, my 
dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell, and so go back to our 
business."
I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than it 
had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household were 
amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the morning, and so 
accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by my inquiries. No one, 
however, had been there. It could not be doubted that this was the truth.
"Then, Miss Summerson," said my companion, "we can't be too soon at the 
cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries there I 
leave to you, if you will be so good as to make 'em. The naturalest way is 
the best way, and the naturalest way is your own way."
We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it shut 
up, and apparently deserted; but one of the neighbours who knew me, and who 
came out when I was trying to make some one hear, informed me that the two 
women and their husbands now lived together in another house, made of loose 
rough bricks, which stood on the margin of the piece of ground where the 
kilns were, and where the long rows of bricks were drying. We lost no time 
in repairing to this place, which was within a few hundred yards; and as 
the door stood ajar, I pushed it open.
There were only three of them sitting at breakfast; the child lying asleep 
on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead child, who was 
absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the men, though they were, 
as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a morose nod of recognition. A 
look passed between them when Mr Bucket followed me in, and I was surprised 
to see that the woman evidently knew him.
I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I knew 
her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool near the 
fire, and Mr Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that I had to speak, 
and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I became conscious of 
being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to begin, and I could not 
help bursting into tears.
"Liz," said I, "I have come a long way in the night and through the snow, 
to inquire after a lady - "
"Who has been here you know," Mr Bucket struck in, addressing the whole 
group, with a composed propitiatory face; "that's the lady the young lady 
means. The lady that was here last night, you know."
"And who told you as there was anybody here?" inquired Jenny's husband, who 
had made a surly stop in his eating, to listen, and now measured him with 
his eye.
"A person of the name of Michael Jackson, in a blue welveteen waistcoat 
with a double row of mother of pearl buttons," Mr Bucket immediately 
answered.
"He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is," growled the man.
"He's out of employment I believe," said Mr Bucket, apologetically for 
Michael Jackson, "and so gets talking."
The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her hand upon 
its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have spoken to me 
privately, if she had dared. She was still in this attitude of uncertainty, 
when her husband, who was eating with a lump of bread and fat in one hand, 
and his clasp-knife in the other, struck the handle of his knife violently 
on the table, and told her with an oath to mind her business at any rate, 
and sit down.
"I should like to have seen Jenny very much," said I, "for I am sure she 
would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very anxious 
indeed - you cannot think how anxious - to overtake. Will Jenny be here 
soon? Where is she?"
The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another oath, 
openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to Jenny's 
husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the latter turned 
his shaggy head towards me.
"I'm not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you've heerd me 
say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it's curous they 
can't let my place be. There'd be a pretty shine made if I was to go a 
wisiting them, I think. Howsoever, I don't so much complain of you as of 
some others; and I'm agreeable to make you a civil answer, though I give 
notice that I'm not a going to be drawed like a badger. Will Jenny be here 
soon? No she won't. Where is she? She's gone up to Lunnun."
"Did she go last night?" I asked.
"Did she go last night? Ah! she went last night," he answered, with a sulky 
jerk of his head.
"But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to her? And 
where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as to tell me," 
said I, "for I am in great distress to know."
"If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm - " the 
womanly timidly began.
"Your master," said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow 
emphasis, "will break your neck, if you meddle with wot don't concern you."
After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me 
again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.
"Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady come. 
Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I'll tell you wot the lady said to her. 
She said, 'You remember me as come one time to talk to you about the young 
lady as had been a wisiting of you? You remember me as give you somethink 
handsome for a handkercher wot she had left?' Ah, she remembered. So we all 
did. Well, then, wos that young lady up at the house now? No, she warn't up 
at the house now. Well, then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all 
alone, strange as we might think it, and could she rest herself where 
you're a setten, for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she 
went - it might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty 
minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time by, nor 
yet clocks. Where did she go? I don't know where she go'd. She went one 
way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun, and t'other went 
right from it. That's all about it. Ask this man. He heerd it all, and see 
it all. He knows."
The other man repeated, "That's all about it."
"Was the lady crying?" I inquired.
"Devil a bit," returned the first man. "Her shoes was the worse, and her 
clothes was the worse, but she warn't - not as I see."
The woman sat with her arms crossed, and her eyes upon the ground. Her 
husband had turned his seat a little, so as to face her; and kept his 
hammer-like hand upon the table, as if it were in readiness to execute his 
threat if she disobeyed him.
"I hope you will not object to my asking your wife," said I, "how the lady 
looked?"
"Come, then!" he gruffly cried to her. "You hear what she says. Cut it 
short, and tell her."
"Bad," replied the woman. "Pale and exhausted. Very bad."
"Did she speak much?"
"Not much, but her voice was hoarse."
She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.
"Was she faint?" said I. "Did she eat or drink here?"
"Go on!" said the husband, in answer to her look. "Tell her and cut it 
short."
"She had a little water, Miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and tea. 
But she hardly touched it."
"And when she went from here" - I was proceeding, when Jenny's husband 
impatiently took me up.
"When she went from here, she went right away Nor'ard by the high road. Ask 
on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so. Now, there's the end. 
That's all about it."
I glanced at my companion; and finding that he had already risen and was 
ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took my leave. 
The woman looked full at Mr Bucket as he went out, and he looked full at 
her.
"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, as we walked quickly away. "They've 
got her ladyship's watch among 'em. That's a positive fact."
"You saw it?" I exclaimed.
"Just as good as saw it," he returned. "Else why should he talk about his 
'twenty minutes past,' and about his having no watch to tell the time by? 
Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as that. If he comes 
to half hours, it's as much as he does. Now, you see, either her ladyship 
gave him that watch, or he took it. I think she gave it him. Now, what 
should she give it him for? What should she give it him for?"
He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on; 
appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his mind.
"If time could be spared," said Mr Bucket - "which is the only thing that 
can't be spared in this case - I might get it out of that woman; but it's 
too doubtful a chance to trust to, under present circumstances. They are up 
to keeping a close eye upon her, and any fool knows that a poor creetur 
like her, beaten and kicked and scarred and bruised from head to foot, will 
stand by the husband that ill uses her, through thick and thin. There's 
something kept back. It's a pity but what we had seen the other woman."
I regretted it exceedingly; for she was very grateful, and I felt sure 
would have resisted no entreaty of mine.
"It's possible, Miss Summerson," said Mr Bucket, pondering on it, "that her 
ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and it's possible 
that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don't come out altogether 
so plain as to please me, but it's on the cards. Now, I don't take kindly 
to laying out the money of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, on these Roughs, 
and I don't see my way to the usefulness of it at present. No! So far, our 
road, Miss Summerson, is for'ard - straight ahead - and keeping everything 
quiet!"
We called at home once more, that I might send a hasty note to my Guardian, 
and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage. The horses were 
brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we were on the road again 
in a few minutes.
It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air was so 
thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall, that we 
could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it was extremely 
cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it churned - with a sound as 
if it were a beach of small shells - under the hoofs of the horses, into 
mire and water. They sometimes slipped and floundered for a mile together, 
and we were obliged to come to a standstill to rest them. One horse fell 
three times in this first stage, and trembled so, and was so shaken, that 
the driver had to dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.
I could eat nothing, and could not sleep; and I grew so nervous under those 
delays, and the slow pace at which we travelled, that I had an unreasonable 
desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my companion's better 
sense, however, I remained where I was. All this time, kept fresh by a 
certain enjoyment of the work in which he was engaged, he was up and down 
at every house we came to; addressing people whom he had never beheld 
before, as old acquaintances; running in to warm himself at every fire he 
saw; talking and drinking and shaking hands at every bar and tap; friendly 
with every waggoner, wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker; yet never 
seeming to lose time, and always mounting to the box again with his 
watchful, steady face, and his business-like "Get on, my lad!"
When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the stable yard, 
and with the wet snow encrusted upon him, and dropping off him - plashing 
and crashing through it to his wet knees, as he had been doing frequently 
since we left Saint Albans - and spoke to me at the carriage side.
"Keep up your spirits. It's certainly true that she came on here, Miss 
Summerson. There's not a doubt of the dress by this time, and the dress has 
been seen here."
"Still on foot?" said I.
"Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point she's 
aiming at; and yet I don't like his living down in her own part of the 
country, neither."
"I know so little," said I. "There may be some one else nearer here, of 
whom I never heard."
"That's true. But whatever you do, don't you fall a crying, my dear; and 
don't you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my lad!"
The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early, and it 
never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never seen. I 
sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the ploughed grounds, 
or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had been out, it presented 
itself as an indefinite period of great duration; and I seemed, in a 
strange way, never to have been free from the anxiety under which I then 
laboured.
As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost 
confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people, but he 
looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his finger uneasily 
going across and across his mouth, during the whole of one long weary 
stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of coaches and other 
vehicles coming towards us, what passengers they had seen in other coaches 
and vehicles that were in advance. Their replies did not encourage him. He 
always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger, and lift of his eyelid as 
he got upon the box again; but he seemed perplexed now, when he said, "Get 
on, my lad!"
At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track of 
the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing, he said, 
to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for another while, 
and so on; but it had disappeared here in an unaccountable manner, and we 
had not come upon it since. This corroborated the apprehensions I had 
formed, when he began to look at direction-posts, and to leave the carriage 
at cross roads for a quarter of an hour at a time, while he explored them. 
But, I was not to be downhearted, he told me; for it was as likely as not 
that the next stage might set us right again.
The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue. There 
was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable substantial building, 
and as we drove in under a large gateway before I knew it, where a landlady 
and her pretty daughters came to the carriage door, entreating me to alight 
and refresh myself while the horses were making ready, I thought it would 
be uncharitable to refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room, and left 
me there.
It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On one 
side, to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were 
unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage; and 
beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was heavily 
swinging; on the other side, to a wood of dark pine-trees. Their branches 
were incumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off in wet heaps while I 
stood at the window. Night was setting in, and its bleakness was enhanced 
by the contrast of the pictured fire glowing and gleaming in the window-
pane. As I looked among the stems of the trees, and followed the 
discoloured marks in the snow where the thaw was sinking into it and 
undermining it, I thought of the motherly face brightly set off by 
daughters that had just now welcomed me, and of my mother lying down in 
such a wood to die.
I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered that 
before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was some little 
comfort. They cushioned me up, on a large sofa by the fire; and then the 
comely landlady told me that I must travel no further tonight, but must go 
to bed. But this put me into such a tremble lest they should detain me 
there, that she soon recalled her words, and compromised for a rest of half-
an-hour.
A good endearing creature she was. She, and her three fair girls all so 
busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr Bucket 
dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when a snug round 
table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was very unwilling to 
disappoint them. However, I could take some toast and some hot negus; and 
as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made some recompense.
Punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end the carriage came rumbling 
under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed, comforted by 
kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any more. After I had got 
in and had taken a grateful leave of them all, the youngest daughter - a 
blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the first married, they had told 
me - got upon the carriage step, reached in, and kissed me. I have never 
seen her, from that hour, but I think of her to this hour as my friend.
The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright and warm 
from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and again we were 
crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with toil enough; but the 
dismal roads were not much worse than they had been, and the stage was only 
nine miles. My companion smoking on the box - I had thought at the last inn 
of begging him to do so, when I saw him standing at a great fire in a 
comfortable cloud of tobacco - was as vigilant as ever; and as quickly down 
and up again, when we came to any human abode or any human creature. He had 
lighted his little dark lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, 
for we had lamps to the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon 
me, to see that I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the 
carriage-head, but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.
We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not 
recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change; but I knew 
by his yet graver face, as he stood watching the ostlers, that he had heard 
nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back in my seat, he 
looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an excited and quite 
different man.
"What is it?" said I, starting. "Is she here?"
"No, no. Don't deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody's here. But I've got it!"
The crystallised snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in ridges on 
his dress. He had to shake it from his face, and get his breath, before he 
spoke to me.
"Now, Miss Summerson," said he, beating his finger on the apron, "don't you 
be disappointed at what I'm a going to do. You know me. I'm Inspector 
Bucket, and you can trust me. We've come a long way; never mind. Four 
horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!"
There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the 
stables to know "if he meant up or down?"
"Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? Up!"
"Up?" said I, astonished. "To London! Are we going back?"
"Miss Summerson," he answered, "back. Straight back as a die. You know me. 
Don't be afraid. I'll follow the other, by G -."
"The other?" I repeated. "Who?"
"You called her Jenny, didn't you? I'll follow her. Bring those two pair 
out here, for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!"
"You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not abandon 
her on such a night, and in such a state of mind as I know her to be in!" 
said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.
"You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'll follow the other. Look alive 
here with them horses. Send a man fo'rard in the saddle to the next stage, 
and let him send another for'ard again, and order four on, up, right 
through. My darling, don't you be afraid!"
These orders, and the way in which he ran about the yard, urging them, 
caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me than 
the sudden change. But, in the height of the confusion, a mounted man 
galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to with great 
speed.
"My dear," said Mr Bucket, jumping to his seat, and looking in again - 
"you'll excuse me if I'm too familiar - don't you fret and worry yourself 
no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present; but you know me, 
my dear; now, don't you?"
I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of deciding 
what we ought to do; but was he sure that this was right? Could I not go 
forward by myself in search of - I grasped his hand again in my distress, 
and whispered it to him - of my own mother.
"My dear," he answered, "I know, I know, and would I put you wrong, do you 
think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don't you?"
What could I say but yes!
"Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me for 
standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Now, are 
you right there?"
"All right, sir!"
"Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!"
We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come; tearing up the 
miry sleet and thawing snow, as if they were torn up by a water-wheel.


Chapter 58

A Wintry Day And Night

Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house carries 
itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There are powdered 
heads from time to time in the little windows of the hall, looking out at 
the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky; and, in the same 
conservatory, there is peach blossom turning itself exotically to the great 
hall fire from the nipping weather out of doors. It is given out that my 
Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, but is expected to return presently.
Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire. It 
persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that poor 
unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears, my dear 
child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world, of five miles 
round, quite merry. Not to know that there is something wrong at the 
Dedlocks' is to augur yourself unknown. One of the peachy-cheeked charmers 
with the skeleton throats, is already apprised of all the principal 
circumstances that will come out before the Lords, on Sir Leicester's 
application for a bill of divorce.
At Blaze and Sparkle's the jewellers, and at Sheen and Gloss's the mercers, 
it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age, the feature of 
the century. The patronesses of those establishments, albeit so loftily 
inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured there as any other 
article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly understood in this new fashion 
by the rawest hand behind the counter. "Our people, Mr Jones," said Blaze 
and Sparkle to the hand in question on engaging him, "our people, sir, are 
sheep - mere sheep. Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. 
Keep those two or three in your eye, Mr Jones, and you have the flock." So, 
likewise, Sheen and Gloss to their Jones, in reference to knowing where to 
have the fashionable people, and how to bring what they (Sheen and Gloss) 
choose, into fashion. On similar unerring principles, Mr Sladdery the 
librarian, and indeed the great farmer of gorgeous sheep, admits this very 
day, "Why yes, sir, there certainly are reports concerning Lady Dedlock, 
very current indeed among my high connection, sir. You see, my high 
connection must talk about something, sir; and it's only to get a subject 
into vogue with one or two ladies I could name, to make it go down with the 
whole. Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of 
any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of themselves in 
this case through knowing Lady Dedlock, and being perhaps a little 
innocently jealous of her too, sir. You'll find, sir, that this topic will 
be very popular among my high connection. If it had been a speculation, 
sir, it would have brought money. And when I say so, you may trust to my 
being right, sir; for I have made it my business to study my high 
connection, and to be able to wind it up like a clock, sir."
Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into Lincolnshire. 
By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards' time, it has even elicited 
a new remark from the Honourable Mr Stables, which bids fair to outshine 
the old one, on which he has so long rested his colloquial reputation. This 
sparkling sally is to the effect that, although he always knew she was the 
best-groomed woman in the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is 
immensely received in turf-circles.
At feasts and festivals also: in firmaments she has often graced, and among 
constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the prevalent 
subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it? How was it? She 
is discussed by her dear friends with all the genteelest slang in vogue, 
with the last new word, the last new manner, the last new drawl, and the 
perfection of polite indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is, 
that it is found to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it 
who never came out before - positively say things! William Buffy carries 
one of these smartnesses from the place where he dines, down to the House, 
where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box, to keep men 
together who want to be off, with such effect that the Speaker (who has had 
it privately insinuated into his own ear under the corner of his wig) cries 
"Order at the bar!" three times without making an impression.
And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being vaguely the 
town talk, is, that people hovering on the confines of Mr Sladdery's high 
connection, people who know nothing and ever did know nothing about her, 
think it essential to their reputation to pretend that she is their topic 
too; and to retail her at second-hand with the last new word and the last 
new manner, and the last new drawl, and the last new polite indifference, 
and all the rest of it, all at second-hand but considered equal to new, in 
inferior systems and to fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, 
or science among these little dealers, how noble in him to support the 
feeble sisters on such majestic crutches!
So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it?
Sir Leicester lying in his bed can speak a little, though with difficulty 
and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest, and they have 
given him some opiate to lull his pain; for his old enemy is very hard with 
him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he seems to fall into a dull 
waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be moved out nearer to the window, 
when he heard it was such inclement weather; and his head to be so 
adjusted, that he could see the driving snow and sleet. He watches it as it 
falls, throughout the whole wintry day.
Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is at the 
pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he would write, and 
whispers, "No, he has not come back yet, Sir Leicester. It was late last 
night when he went. He has been but a little time gone yet."
He withdraws his hand, and falls to looking at the sleet and snow again, 
until they seem, by being looked at, to fall so thick and fast, that he is 
obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy whirl of white flakes 
and icy blots.
He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet far 
spent, when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should be 
prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good fires. Let 
them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself. He writes to 
this purpose on his slate, and Mrs Rouncewell with a heavy heart obeys.
"For I dread, George," the old lady says to her son, who waits below to 
keep her company when she has a little leisure; "I dread, my dear, that my 
Lady will never more set foot within these walls."
"That's a bad presentiment, mother."
"Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear."
"That's worse. But why, mother!"
"When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me - and I may say at 
me too - as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked her down."
"Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother."
"No I don't, my dear. No I don't. It's going on for sixty year that I have 
been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before. But it's 
breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is breaking up."
"I hope not, mother."
"I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in this 
illness and trouble; for I know I am not too old, nor too useless, to be a 
welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be. But the step 
on the Ghost's Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it has been many a day 
behind her, and now it will pass her, and go on."
"Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not."
"Ah, so do I, George," the old lady returns, shaking her head, and parting 
her folded hands. "But if my fears come true, and he has to know it, who 
will tell him!"
"Are these her rooms?"
"These are my Lady's rooms, just as she left them."
"Why now," says the trooper, glancing round him, and speaking in a lower 
voice, "I begin to understand how you come to think as you do think, 
mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are fitted up, like 
these, for one person you are used to see in them, and that person is away 
under any shadow: let alone being God knows where."
He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one, - so, 
empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your 
room and what mine must one day be. My Lady's state has a hollow look, thus 
gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment, where Mr Bucket last 
night made his secret perquisition, the traces of her dresses and her 
ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to reflect them when they were a 
portion of herself, have a desolate and vacant air. Dark and cold as the 
wintry day is, it is darker and colder in these deserted chambers than in 
many a hut, that will barely exclude the weather; and though the servants 
heap fires in the grates, and set the couches and the chairs within the 
warm glass screens that let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest 
corners, there is a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.
The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are complete, 
and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs Rouncewell's place in 
the meantime: though pearl necklaces and rouge pots however calculated to 
embellish Bath, are but indifferent comforts to the invalid under present 
circumstances. Volumnia, not being supposed to know (and indeed not 
knowing) what is the matter, has found it a ticklish task to offer 
appropriate observations; and consequently has supplied their place with 
distracting smoothings of the bed linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, 
vigilant peeping at her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to 
herself of "He is asleep." In disproof of which superfluous remark, Sir 
Leicester has indignantly written on the slate, "I am not."
Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old 
housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed, sympathetically 
sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow, and listens for the 
returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his old servant, looking as 
if she had stepped out of an old picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock 
to another world, the silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, "Who 
will tell him!"
He has been under his valet's hands this morning, to be made presentable; 
and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He is propped with 
pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual manner, his linen is 
arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a responsible dressing gown. His 
eyeglass and his watch are ready to his hand. It is necessary - less to his 
own dignity now perhaps, than for her sake - that he should be seen as 
little disturbed, and as much himself, as may be. Women will talk, and 
Volumnia, though a Dedlock, is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, 
there is little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very 
ill: but he makes his present stand against distress of mind and body, most 
courageously.
The fair Volumnia being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long 
continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon Boredom, 
soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of undisguisable 
yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by any other process 
than conversation, she compliments Mrs Rouncewell on her son; declaring 
that he positively is one of the finest figures she ever saw, and as 
soldierly a looking person she should think, as what's his name, her 
favourite Life Guardsman - the man she dotes on - the dearest of creatures -
 who was killed at Waterloo.
Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise, and stares about 
him in such a confused way, that Mrs Rouncewell feels it necessary to 
explain.
"Miss Dedlock don't speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my youngest. 
I have found him. He has come home."
Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. "George? Your son George 
come home, Mrs Rouncewell?"
The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. "Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester."
Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long gone, 
come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he think, "Shall 
I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after this; there being fewer 
hours in her case than there are years in his?"
It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he does. 
In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be understood.
"Why did you not tell me, Mrs Rouncewell?"
"It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being well 
enough to be talked to of such things."
Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that 
nobody was to have known of his being Mrs Rouncewell's son, and that she 
was not to have told. But Mrs Rouncewell protests, with warmth enough to 
swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir Leicester as 
soon as he got better.
"Where is your son George, Mrs Rouncewell?" asks Sir Leicester.
Mrs Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the doctor's 
injunctions, replies, in London.
"Where in London?"
Mrs Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.
"Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly."
The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester, with 
such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little, to receive 
him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling sleet and snow, 
and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity of straw has been 
tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises there, and she might be 
driven to the door perhaps without his hearing wheels.
He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor surprise, 
when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper son. Mr George 
approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow, squares his chest, and 
stands, with his face flushed, very heartily ashamed of himself.
"Good Heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!" exclaims Sir Leicester. 
"Do you remember me, George?"
The trooper needs to look at him, and to separate this sound from that 
sound, before he knows what he has said; but doing this, and being a little 
helped by his mother, he replies:
"I must have a very bad memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to 
remember you."
"When I look at you, George Rouncewell," Sir Leicester observes with 
difficulty, "I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold - I remember well - 
very well."
He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he looks 
at the sleet and snow again.
"I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester," says the trooper, "but would you accept 
of my arms to raise you up. You would lie easier, Sir Leicester, if you 
would allow me to move you."
"If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good."
The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him, and 
turns him with his face more towards the window. "Thank you. You have your 
mother's gentleness," returns Sir Leicester, "and your own strength. Thank 
you."
He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains at the 
bedside, waiting to be spoken to.
"Why did you wish for secrecy?" It takes Sir Leicester some time to ask 
this.
"Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I - I should still, 
Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed - which I hope you will not be 
long - I should still hope for the favour of being allowed to remain 
unknown in general. That involves explanations not very hard to be guessed 
at, not very well timed here, and not very creditable to myself. However 
opinions may differ on a variety of subjects, I should think it would be 
universally agreed, Sir Leicester, that I am not much to boast of."
"You have been a soldier," observes Sir Leicester, "and a faithful one."
George makes his military bow. "As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I have 
done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."
"You find me," says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted towards 
him, "far from well, George Rouncewell."
"I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester."
"I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a sudden 
and bad attack. Something that deadens - " making an endeavour to pass one 
hand down one side; "and confuses - " touching his lips.
George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The 
different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the younger 
of the two), and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold, arise before 
them both and soften both.
Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his own 
manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into silence, tries 
to raise himself among his pillows a little more. George observant of the 
action, takes him in his arms again and places him as he desires to be. 
"Thank you, George. You are another self to me. You have often carried my 
spare gun at Chesney Wold, George. You are familiar to me in these strange 
circumstances, very familiar." He has put Sir Leicester's sounder arm over 
his shoulder in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it 
away again, as he says these words.
"I was about to add," he presently goes on, "I was about to add, respecting 
this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a slight 
misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not mean that there was 
any difference between us (for there has been none), but that there was a 
misunderstanding of certain circumstances important only to ourselves, 
which deprives me, for a little while, of my Lady's society. She has found 
it necessary to make a journey, - I trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do 
I make myself intelligible? The words are not quite under my command, in 
the manner of pronouncing them."
Volumnia understands him perfectly; and in truth he delivers himself with 
far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a minute ago. 
The effort by which he does so, is written in the anxious and labouring 
expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his purpose enables him 
to make it.
"Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence - and in the 
presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs Rouncewell, whose truth and 
fidelity no one can question - and in the presence of her son George, who 
comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in the home of my 
ancestors at Chesney Wold - in case I should relapse, in case I should not 
recover, in case I should lose both my speech and the power of writing, 
though I hope for better things - "
The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest agitation, 
with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with his arms folded and 
his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.
"Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to witness - beginning, 
Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly - that I am on unaltered terms with 
Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever of complaint against her. 
That I have ever had the strongest affection for her, and that I retain it 
undiminished. Say this to herself, and to every one. If you ever say less 
than this, you will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me."
Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions to the 
letter.
"My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too 
superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is surrounded, 
not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it be known to them, 
as I make it known to you, that being of sound mind, memory, and 
understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made in her favour. I abridge 
nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am on unaltered terms with her, 
and I recall - having the full power to do it if I were so disposed, as you 
see - no act I have done for her advantage and happiness."
His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has often 
had, something ludicrous in it; but at this time, it is serious and 
affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant shielding of 
her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own pride for her sake, 
are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing less worthy can be seen 
through the lustre of such qualities in the commonest mechanic, nothing 
less worthy can be seen in the best-born gentleman. In such a light both 
aspire alike, both rise alike, both children of the dust shine equally.
Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows, and 
closes his eyes; for not more than a minute; when he again resumes his 
watching of the weather, and his attention to the muffled sounds. In the 
rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their acceptance, 
the trooper has become installed as necessary to him. Nothing has been 
said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or two backward to be out 
of sight, and mounts guard a little behind his mother's chair.
The day is now beginning to decline. The mist, and the sleet into which the 
snow has all resolved itself, are darker, and the blaze begins to tell more 
vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The gloom augments; the bright 
gas springs up in the streets; and the pertinacious oil lamps which yet 
hold their ground there, with their source of life half frozen and half 
thawed, twinkle gaspingly, like fiery fish out of water - as they are. The 
world, which has been rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell "to 
inquire," begins to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear 
friend, with all the last new modes, as already mentioned.
Now, does Sir Leicester become worse; restless, uneasy, and in great pain. 
Volumnia lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for doing something 
objectionable) is bidden to put it out again, for it is not yet dark 
enough. Yet it is very dark too; as dark as it will be all night. By-and-by 
she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not dark enough yet.
His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to 
uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late.
"Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master," she softly whispers, "I must, for 
your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and praying that 
you will not lie here in the lone darkness, watching and waiting, and 
dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains and light the candles, 
and make things more comfortable about you. The church-clocks will strike 
the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and the night will pass away just 
the same. My Lady will come back just the same."
"I know it, Mrs Rouncewell, but I am weak - and he has been so long gone."
"Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet."
"But that is a long time. O it is a long time!"
He says it with a groan that wrings her heart.
She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon him; 
she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her. Therefore, she 
sits in the darkness for a while, without a word; then gently begins to 
move about; now stirring the fire, now standing at the dark window looking 
out. Finally he tells her, with recovered self-command, "As you say, Mrs 
Rouncewell, it is no worse for being confessed. It is getting late, and 
they are not come. Light the room!" When it is lighted, and the weather 
shut out, it is only left to him to listen.
But they find that, however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when a 
quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms, and being sure 
that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as it is, these 
allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.
Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the streets 
are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there are none, unless 
a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the frigid zone goes 
brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this wintry night it is so 
still, that listening to the intense silence is like looking at intense 
darkness. If any distant sound be audible in this case, it departs through 
the gloom like a feeble light in that, and all is heavier than before.
The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to go, for 
they were up all last night), and only Mrs Rouncewell and George keep watch 
in Sir Leicester's room. As the night lags tardily on - or rather when it 
seems to stop altogether, at between two and three o'clock - they find a 
restless craving on him to know more about the weather, now he cannot see 
it. Hence George, patrolling regularly every half hour to the rooms so 
carefully looked after, extends his march to the hall-door, looks about 
him, and brings back the best report he can make of the worst of nights; 
the sleet still falling, and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in 
icy sludge.
Volumnia in her room up a retired landing on the staircase - the second 
turning past the end of the carving and gilding - a cousinly room 
containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester, banished for 
its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard, planted with dried-up 
shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black tea - is a prey to horrors of 
many kinds. Not last nor least among them, possibly, is a horror of what 
may befall her little income, in the event, as she expresses it, "of 
anything happening" to Sir Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one 
thing only, and that the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of 
any baronet in the known world.
An effect of these horrors is, that Volumnia finds she cannot go to bed in 
her own room, or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come forth with 
her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her fair form enrobed in 
drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost: particularly haunting the 
rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one who still does not return. 
Solitude under such circumstances being not to be thought of, Volumnia is 
attended by her maid, who, impressed from her own bed for that purpose, 
extremely cold, very sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by 
circumstances to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be 
maid to nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression 
of countenance.
The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the course 
of his patrolling, is an assurance of protection and company, both to 
mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the small hours of 
the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both make some little 
decorative preparation to receive him; at other times, they divide their 
watches into short scraps of oblivion, and dialogues, not wholly free from 
acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock, sitting with her feet upon the 
fender, was or was not falling into the fire when rescued (to her great 
displeasure) by her guardian genius the maid.
"How is Sir Leicester, now, Mr George?" inquires Volumnia, adjusting her 
cowl over her head.
"Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill, and he 
even wanders a little sometimes."
"Has he asked for me?" inquires Volumnia tenderly.
"Why no, I can't say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to say."
"This is a truly sad time, Mr George."
"It is indeed, miss. Hadn't you better go to bed?"
"You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock," quoth the maid, sharply.
But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted at a 
moment's notice. She never should forgive herself "if anything was to 
happen" and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on the question, 
mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and not in her own room 
(which is nearer to Sir Leicester's); but staunchly declares that on the 
spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a merit of not having "closed 
an eye" - as if she had twenty or thirty - though it is hard to reconcile 
this statement with her having most indisputably opened two within five 
minutes.
But when it comes to four o'clock, and still the same blank, Volumnia's 
constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to strengthen; for she 
now considers that it is her duty to be ready for the morrow, when much may 
be expected of her; that, in fact, howsoever anxious to remain upon the 
spot, it may be required of her, as an act of self-devotion, to desert the 
spot. So, when the trooper reappears with his "Hadn't you better go to bed, 
miss?" and when the maid protests, more sharply than before, "You had a 
deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock!" she meekly rises and says, "Do with 
me what you think best!"
Mr George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the door 
of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it best to 
hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly, these steps 
are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the house to himself.
There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the eaves, 
from the parapet, from every ledge, and post and pillar, drips the thawed 
snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of the great door - 
under it into the corners of the windows, into every chink and crevice of 
retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is falling still; upon the roof, 
upon the skylight; even through the skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with 
the regularity of the Ghost's Walk, on the stone floor below.
The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur of a 
great house - no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold - goes up the stairs 
and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm's length. Thinking 
of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks, and of his rustic 
boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so strangely brought together 
across the wide intermediate space; thinking of the murdered man whose 
image is fresh in his mind; thinking of the lady who has disappeared from 
these very rooms, and the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; 
thinking of the master of the house upstairs, and of the foreboding "Who 
will tell him!" he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he might 
see something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his 
hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank; blank as the 
darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again; blank 
as the oppressive silence.
"All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?"
"Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester."
"No word of any kind?"
The trooper shakes his head.
"No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?"
But he knows there is no such hope as that, and lays his head down without 
looking for an answer.
Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George Rouncewell 
lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder of the blank 
wintry night; and, equally familiar with his unexpressed wish, extinguishes 
the light, and undraws the curtains at the first late break of day. The day 
comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless, and vague, it sends a warning 
streak before it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, "Look what I am 
bringing you, who watch there! Who will tell him!"


Chapter 59

Esther's Narrative

It was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside London did at 
last begin to exclude the country, and to close us in with streets. We had 
made our way along roads in a far worse condition than when we had 
traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the thaw having lasted ever 
since; but the energy of my companion had never slackened. It had only 
been, as I thought, of less assistance than the horses in getting us on, 
and it had often aided them. They had stopped exhausted halfway up hills, 
they had been driven through streams of turbulent water, they had slipped 
down and become entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern 
had been always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard 
any variation in his cool "Get on, my lads!"
The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey back, 
I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped to make an 
inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very few words, here 
and there, were then enough for him; and thus we came, at between three and 
four o'clock in the morning, into Islington.
I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected all 
this time, that we were leaving my mother farther and farther behind every 
minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be right, and could not 
fail to have a satisfactory object in following this woman; but I tormented 
myself with questioning it, and discussing it, during the whole journey. 
What was to ensue when we found her, and what could compensate us for this 
loss of time, were questions also that I could not possibly dismiss; my 
mind was quite tortured by long dwelling on such reflections, when we 
stopped.
We stopped in a high-street, where there was a coach-stand. My companion 
paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with splashes as if 
they had been dragged along the roads like the carriage itself; and giving 
them some brief direction where to take it, lifted me out of it, and into a 
hackney-coach he had chosen from the rest.
"Why, my dear," he said, as he did this. "How wet you are!"
I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way into 
the carriage; and I had got out two or three times when a fallen horse was 
plunging and had to be got up; and the wet had penetrated my dress. I 
assured him it was no matter; but the driver, who knew him, would not be 
dissuaded by me from running down the street to his stable, whence he 
brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it out and strewed it well 
about me, and I found it warm and comfortable.
"Now, my dear," said Mr Bucket, with his head in at the window after I was 
shut up. "We're going to mark this person down. It may take a little time, 
but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've got a motive. Ain't 
you?"
I little thought what it was - little thought in how short a time I should 
understand it better; but I assured him that I had confidence in him.
"So you may have, my dear," he returned. "And I tell you what! If you only 
repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you, after what I've 
experienced of you, that'll do. Lord! you're no trouble at all. I never see 
a young woman in any station of society - and I've seen many elevated ones 
too - conduct herself like you have conducted yourself, since you was 
called out of your bed. You're a pattern, you know, that's what you are," 
said Mr Bucket warmly; "you're a pattern."
I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no hindrance to 
him; and that I hoped I should be none now.
"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game, and as 
game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect. She then 
becomes a Queen, and that's about what you are yourself."
With these encouraging words - they really were encouraging to me under 
those lonely and anxious circumstances - he got upon the box, and we once 
more drove away. Where we drove, I neither knew then, nor have ever known 
since; but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and worst streets in 
London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I was prepared for our 
descending into a deeper complication of such streets, and we never failed 
to do so.
Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare, or came to a larger 
building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at offices like 
those we had visited when we began our journey, and I saw him in 
consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by an archway, or at 
a street corner, and mysteriously show the light of his little lantern. 
This would attract similar lights from various dark quarters, like so many 
insects, and a fresh consultation would be held. By degrees we appeared to 
contract our search within narrower and easier limits. Single police 
officers on duty could now tell Mr Bucket what he wanted to know, and point 
to him where to go. At last we stopped for a rather long conversation 
between him and one of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from 
his manner of nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to 
me, looking very busy and very attentive.
"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever comes 
off, I know. It's not necessary for me to give you any further caution, 
than to tell you that we have marked this person down, and that you may be 
of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to ask such a thing, my 
dear, but would you walk a little way?"
Of course I got out directly, and took his arm.
"It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr Bucket; "but take time."
Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly, as we crossed a 
street, I thought I knew the place.
"Are we in Holborn?" I asked him.
"Yes," said Mr Bucket. "Do you know this turning?"
"It looks like Chancery Lane."
"And was christened so, my dear," said Mr Bucket.
We turned down it; and as we went, shuffling through the sleet, I heard the 
clock strike half-past five. We passed on in silence, and as quickly as we 
could with such a foothold; when some one coming towards us on the narrow 
pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and stood aside to give me room. In 
the same moment I heard an exclamation of wonder, and my own name, from Mr 
Woodcourt. I knew his voice very well.
It was so unexpected, and so - I don't know what to call it, whether 
pleasant or painful - to come upon it after my feverish wandering journey, 
and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back the tears from my 
eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange country.
"My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in such 
weather!"
He had heard from my Guardian of my having been called away on some 
uncommon business, and said so to dispense with any explanation. I told him 
that we had but just left a coach, and were going - but then I was obliged 
to look at my companion.
"Why, you see, Mr Woodcourt;" he had caught the name from me; "we are a-
going at present into the next street. - Inspector Bucket."
Mr Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off his 
cloak, and was putting it about me. "That's a good move, too," said Mr 
Bucket, assisting, "a very good move."
"May I go with you?" said Mr Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me or my 
companion.
"Why, lord!" exclaimed Mr Bucket, taking the answer on himself. "Of course 
you may."
It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped in a 
cloak.
"I have just left Richard," said Mr Woodcourt. "I have been sitting with 
him since ten o'clock last night."
"O dear me, he is ill!"
"No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed and 
faint - you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes - and Ada sent to 
me of course; and when I came home I found her note, and came straight 
here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while, and Ada was so 
happy, and so convinced of its being my doing, though God knows I had 
little enough to do with it, that I remained with him until he had been 
fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is now, I hope!"
His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected devotion 
to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he inspired my darling, 
and the comfort he was to her; could I separate all this from his promise 
to me? How thankless I must have been if it had not recalled the words he 
said to me, when he was so moved by the change in my appearance; "I will 
accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr Woodcourt," said Mr Bucket, 
who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business takes us to a law-
stationer's here; a certain Mr Snagsby's. What, you know him, do you?" He 
was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
"Yes, I know a little of him, and have called upon him at this place."
"Indeed, sir?" said Mr Bucket. "Then will you be so good as to let me leave 
Miss Summerson with you for a moment, while I go and have half a word with 
him?"
The last police officer with whom he had conferred was standing silently 
behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in, on my saying I heard 
some one crying.
"Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."
"Why, you see," said Mr Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has 'em 
bad upon her tonight. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I want 
certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to reason 
somehow."
"At all events, they wouldn't be up yet, if it wasn't for her, Mr Bucket," 
said the other man. "She's been at it pretty well all night, sir."
"Well, that's true," he returned. "My light's burnt out. Show yours a 
moment."
All this passed in a whisper, a door or two from the house in which I could 
faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light produced for 
the purpose, Mr Bucket went up to the door and knocked. The door was 
opened, after he had knocked twice; and he went in, leaving us standing in 
the street.
"Miss Summerson," said Mr Woodcourt; "if, without obtruding myself on your 
confidence, I may remain near you, pray let me do so."
"You are truly kind," I answered. "I need wish to keep no secret of my own 
from you; if I keep any it is another's."
"I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as I can 
fully respect it."
"I trust implicitly to you," I said. "I know and deeply feel how sacredly 
you keep your promise."
After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr Bucket 
advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "Please to come in, Miss 
Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr Woodcourt, from 
information I have received I understand you are a medical man. Would you 
look to this girl and see if anything can be done to bring her round. She 
has a letter somewhere that I particularly want. It's not in her box, and I 
think it must be about her; but she is so twisted and clenched up, that she 
is difficult to handle without hurting."
We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and raw, it 
smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage, behind the door, 
stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a grey coat, who seemed to 
have a naturally polite manner, and spoke meekly.
"Downstairs if you please, Mr Bucket," said he. "The lady will excuse the 
front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The back is Guster's 
bedroom, and in it she's a carrying on, poor thing, to a frightful extent!"
We went downstairs, followed by Mr Snagsby, as I soon found the little man 
to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs Snagsby, with 
very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
"My little woman," said Mr Snagsby, entering behind us, "to wave - not to 
put too fine a point upon it, my dear - hostilities, for one single moment, 
in the course of this prolonged night, here is Inspector Bucket, Mr 
Woodcourt and a lady."
She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and looked 
particularly hard at me.
"My little woman," said Mr Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest corner by 
the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not unlikely that you may 
inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr Woodcourt, and a lady, call upon us 
in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, at the present hour. I don't know. I have 
not the least idea. If I was to be informed, I should despair of 
understanding, and I'd rather not be told."
He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I 
appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology, when Mr Bucket 
took the matter on himself.
"Now, Mr Snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do, is to go along with 
Mr Woodcourt to look after your Guster - "
"My Guster, Mr Bucket!" cried Mr Snagsby. "Go on, sir, go on. I shall be 
charged with that next."
"And to hold the candle," pursued Mr Bucket without correcting himself, "or 
hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're asked. Which there's 
not a man alive more ready to do; for you're a man of urbanity and suavity, 
you know, and you've got the sort of heart that can feel for another. (Mr 
Woodcourt, would you be so good as to see to her, and if you can get that 
letter from her, to let me have it as soon as ever you can?)"
As they went out, Mr Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire, and 
take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender; talking 
all the time.
"Don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look from 
Mrs Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether. She'll find 
that out, sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her generally correct 
manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a going to explain it to her." 
Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat and shawls in his hand, 
himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs Snagsby. "Now the first thing that 
I say to you, as a married woman, possessing what you may call charms, you 
know - 'Believe me, if all those endearing, and cetrer' - you're well 
acquainted with the song, because it's in vain for you to tell me that you 
and good society are strangers - charms - attractions, mind you, that ought 
to give you confidence in yourself - is, that you've done it."
Mrs Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little, and faltered, what 
did Mr Bucket mean?
"What does Mr Bucket mean?" he repeated; and I saw, by his face, that all 
the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the letter - to my 
own great agitation; for I knew then how important it must be; "I'll tell 
you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello acted. That's the tragedy for 
you."
Mrs Snagsby consciously asked why.
"Why?" said Mr Bucket. "Because you'll come to that, if you don't look out. 
Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your mind's not wholly 
free from, respecting this young lady. But shall I tell you who this young 
lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an intellectual woman - with your 
soul too large for your body, if you come to that, and chafing it - and you 
know me, and you recollect where you saw me last, and what was talked of in 
that circle. Don't you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young 
lady."
Mrs Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did at the 
time.
"And Toughey - him as you call Jo - was mixed up in the same business, and 
no other; and the law-writer that you know of, was mixed up in the same 
business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge of it than 
your great-grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr Tulkinghorn, deceased, his best 
customer) in the same business, and no other; and the whole bileing of 
people was mixed up in the same business, and no other. And yet a married 
woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too), and 
goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of 
you! (I expected Mr Woodcourt might have got it, by this time.)"
Mrs Snagsby shook her head, and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Is that all?" said Mr Bucket, excitedly. "No. See what happens. Another 
person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a wretched 
state, comes here tonight, and is seen a speaking to your maid-servant; and 
between her and your maid-servant there passes a paper that I would give a 
hundred pound for, down. What do you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and 
you pounce upon that maid-servant - knowing what she's subject to, and what 
a little thing will bring 'em on - in that surprising manner, and with that 
severity, that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a Life may be 
hanging upon that girl's words!"
He so thoroughly meant what he said now, that I involuntarily clasped my 
hands, and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr Woodcourt 
came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
"Now, Mrs Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr Bucket, rapidly 
glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady in private 
here. And if you know of any help that you can give to that gentleman in 
the next kitchen there, or can think of any one thing that's likelier than 
another to bring the girl round, do your swiftest and best!" In an instant 
she was gone, and he had shut the door. "Now, my dear, you're steady, and 
quite sure of yourself?"
"Quite," said I.
"Whose writing is that?"
It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of paper, 
blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed to me at my 
Guardian's.
"You know the hand," he said; "and if you are firm enough to read it to me, 
do! But be particular to a word."
It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what follows:
"I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the dear one, if I 
could, once more - but only to see her - not to speak to her, or let her 
know that I was near. The other object, to elude pursuit, and to be lost. 
Do not blame the mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me, 
she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the dear one's good. 
You remember her dead child. The men's consent I bought, but her help was 
freely given."

"'I came.' That was written," said my companion, "when she rested there. It 
bears out what I made of it. I was right."
The next was written at another time.

"I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and I know that I 
must soon die. These streets! I have no purpose but to die. When I left, I 
had a worse; but I am saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, 
and fatigue, are sufficient causes for my being found dead: but I shall die 
of others, though I suffer from these. It was right that all that had 
sustained me should give way at once, and that I should die of terror and 
my conscience."

"Take courage," said Mr Bucket. "There's only a few words more."
Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost in the 
dark.

"I have done all I could to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten so, and 
shall disgrace him least. I have nothing about me by which I can be 
recognised. This paper I part with now. The place where I shall lie down, 
if I can yet get so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive."

Mr Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my chair. 
"Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but, as soon as ever you 
feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."
I did as he required; but I was left there a long time, praying for my 
unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I heard Mr 
Woodcourt directing them, and speaking to her often. At length he came in 
with Mr Bucket; and said that as it was important to address her gently, he 
thought it best that I should ask her for whatever information we desired 
to obtain. There was no doubt that she could now reply to questions, if she 
were soothed, and not alarmed. The questions, Mr Bucket said, were how she 
came by the letter, what passed between her and the person who gave her the 
letter, and where the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could 
to these points, I went into the next room with them. Mr Woodcourt would 
have remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.
The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down. They 
stood around her though at a little distance, that she might have air. She 
was not pretty, and looked weak and poor; but she had a plaintive and a 
good face, though it was still a little wild. I kneeled on the ground 
beside her, and put her poor head on my shoulder; whereupon she drew her 
arm round my neck, and burst into tears.
"My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead; for indeed I 
was crying too, and trembling; "it seems cruel to trouble you now, but more 
depends on our knowing something about this letter, than I could tell you 
in an hour."
She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she didn't 
mean any harm, Mrs Snagsby.
"We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."
"Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I'll tell true, indeed, Mrs 
Snagsby."
"I am sure of that," said I. "And how was it?"
"I had been out on an errand, dear lady - long after it was dark - quite 
late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking person, all wet and 
muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me coming in at the door, she 
called me back, and said did I live here? and I said yes, and she said she 
knew only one or two places about here, but had lost her way, and couldn't 
find them. O what shall I do, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She 
didn't say any harm to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs 
Snagsby!"
It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her; which she did, I must 
say, with a good deal of contribution; before she could be got beyond this.
"She could not find those places," said I.
"No!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "No! Couldn't find them. And she 
was so faint, and lame, and miserable, O so wretched! that if you had seen 
her, Mr Snagsby, you'd have given her half-a-crown, I know!"
"Well, Guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say. "I hope 
I should."
"And yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with wide-
open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. And so she said to me, did 
I know the way to the burying-ground? And I asked her which burying-ground? 
And she said the poor burying-ground. And I told her I had been a poor 
child myself, and it was according to parishes. But she said she meant a 
poor burying-ground not very far from here, where there was an archway, and 
a step, and an iron gate."
As I watched her face, and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr Bucket 
received this with a look which I could not separate from one of alarm.
"O dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her hands, 
"what shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying-ground where the 
man was buried that took the sleeping stuff - that you came home and told 
us of, Mr Snagsby - that frightened me so, Mrs Snagsby. O I am frightened 
again. Hold me!"
"You are so much better now," said I. "Pray, pray tell me more."
"Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear lady, 
because I have been so ill."
Angry with her, poor soul!
"There, now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to find 
it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with eyes like 
almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back. And so she took 
out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was to put that in the 
post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded and never sent; and 
would I take it from her, and send it, and the messenger would be paid at 
the house? And so I said yes, if it was no harm, and she said no - no harm. 
And so I took it from her, and she said she had nothing to give me, and I 
said I was poor myself and consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God 
bless you! and went."
"And did she go -?"
"Yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry, "yes! she went the way I 
had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs Snagsby came behind me from 
somewhere, and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."
Mr Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr Bucket wrapped me up, and 
immediately we were in the street. Mr Woodcourt hesitated, but I said, 
"Don't leave me now!" and Mr Bucket added, "You'll be better with us, we 
may want you; don't lose time!"
I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that it was 
neither night nor day; that morning was dawning, but the street lamps were 
not yet put out; that the sleet was still falling, and that all the ways 
were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled people passing in the streets. 
I recollect the wet housetops, the clogged and bursting gutters and water-
spouts, the mounds of blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the 
narrowness of the courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that 
the poor girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my 
hearing; that I could feel her resting on my arm; that the stained house 
fronts put on human shapes and looked at me; that great water gates seemed 
to be opening and closing in my head, or in the air; and that the unreal 
things were more substantial than the real.
At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one lamp was 
burning over an iron gate, and where the morning faintly struggled in. The 
gate was closed. Beyond it, was a burial-ground - a dreadful spot in which 
the night was very slowly stirring; but where I could dimly see heaps of 
dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses, with a few dull 
lights in their windows, and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like 
a disease. On the step at the gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a 
place, which oozed and splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity 
and horror, a woman lying - Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr Woodcourt entreated me with the 
greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to the figure, to 
listen for an instant to what Mr Bucket said. I did so, as I thought. I did 
so, as I am sure.
"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They changed 
clothes at the cottage."
They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my mind, 
and I knew what they meant of themselves; but I attached no meaning to them 
in any other connection.
"And one returned," said Mr Bucket, "and one went on. And the one that went 
on, only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive, and then turned 
across country, and went home. Think a moment!"
I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what it 
meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead child. 
She lay there, with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron gate, and 
seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately spoken to my 
mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered, senseless creature. She 
who had brought my mother's letter, who could give me the only clue to 
where my mother was; she who was to guide us to rescue and save her whom we 
had sought so far, who had come to this condition by some means connected 
with my mother that I could not follow, and might be passing beyond our 
reach and help at that moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw, 
but did not comprehend, the solemn and compassionate look in Mr Woodcourt's 
face. I saw, but did not comprehend, his touching the other on the breast 
to keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a 
reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
I even heard it said between them:
"Shall she go?"
"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They have a 
higher right than ours."
I passed on to the gate, and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head, put the 
long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my mother, cold and 
dead.


Chapter 60

Perspective

I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all about 
me, I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved. I have 
already said so much of myself, and so much still remains, that I will not 
dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was not a long one; and I 
would avoid even this mention of it, if I could quite keep down the 
recollection of their sympathy.
I proceed to other passages of my narrative.
During the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs Woodcourt 
had come, on my Guardian's invitation, to stay with us. When my Guardian 
thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him in our old way - 
though I could have done that sooner, if he would have believed me - I 
resumed my work, and my chair beside his. He had appointed the time 
himself, and we were alone.
"Dame Trot," said he, receiving me with a kiss, "welcome to the Growlery 
again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I purpose to 
remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer time - as it may 
be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short."
"And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?" said I.
"Aye, my dear? Bleak House," he returned, "must learn to take care of 
itself."
I thought his tone sounded sorrowful; but, looking at him, I saw his kind 
face lighted up by its pleasantest smile.
"Bleak House," he repeated; and his tone did not sound sorrowful, I found, 
"must learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada, my dear, and 
Ada stands much in need of you."
"It is like you, Guardian," said I, "to have been taking that into 
consideration, for a happy surprise to both of us."
"Not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for that 
virtue; since, if you were generally on the road, you could be seldom with 
me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of Ada as I can, in 
this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of her alone, but of him 
too, poor fellow."
"Have you seen Mr Woodcourt, this morning, Guardian?"
"I see Mr Woodcourt every morning, Dame Durden."
"Does he still say the same of Richard?"
"Just the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on the 
contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about him; who 
can be?"
My dear girl had been to see us lately, every day; sometimes twice in a 
day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last until I was 
quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart was as full of 
affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it had ever been, and we 
acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions upon her to stay away; but we 
knew on the other hand that she felt it a part of her duty to him, to be 
sparing of her visits at our house. My Guardian's delicacy had soon 
perceived this, and had tried to convey to her that he thought she was 
right.
"Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard," said I. "When will he awake from his 
delusion!"
"He is not in the way to do so now, my dear," replied my Guardian. "The 
more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me: having made me the 
principal representative of the great occasion of his suffering."
I could not help adding, "So unreasonably!"
"Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot!" returned my Guardian, "what shall we find 
reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! Unreason and injustice at the top, 
unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason and 
injustice from beginning to end - if it ever has an end - how should poor 
Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He no more gathers 
grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, than older men did, in old 
times."
His gentleness and consideration for Richard, whenever we spoke of him, 
touched me so, that I was always silent on this subject very soon.
"I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the whole 
Chancery battery of great guns, would be infinitely astonished by such 
unreason and injustice in one of their suitors," pursued my Guardian. "When 
those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses from the powder they sow 
in their wigs, I shall begin to be astonished too!"
He checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the wind 
was, and leaned on the back of my chair instead.
"Well, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave to 
time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada upon it. 
She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance of another 
separation from a friend. Therefore, I have particularly begged of 
Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not to move this 
subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month, next year, sooner or 
later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can wait."
But I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I thought, 
had Mr Woodcourt.
"So he tells me," returned my Guardian. "Very good. He has made his 
protest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to be 
said about it. Now, I come to Mrs Woodcourt. How do you like her, my dear?"
In answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked her very 
much, and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be.
"I think so too," said my Guardian. "Less pedigree? Not so much of Morgan-
ap - what's his name?"
That was what I meant, I acknowledged; though he was a very harmless 
person, even when we had had more of him.
"Still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains," said my 
Guardian. "I agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better for a time 
than retain Mrs Woodcourt here?"
No. And yet -
My Guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say.
I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could say. I 
had an undefined impression that it might have been better if we had had 
some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why, even to myself. 
Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.
"You see," said my Guardian, "our neighbourhood is in Woodcourt's way, and 
he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is agreeable to 
them both; and she is familiar to us, and fond of you.
Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could not have 
suggested a better arrangement; but I was not quite easy in my mind. 
Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think!
"It is a very good plan indeed, dear Guardian, and we could not do better."
"Sure, little woman?"
Quite sure. I had had a moment's time to think, since I had urged that duty 
on myself, and I was quite sure.
"Good," said my Guardian. "It shall be done. Carried unanimously."
"Carried unanimously," I repeated, going on with my work.
It was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting. It had 
been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey, and never resumed. I 
showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I had explained the 
pattern to him, and all the great effects that were to come out by-and-by, 
I thought I would go back to our last theme.
"You said dear Guardian, when we spoke of Mr Woodcourt before Ada left us, 
that you thought he would give a long trial to another country. Have you 
been advising him since?"
"Yes, little woman; pretty often."
"Has he decided to do so?"
"I rather think not."
"Some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?" said I.
"Why - yes - perhaps," returned my Guardian, beginning his answer in a very 
deliberate manner. "About half a year hence or so, there is a medical 
attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in Yorkshire. It 
is a thriving place, pleasantly situated; streams and streets, town and 
country, mill and moor; and seems to present an opening for such a man. I 
mean, a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes 
do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level 
will be high enough after all, if it should prove to be a way of usefulness 
and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I 
suppose; but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead 
of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for. It is 
Woodcourt's kind."
"And will he get this appointment?" I asked.
"Why, little woman," returned my Guardian, smiling, "not being an oracle, I 
cannot confidently say; but I think so. His reputation stands very high; 
there were people from that part of the country in the shipwreck; and, 
strange to say, I believe the best man has the best chance. You must not 
suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a very, very commonplace affair, 
my dear; an appointment to a great amount of work and a small amount of 
pay; but better things will gather about it, it may be fairly hoped."
"The poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice, if it falls 
on Mr Woodcourt, Guardian."
"You are right, little woman; that I am sure they will."
We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of Bleak 
House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his side in my 
mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered.
I now began to visit my dear girl every day, in the dull dark corner where 
she lived. The morning was my usual time; but whenever I found I had an 
hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to Chancery Lane. 
They were both so glad to see me at all hour and used to brighten up so 
when they heard me opening the door and coming in (being quite at home, I 
never knocked), that I had no fear of becoming troublesome just yet.
On these occasions I frequently found Richard absent. At other times he 
would be writing, or reading papers in the Cause, at that table of his, so 
covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I would come upon 
him, lingering at the door of Mr Vholes's office. Sometimes I would meet 
him in the neighbourhood, lounging about, and biting his nails. I often met 
him wandering in Lincoln's Inn, near the place where I had first seen him, 
O how different, how different!
That the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I used to 
see burning after dark in Mr Vholes's office, I knew very well. It was not 
a large amount in the beginning; he had married in debt; and I could not 
fail to understand, by this time, what was meant by Mr Vholes's shoulder 
being at the wheel - as I still heard it was. My dear made the best of 
housekeepers, and tried hard to save; but I knew that they were getting 
poorer and poorer every day.
She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned and 
graced it so, that it became another place. Paler than she had been at 
home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when she was yet so 
cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed, that I half believed she 
was blinded by her love for Richard to his ruinous career.
I went one day to dine with them, while I was under this impression. As I 
turned into Symond's Inn, I met little Miss Flite coming out. She had been 
to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as she still called 
them, and had derived the highest gratification from that ceremony. Ada had 
already told me that she called every Monday at five o'clock, with one 
little extra white bow in her bonnet, which never appeared there at any 
other time, and with her largest reticule of documents on her arm.
"My dear!" she began. "So delighted! How do you do! So glad to see you. And 
are you going to visit our interesting Jarndyce wards? To be sure! Our 
beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see you."
"Then Richard has not come in yet?" said I. "I am glad of that, for I was 
afraid of being a little late."
"No he is not come in," returned Miss Flite. "He has had a long day in 
court. I left him there, with Vholes. You don't like Vholes, I hope? Don't 
like Vholes. Dangerous man!"
"I am afraid you see Richard oftener than ever now?" said I.
"My dearest," returned Miss Flite, "daily and hourly. You know what I told 
you of the attraction on the Chancellor's table? My dear, next to myself he 
is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to amuse our little 
party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?"
It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was no 
surprise.
"In short, my valued friend," pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips to my 
ear, with an air of equal patronage and mystery, "I must tell you a secret. 
I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted, and appointed him. In 
my will. Ye-es."
"Indeed?" said I.
"Ye-es," repeated Miss Flite, in her most genteel accents, "my executor, 
administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.) I have 
reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch that 
judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance."
It made me sigh to think of him.
"I did at one time mean," said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, "to nominate, 
constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my charming girl. 
I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor man, so I have 
appointed his successor. Don't mention it. This is in confidence."
She carefully opened her reticule a little way, and showed me a folded 
piece of paper inside, as the appointment of which she spoke.
"Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds."
"Really, Miss Flite?" said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her 
confidence received with an appearance of interest.
She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy. "Two 
more. I call them the wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with all the 
others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, 
Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, 
Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach!"
The poor soul kissed me, with the most troubled look I had ever seen in 
her; and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her birds, 
as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips, quite chilled 
me.
This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have 
dispensed with the company of Mr Vholes, when Richard (who arrived within a 
minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner. Although it was a 
very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some minutes both out of the room 
together, helping to get ready what we were to eat and drink. Mr Vholes 
took that opportunity of holding a little conversation in a low voice with 
me. He came to the window where I was sitting, and began upon Symond's Inn.
"A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official one," 
said Mr Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove, to make it clearer 
for me.
"There is not much to see here," said I.
"Nor to hear, miss," returned Mr Vholes. "A little music does occasionally 
stray in; but we are not musical in the law, and soon eject it. I hope Mr 
Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish him?"
I thanked Mr Vholes, and said he was quite well.
"I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his friends 
myself," said Mr Vholes, "and I am aware that the gentlemen of our 
profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an unfavourable 
eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and evil report, and all 
kinds of prejudice, (we are the victims of prejudice) is to have everything 
openly carried on. How do you find Mr C looking, Miss Summerson?"
"He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious."
"Just so," said Mr Vholes.
He stood behind me, with his long black figure reaching nearly to the 
ceiling of those low rooms; feeling the pimples on his face as if they were 
ornaments, and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there were not a 
human passion or emotion in his nature.
"Mr Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr C, I believe?" he resumed.
"Mr Woodcourt is his disinterested friend," I answered.
"But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance."
"That can do little for an unhappy mind," said I.
"Just so," said Mr Vholes.
So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were 
wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser, and there were something of 
the Vampire in him.
"Miss Summerson," said Mr Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved hands, as 
if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in black kid or out 
of it, "this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr C's."
I begged he would excuse me for discussing it. They had been engaged when 
they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly), and when the 
prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When Richard had not 
yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now darkened his life.
"Just so," assented Mr Vholes again. "Still, with a view to everything 
being openly carried on, I will, with your permission, Miss Summerson, 
observe to you that I consider this a very ill-advised marriage, indeed. I 
owe the opinion, not only to Mr C's connections, against whom I should 
naturally wish to protect myself, but also to my own reputation - dear to 
myself, as a professional man aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three 
girls at home, for whom I am striving to realise some little independence; 
dear, I will even say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to 
support."
"It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better 
marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr Vholes," said I, "if Richard were 
persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which you are engaged 
with him."
Mr Vholes, with a noiseless cough - or rather gasp - into one of his black 
gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even that.
"Miss Summerson," he said, "it may be so; and I freely admit that the young 
lady who has taken Mr C's name upon herself in so ill-advised a manner - 
you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out that remark again, 
as a duty I owe to Mr C's connections - is a highly genteel young lady. 
Business has prevented me from mixing much with general society, in any but 
a professional character; still I trust I am competent to perceive that she 
is a highly genteel young lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that 
myself, and I never did give much attention to it from a boy; but I dare 
say the young lady is equally eligible, in that point of view. She is 
considered so (I have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point 
more in their way than in mine. In reference to Mr C.'s pursuit of his 
interests - "
"O! His interests, Mr Vholes!"
"Pardon me," returned Mr Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward and 
dispassionate manner. "Mr C takes certain interests under certain wills 
disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference to Mr C's pursuit 
of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss Summerson, the first time I had 
the pleasure of seeing you, in my desire that everything should be openly 
carried on - I used those words, for I happened afterwards to note them in 
my diary, which is producible at any time - I mentioned to you that Mr C 
had laid down the principle of watching his own interests; and that when a 
client of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is 
to say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I have 
carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over, to 
any connection of Mr C's, on any account. As open as I was to Mr Jarndyce, 
I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional duty to be so, 
though it can be charged to no one. I openly say, unpalatable as it may be, 
that I consider Mr, C's affairs in a very bad way, that I consider Mr C 
himself in a very bad way, and that I regard this as an exceedingly ill-
advised marriage. - Am I here, sir? Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr C, and 
enjoying the pleasure of some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, 
for which I have to thank you very much, sir!"
He broke off thus, in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came into 
the room. By this time I too well understood Mr Vholes's scrupulous way of 
saving himself and his respectability, not to feel that our worst fears did 
but keep pace with his client's progress.
We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard, 
anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr Vholes (who took off his gloves to 
dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table; for I doubt if, 
looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host's face. I found 
Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress, abstracted in his manner, 
forcing his spirits now and then, and at other intervals relapsing into a 
dull thoughtfulness. About his large bright eyes that used to be so merry, 
there was a wanness and a restlessness that changed them altogether. I 
cannot use the expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth 
which is not like age; and into such a ruin, Richard's youth and youthful 
beauty had all fallen away.
He ate little, and seemed indifferent what it was; showed himself to be 
much more impatient than he used to be; and was quick, even with Ada. I 
thought, at first, that his old lighthearted manner was all gone; but it 
shone out of him sometimes, as I had occasionally known little momentary 
glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from the glass. His laugh 
had not quite left him either; but it was like the echo of a joyful sound, 
and that is always sorrowful.
Yet he was as glad as ever in his old affectionate way, to have me there; 
and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not appear to be 
interesting to Mr Vholes, though he occasionally made a gasp which I 
believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner, and said that with the 
permission of the ladies he would retire to his office.
"Always devoted to business, Vholes!" cried Richard.
"Yes, Mr C," he returned, "the interests of clients are never to be 
neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional man 
like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his fellow-
practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the pleasure of the 
present agreeable conversation, may not be wholly irrespective of your own 
interests, Mr C."
Richard expressed himself quite sure of that, and lighted Mr Vholes out. On 
his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good fellow, a 
safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very good fellow, 
indeed! He was so defiant about it, that it struck me he had begun to doubt 
Mr Vholes.
Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put things to 
rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who attended to the 
chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there, and quietly sat down to 
sing some of Richard's favourites; the lamp being first removed into the 
next room, as he complained of its hurting his eyes.
I sat between them at my dear girl's side, and felt very melancholy 
listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he darkened 
the room for that reason. She had been singing some time, rising between-
whiles to bend over him and speak to him; when Mr Woodcourt came in. Then 
he sat down by Richard; and half playfully, half earnestly, quite naturally 
and easily, found out how he felt, and where he had been all day. Presently 
he proposed to accompany him in a short walk on one of the bridges, as it 
was a moonlight airy night; and Richard readily consenting, they went out 
together.
They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano, and me still sitting 
beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her waist. She put 
her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side), but kept her right upon 
the keys - going over and over them, without striking any note.
"Esther, my dearest," she said, breaking silence, "Richard is never so 
well, and I am never so easy about him, as when he is with Allan Woodcourt. 
We have to thank you for that."
I pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because Mr 
Woodcourt had come to her cousin John's house, and had known us all there; 
and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had always liked him, 
and - and so forth.
"All true," said Ada; "but that he is such a devoted friend to us, we owe 
to you."
I thought it best to let my dear girl have her way, and to say no more 
about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her 
trembling.
"Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife 
indeed. You shall teach me."
I teach! I said no more; for I noticed the hand that was fluttering over 
the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak; that it was she 
who had something to say to me.
"When I married Richard, I was not insensible to what was before him. I had 
been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never known any 
trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for; but I understood the danger he 
was in, dear Esther."
"I know, I know, my darling."
"When we were married, I had some little hope that I might be able to 
convince him of his mistake; that he might come to regard it in a new way 
as my husband, and not pursue it all the more desperately for my sake - as 
he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have married him just the 
same, Esther. Just the same!"
In the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still - a firmness 
inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying away with them - I 
saw the confirmation of her earnest tones.
"You are not to think, my dearest Esther, that I fail to see what you see, 
and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I do. The 
greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely know Richard 
better than my love does."
She spoke so modestly and softly, and her trembling hand expressed such 
agitation, as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear, dear 
girl!
"I see him at his worst, every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know every 
change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite determined, 
Esther, if Heaven would help me, never to show him that I grieved for what 
he did, and so to make him more unhappy. I want him, when he comes home, to 
find no trouble in my face. I want him, when he looks at me, to see what he 
loved in me. I married him to do this, and this supports me."
I felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I now 
thought I began to know what it was.
"And something else supports me, Esther."
She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in motion.
"I look forward a little while, and I don't know what great aid may come to 
me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be something lying 
on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with greater power than mine 
to show him his true course, and win him back."
Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her in 
mine.
"If that little creature should fail too, Esther, I still look forward. I 
look forward a long while, through years and years, and think that then, 
when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a beautiful woman, his 
daughter, happily married, may be proud of him and a blessing to him. Or 
that a generous brave man, as handsome as he used to be, as hopeful, and 
far more happy, may walk in the sunshine with him, honouring his grey head, 
and saying to himself, 'I thank God this is my father! ruined by a fatal 
inheritance, and restored through me!'"
O, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against me!
"These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, and I know they will. Though 
sometimes even they depart from me, before a dread that arises when I look 
at Richard."
I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was? Sobbing and 
weeping, she replied:
"That he may not live to see his child."


Chapter 61

A Discovery

The days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl 
brightened, can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I never 
wish to see it, now; I have been there only once since; but in my memory 
there is a mournful glory shining on the place, which will shine forever.
Not a day passed, without my going there, of course. At first I found Mr 
Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano, and 
talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides my very much 
mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard 
poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety, too 
inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada's life. I clearly 
perceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved, after 
much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr Skimpole, and try 
delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great consideration that 
made me bold.
I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley, for Somers Town. As I 
approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I felt what 
a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr Skimpole, and how 
extremely likely it was that he would signally defeat me. However, I 
thought that being there, I would go through with it. I knocked with a 
trembling hand at Mr Skimpole's door - literally with a hand, for the 
knocker was gone - and after a long parley gained admission from an 
Irishwoman, who was in the area when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a 
water-bucket with a poker to light the fire with.
Mr Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a little, was 
enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he asked? Who would I 
prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I have his Comedy daughter, 
his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment daughter? Or would I have all the 
daughters at once, in a perfect nosegay?
I replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself only, 
if he would give me leave.
"My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! Of course," he said, bringing his 
chair near mine, and breaking into his fascinating smile, "of course it's 
not business. Then it's pleasure!"
I said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not quite 
a pleasant matter.
"Then, my dear Miss Summerson," said he, with the frankest gaiety, "don't 
allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is not a pleasant 
matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature, in every point 
of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am imperfectly pleasant; 
then, if I never allude to an unpleasant matter, how much less should you! 
So, that's disposed of, and we will talk of something else."
Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still wished 
to pursue the subject.
"I should think it a mistake," said Mr Skimpole, with his airy laugh, "if I 
thought Miss Summerson capable of making one. But I don't!"
"Mr Skimpole," said I, raising my eyes to his, "I have so often heard you 
say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of life - "
"Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who's the junior 
partner? D?" said Mr Skimpole, brightly. "Not an idea of them!"
" - That, perhaps," I went on, "you will excuse my boldness on that 
account. I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is poorer 
than he was."
"Dear me!" said Mr Skimpole. "So am I, they tell me."
"And in very embarrassed circumstances."
"Parallel case exactly!" said Mr Skimpole, with a delighted countenance.
"This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety; and as I think 
she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by visitors, and as 
Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind, it has occurred to me 
to take the liberty of saying that - if you would - not - "
I was coming to the point with great difficulty, when he took me by both 
hands, and, with a radiant face and in the liveliest way, anticipated it.
"Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly not. 
Why should I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I don't go 
anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain comes to me when 
it wants me. Now I have had very little pleasure at our dear Richard's, 
lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates why. Our young friends, 
losing the youthful poetry which was once so captivating in them, begin to 
think, 'this is a man who wants pounds.' So I am; I always want pounds; not 
for myself, but because tradespeople always want them of me. Next, our 
young friends begin to think, becoming mercenary, 'this is the man who had 
pounds, - who borrowed them;' which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our 
young friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate 
in their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see them 
therefore? Absurd!"
Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me, as he reasoned thus, 
there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite 
astonishing.
"Besides," he said, pursuing his argument, in his tone of light-hearted 
conviction, "if I don't go anywhere for pain - which would be a perversion 
of the intention of my being, and a monstrous thing to do - why should I go 
anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I went to see our young friends in 
their present ill-regulated state of mind, I should give them pain. The 
associations with me would be disagreeable. They might say, 'this is the 
man who had pounds, and who can't pay pounds,' which I can't, of course; 
nothing could be more out of the question! Then, kindness requires that I 
shouldn't go near them - and I won't."
He finished by genially kissing my hand, and thanking me. Nothing but Miss 
Summerson's fine tact, he said, would have found this out for him.
I was much disconcerted; but I reflected that if the main point were 
gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything leading to 
it. I had determined to mention something else, however, and I thought I 
was not to be put off in that.
"Mr Skimpole," said I, "I must take the liberty of saying, before I 
conclude my visit, that I was much surprised to learn, on the best 
authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor boy left 
Bleak House, and that you accepted a present on that occasion. I have not 
mentioned it to my Guardian, for I fear it would hurt him unnecessarily; 
but I may say to you that I was much surprised."
"No? Really surprised, my dear Miss Summerson?" he returned, inquiringly, 
raising his pleasant eyebrows.
"Greatly surprised."
He thought about it for a little while, with a highly agreeable and 
whimsical expression of face; then quite gave it up, and said, in his most 
engaging manner:
"You know what a child I am. Why surprised?"
I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question; but as he begged I 
would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to understand, in the 
gentlest words I could use, that his conduct seemed to involve a disregard 
of several moral obligations. He was much amused and interested when he 
heard this, and said, "No, really?" with ingenuous simplicity.
"You know I don't pretend to be responsible. I never could do it. 
Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me - or below me," 
said Mr Skimpole, "I don't even know which; but, as I understand the way in 
which my dear Miss Summerson (always remarkable for her practical good 
sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine it was chiefly a 
question of money, do you know?"
I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this.
"Ah! Then you see," said Mr Skimpole, shaking his head, "I am hopeless of 
understanding it."
I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my Guardian's 
confidence for a bribe.
"My dear Miss Summerson," he returned, with a candid hilarity that was all 
his own, "I can't be bribed."
"Not by Mr Bucket?" said I.
"No," said he. "Not by anybody. I don't attach any value to money. I don't 
care about it, I don't know about it, I don't want it, I don't keep it - it 
goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?"
I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the capacity 
for arguing the question.
"On the contrary," said Mr Skimpole, "I am exactly the man to be placed in 
a superior position, in such a case as that. I am above the rest of 
mankind, in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy, in such a case 
as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian baby is by bandages. 
I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far above suspicion as Caesar's 
wife."
Anything to equal the lightness of his manner, and the playful impartiality 
with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed the matter about 
like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in anybody else!
"Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received into the 
house and put to bed, in a state that I strongly object to. The boy being 
in bed, a man arrives - like the house that Jack built. Here is the man who 
demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state 
that I strongly object to. Here is a banknote produced by the man who 
demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in a state 
that I strongly object to. Here is the Skimpole who accepts the banknote 
produced by the man who demands the boy who is received into the house and 
put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very 
well. Should the Skimpole have refused the note? Why should the Skimpole 
have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket; 'what's this for? I 
don't understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.' Bucket still 
entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole, not being 
warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole, perceives them. What 
are they? Skimpole reasons with himself, this is a tamed, lynx, an active 
police officer, an intelligent man, a person of a peculiarly directed 
energy and great subtlety both of conception and execution, who discovers 
our friends and enemies for us when they run away, recovers our property 
for us when we are robbed, avenges us comfortably when were are murdered. 
This active police officer and intelligent man has acquired, in the 
exercise of his art, a strong faith in money; he finds it very useful to 
him, and he makes it very useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in 
Bucket, because I want it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of 
Bucket's weapons; shall I possibly paralyse Bucket, in his next detective 
operation? And again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it 
is blameable in Bucket to offer the note - much more blameable in Bucket, 
because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of 
Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the general 
cohesion of things, that he should think well of Bucket. The State 
expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that's all he 
does!"
I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition, and therefore took my 
leave. Mr Skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would not hear 
of my returning home attended only by "Little Coavinses," and accompanied 
me himself. He entertained me, on the way, with a variety of delightful 
conversation; and assured me, at parting, that he should never forget the 
fine tact with which I had found that out for him about our young friends.
As it so happened that I never saw Mr Skimpole again, I may at once finish 
what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and my Guardian, 
based chiefly on the foregoing grounds, and on his having heartlessly 
disregarded my Guardian's entreaties (as we afterwards learned from Ada) in 
reference to Richard. His being heavily in my Guardian's debt, had nothing 
to do with their separation. He died some five years afterwards, and left a 
diary behind him, with letters and other materials towards his Life; which 
was published, and which showed him to have been the victim of a 
combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was 
considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself than 
the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It was this. 
"Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is the Incarnation 
of Selfishness."
And now I come to a part of my story, touching myself very nearly indeed, 
and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance occurred. 
Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in my mind, 
associated with my poor old face, had only revived as belonging to a part 
of my life that was gone - gone like my infancy or my childhood. I have 
suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that subject, but have written 
them as faithfully as my memory has recalled them. And I hope to do, and 
mean to do, the same down to the last words of these pages; which I see 
now, not so very far before me.
The months were gliding away; and my dear girl, sustained by the hopes she 
had confided to me, was the same beautiful star in the miserable corner. 
Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the Court day after day; listlessly 
sat there the whole day long, when he knew there was no remote chance of 
the suit being mentioned; and became one of the stock sights of the place. 
I wonder whether any of the gentlemen remembered him as he was when he 
first went there.
So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea, that he used to avow in 
his cheerful moments, that he should never have breathed the fresh air now 
"but for Woodcourt." It was only Mr Woodcourt who could occasionally divert 
his attention, for a few hours at a time; and rouse him, even when he sunk 
into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed us greatly, and the returns 
of which became more frequent as the months went on. My dear girl was right 
in saying that he only pursued his errors the more desperately for her 
sake. I have no doubt that his desire to retrieve what he had lost, was 
rendered the more intense by his grief for his young wife, and became like 
the madness of a gamester.
I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at night, 
I generally want home with Charley in a coach; sometimes my Guardian would 
meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home together. One evening, 
he had arranged to meet me at eight o'clock. I could not leave, as I 
usually did, quite punctually to the time, for I was working for my dear 
girl, and had a few stitches more to do, to finish what I was about; but it 
was within a few minutes of the hour, when I bundled up my little work-
basket, gave my darling my last kiss for the night, and hurried downstairs. 
Mr Woodcourt went with me, as it was dusk.
When we came to the usual place of meeting - it was close by, and Mr 
Woodcourt had often accompanied me before - my Guardian was not there. We 
waited half an hour, walking up and down; but there were no signs of him. 
We agreed that he was either prevented from coming, or that he had come, 
and gone away; and Mr Woodcourt proposed to walk home with me.
It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very short 
one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and Ada the whole 
way. I did not thank him, in words, for what he had done - my appreciation 
of it had risen above all words then - but I hoped he might not be without 
some understanding of what I felt so strongly.
Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my Guardian was out, and 
that Mrs Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same room into which I 
had brought my blushing girl, when her youthful lover, now her so altered 
husband, was the choice of her young heart; the very same room, from which 
my Guardian and I watched them going away through the sunlight, in the 
fresh bloom of their hope and promise.
We were standing by the opened window, looking down into the street, when 
Mr Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved me. I learned 
in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to him. I learned in a 
moment that what I had thought was pity and compassion, was devoted, 
generous, faithful love. O, too late to know it now, too late, too late. 
That was the first ungrateful thought I had. Too late.
"When I returned," he told me, "when I came back, no richer than I went 
away, and found you nearly risen from a sick bed, yet so inspired by sweet 
consideration for others, and so free from a selfish thought - "
"O, Mr Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!" I entreated him. "I do not deserve 
your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time, many!"
"Heaven knows, beloved of my life," said he, "that my praise is not a 
lover's praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you see in 
Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, what sacred 
admiration and what love she wins."
"O, Mr Woodcourt," cried I, "it is a great thing to win love, it is a great 
thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and the hearing of 
it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and sorrow - joy that I 
have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it better; but I am not free 
to think of yours."
I said it with a stronger heart; for when he praised me thus, and when I 
heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true, I 
aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that. Although I 
close this unforeseen page in my life tonight, I could be worthier of it 
all through my life. And it was a comfort to me, and an impulse to me, and 
I felt a dignity rise up within me that was derived from him, when I 
thought so.
He broke the silence.
"I should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will 
evermore be as dear to me as now," and the deep earnestness with which he 
said it, at once strengthened me and made me weep, "if, after her assurance 
that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it. Dear Esther, let me 
only tell you that the fond idea of you which I took abroad, was exalted to 
the Heavens when I came home. I have always hoped, in the first hour when I 
seemed to stand in any ray of good fortune, to tell you this. I have always 
feared that I should tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both 
fulfilled tonight. I distress you. I have said enough."
Something seemed to pass into my place that was like the Angel he thought 
me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I wished to help 
him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he showed that first 
commiseration for me.
"Dear Mr Woodcourt," said I, "before we part tonight, something is left for 
me to say. I never could say it as I wish - I never shall - but - "
I had to think again of being more deserving of his love, and his 
affliction, before I could go on.
" - I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its 
remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I know you 
are not acquainted with my history, and I know what a noble love that is 
which is so faithful. What you have said to me, could have affected me so 
much from no other lips; for there are none that could give it such a value 
to me. It shall not be lost. It shall make me better."
He covered his eyes with his hand, and turned away his head. How could I 
ever be worthy of those tears?
"If, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together - in tending 
Richard and Ada; and I hope in many happier scenes of life - you ever find 
anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it used to be, 
believe that it will have sprung up from tonight, and that I shall owe it 
to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr Woodcourt, never believe, that I 
forget this night; or that while my heart beats, it can be insensible to 
the pride and joy of having been beloved by you."
He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt still 
more encouraged.
"I am induced, by what you said just now," said I, "to hope that you have 
succeeded in your endeavour?"
"I have," he answered. "With such help from Mr Jarndyce, as you who know 
him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have succeeded."
"Heaven bless him for it," said I, giving him my hand; "and Heaven bless 
you in all you do!"
"I shall do it better for the wish," he answered; "it will make me enter on 
these new duties, as on another sacred trust from you."
"Ah! Richard!" I exclaimed involuntarily, "what will he do when you are 
gone!"
"I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss Summerson, 
even if I were."
One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon, before he left me. I knew 
that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take, if I reserved 
it.
"Mr Woodcourt," said I, "you will be glad to know from my lips before I say 
Good night, that in the future, which is clear and bright before me, I am 
most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or to desire."
It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
"From my childhood I have been," said I, "the object of the untiring 
goodness of the best of human beings; to whom I am so bound by every tie of 
attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in the compass of 
a life could express the feelings of a single day."
"I share those feelings," he returned; "You speak of Mr Jarndyce."
"You know his virtues well," said I, "but few can know the greatness of his 
character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities have been 
revealed to me in nothing more brightly, than in the shaping out of that 
future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage and respect had 
not been his already, - which I know they are, - they would have been his, 
I think, on this assurance, and in the feeling it would have awakened in 
you towards him for my sake."
He fervently replied, that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave him 
my hand again.
"Good night," I said; "Good-bye."
"The first, until we meet tomorrow: the second, as a farewell to this theme 
between us for ever?"
"Yes."
"Good night; good-bye!"
He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His love, 
in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon me, that he 
had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again, and the street 
was blotted out by my rushing tears.
But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me the 
beloved of his life, and had said I would be evermore as dear to him as I 
was then; and I felt as if my heart would not hold the triumph of having 
heard those words. My first wild thought had died away. It was not too late 
to hear them, for it was not too late to be animated by them to be good, 
true, grateful, and contented. How easy my path; how much easier than his!


Chapter 62

Another Discovery

I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the courage 
to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little reproach me. I 
went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the dark, and lay down in the 
dark to sleep. I had no need of any light to read my Guardian's letter by, 
for I knew it by heart. I took it from the place where I kept it, and 
repeated its contents by its own clear light of integrity and love, and 
went to sleep with it on my pillow.
I was up very early in the morning, and called Charley to come for a walk. 
We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and arranged them, 
and were as busy as possible. We were so early, that I had good time still 
for Charley's lesson, before breakfast; Charley (who was not in the least 
improved in the old defective article of grammar) came through it with 
great applause; and we were altogether very notable. When my Guardian 
appeared, he said, "Why, little woman, you look fresher than your flowers!" 
And Mrs Woodcourt repeated and translated a passage from the 
Mewlinwillinwodd, expressive of my being like a mountain with the sun upon 
it.
This was all so pleasant, that I hope it made me more like the mountain 
than I had been before. After breakfast, I waited my opportunity, and 
peeped about a little, until I saw my Guardian in his own room - the room 
of last night - by himself. Then I made an excuse to go in with my 
housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.
"Well, Dame Durden?" said my Guardian; the post had brought him several 
letters, and he was writing. "You want money!"
"No, indeed, I have plenty in hand."
"There never was such a Dame Durden," said my Guardian, "for making money 
last."
He had laid down his pen, and leaned back in his chair looking at me. I 
have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never seen it 
look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it, which made me 
think, "he has been doing some great kindness this morning."
"There never was," said my Guardian, musing as he smiled upon me, "such a 
Dame Durden for making money last."
He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it, and him, so much, that 
when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was always put at 
his side - for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I talked to him, and 
sometimes I silently worked by him - I hardly liked to disturb it by laying 
my hand on his breast. But I found I did not disturb it at all.
"Dear Guardian," said I, "I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss in 
anything?"
"Remiss in anything, my dear!"
"Have I not been what I have meant to be, since - I brought the answer to 
your letter, Guardian?"
"You have been everything I could desire, my love."
"I am very glad indeed to hear that," I returned. "You know, you said to 
me, was this the mistress of Bleak House? And I said, yes."
"Yes," said my Guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about me, as 
if there were something to protect me from; and looked into my face, 
smiling.
"Since then," said I, "we have never spoken on the subject except once."
"And then I said, Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my dear."
"And I said," I timidly reminded him, "but its mistress remained."
He still held me in the same protecting manner, and with the same bright 
goodness in his face.
"Dear Guardian," said I, "I know how you have felt all that has happened, 
and how considerate you have been. As so much time has passed, and as you 
spoke only this morning of my being so well again, perhaps you expect me to 
renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so. I will be the mistress of 
Bleak House when you please."
"See!" he returned gaily, "what a sympathy there must be between us! I have 
had nothing else, poor Rick excepted - it's a large exception - in my mind. 
When you came in, I was full of it. When shall we give Bleak House its 
mistress, little woman?"
"When you please."
"Next month!"
"Next month, dear Guardian."
"The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life - the day on 
which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than any other man 
in the world - the day on which I give Bleak House its little mistress - 
shall be next month, then," said my Guardian.
I put my arms round his neck and kissed him, just as I had done on the day 
when I brought my answer.
A servant came to the door to announce Mr Bucket, which was quite 
unnecessary, for Mr Bucket was already looking in over the servant's 
shoulder. "Mr Jarndyce and Miss Summerson," said he rather out of breath, 
"with all apologies for intruding, will you allow me to order up a person 
that's on the stairs, and that objects to being left there in case of 
becoming the subject of observation in his absence? Thank you. Be so good 
as chair that there Member in this direction, will you?" said Mr Bucket, 
beckoning over the banisters.
This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap, unable to 
walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers, and deposited in the room 
near the door. Mr Bucket immediately got rid of the bearers, mysteriously 
shut the door, and bolted it.

"Now you see, Mr Jarndyce," he then began, putting down his hat, and 
opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger, "you 
know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise knows me, and 
his name is Smallweed. The discounting line is his line principally, and 
he's what you may call a dealer in bills. That's about what you are, you 
know, ain't you?" said Mr Bucket, stopping a little to address the 
gentleman in question, who was exceedingly suspicious of him.
He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself, when he was seized 
with a violent fit of coughing.
"Now, Moral, you know!" said Mr Bucket, improving the accident. "Don't you 
contradict when there ain't no occasion, and you won't be took in that way. 
Now, Mr Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I've been negotiating with this 
gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and one way and 
another I've been in and out and about his premises a deal. His premises 
are the premises formerly occupied by Krook, Marine Store Dealer - a 
relation of this gentleman's, that you saw in his lifetime, if I don't 
mistake?"
My Guardian replied "Yes."
"Well! You are to understand," said Mr Bucket, "that this gentleman he come 
into Krook's property, and a good deal of magpie property there was. Vast 
lots of waste paper among the rest. Lord bless you, of no use to nobody!"
The cunning of Mr Bucket's eye, and the masterly manner in which he 
contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful auditor 
could protest, to let us know that he stated the case according to previous 
agreement, and could say much more of Mr Smallweed if he thought it 
advisable, deprived us of any merit in quite understanding him. His 
difficulty was increased by Mr Smallweed's being deaf as well as 
suspicious, and watching his face with the closest attention.
"Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes into the 
property, naturally begins to rummage, don't you see?" said Mr Bucket.
"To which? Say that again," cried Mr Smallweed, in a shrill sharp voice.
"To rummage," repeated Mr Bucket. "Being a prudent man, and being 
accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage among the 
papers as you have come into; don't you?"
"Of course I do," cried Mr Smallweed.
"Of course you do," said Mr Bucket, conversationally, "and much to blame 
you would be if you didn't. And so you chance to find, you know," Mr Bucket 
went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful raillery which Mr 
Smallweed by no means reciprocated, "and so you chance to find, you know, a 
paper with the signature of Jarndyce to it. Don't you?"
Mr Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us, and grudgingly nodded 
assent.
"And coming to look at the paper, at your full leisure and convenience - 
all in good time, for you're not curious to read it, and why should you be! 
- what do you find it to be but a Will, you see. That's the drollery of 
it," said Mr Bucket, with the same lively air of recalling a joke for the 
enjoyment of Mr Smallweed, who still had the same crestfallen appearance of 
not enjoying it at all; "what do you find it to be but a Will?"
"I don't know that it's good as a will, or as anything else," snarled 
Smallweed.
Mr Bucket eyed the old man for a moment - he had slipped and shrunk down in 
his chair into a mere bundle - as if he were much disposed to pounce upon 
him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the same agreeable 
air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us.
"Notwithstanding which," said Mr Bucket, "you get a little doubtful and 
uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of your 
own."
"Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?" asked Mr Smallweed, with his 
hand to his ear.
"A very tender mind."
"Ho! Well, go on," said Mr Smallweed.
"And as you've heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated Chancery 
will case, of the same name; and as you know what a card Krook was for 
buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books, and papers, and 
what not, and never liking to part with 'em, and always a going to teach 
himself to read; you begin to think - and you never was more correct in 
your born days - 'Ecod, if I don't look about me, I may get into trouble 
regarding this will.'"
"Now, mind how you put it, Bucket," cried the old man anxiously, with his 
hand at his ear. "Speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick me up; I 
want to hear better. O Lord, I am shaken to bits!"
Mr Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as he 
could be heard through Mr Smallweed's coughing, and his vicious 
ejaculations of "O my bones! O dear! I've no breath in my body! I'm worse 
than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!" Mr Bucket 
proceeded, in the same convivial manner as before.
"So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises, you take 
me into your confidence, don't you?"
I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill-will, and 
a worse grace, than Mr Smallweed displayed when he admitted this; rendering 
it perfectly evident that Mr Bucket was the very last person he would have 
thought of taking into his confidence, if he could by any possibility have 
kept him out of it.
"And I go into the business with you, - very pleasant we are over it; and I 
confirm you in your well-founded fears, that you will-get-yourself-in-to-a-
most precious line if you don't come out with that there will," said Mr 
Bucket, emphatically; "and accordingly you arrange with me that it shall be 
delivered up to this present Mr Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should 
prove to be valuable, you trusting yourself to him for your reward; that's 
about where it is, ain't it?"
"That's what was agreed," Mr Smallweed assented, with the same bad grace.
"In consequence of which," said Mr Bucket, dismissing his agreeable manner 
all at once, and becoming strictly business-like, "you've got that will 
upon your person at present time; and the only thing that remains for you 
to do is, just to Out with it!"
Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and 
having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr Bucket 
stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend, and his hand 
stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my Guardian. It 
was not produced without much reluctance, and many declarations on the part 
of Mr Smallweed that he was a poor industrious man, and that he left it to 
Mr Jarndyce's honour not to let him lose by his honesty. Little by little, 
he very slowly took from a breast-pocket a stained discoloured paper, which 
was much singed upon the outside, and a little burnt at the edges, as if it 
had long ago been thrown upon a fire, and hastily snatched off again. Mr 
Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of a 
conjuror, from Mr Smallweed to Mr Jarndyce. As he gave it to my Guardian, 
he whispered behind his fingers:
"Hadn't settled how to make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about 
it. I laid out twenty pound upon it. First, the avaricious grandchildren 
split upon him, on account of their objections to his living so 
unreasonably long, and then they split on one another. Lord! there ain't 
one of the family that wouldn't sell the other for a pound or two, except 
the old lady - and she's only out of it because she's too weak in her mind 
to drive a bargain."
"Mr Bucket," said my Guardian aloud, "whatever the worth of this paper may 
be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it be of any worth, 
I hold myself bound to see Mr Smallweed remunerated accordingly."
"Not according to your merits, you know," said Mr Bucket, in friendly 
explanation to Mr Smallweed, "Don't you be afraid of that. According to its 
value."
"That is what I mean," said my Guardian. "You may observe, Mr Bucket, that 
I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain truth is, I have 
forsworn and abjured the whole business these many years, and my soul is 
sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will immediately place the paper in 
the hands of my solicitor in the cause, and its existence shall be made 
known without delay to all other parties interested."
"Mr Jarndyce can't say fairer than that, you understand," observed Mr 
Bucket to his fellow visitor. "And it being now made clear to you that 
nobody's going to be wronged - which must be a great relief to your mind - 
we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home again."
He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning, and 
with a look full of meaning, and a crook of his finger at parting, went his 
way.
We went our way too, which was to Lincoln's Inn, as quickly as possible. Mr 
Kenge was disengaged; and we found him at his table in his dusty room, with 
the inexpressive-looking books, and the piles of papers. Chairs having been 
placed for us by Mr Guppy, Mr Kenge expressed the surprise and 
gratification he felt at the unusual sight of Mr Jarndyce in his office. He 
turned over his double eyeglass as he spoke, and was more Conversation 
Kenge than ever.
"I hope," said Mr Kenge, "that the genial influence of Miss Summerson," he 
bowed to me, "may have induced Mr Jarndyce," he bowed to him, "to forego 
some little of his animosity towards a Cause and towards a Court which are -
 shall I say, which take their place in the stately vista of the pillars of 
our profession?"
"I am inclined to think," returned my Guardian, "that Miss Summerson has 
seen too much of the effects of the Court and the Cause to exert any 
influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the occasion of 
my being here. Mr Kenge, before I lay this paper on your desk and have done 
with it, let me tell you how it has come into my hands."
He did so shortly and distinctly.
"It could not, sir," said Mr Kenge, "have been stated more plainly and to 
the purpose, if it had been a case at law."
"Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the 
purpose?" said my Guardian.
"O fie!" said Mr Kenge.
At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper, but when 
he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had opened and read a 
little of it through his eyeglass, he became amazed. "Mr Jarndyce," he 
said, looking off it, "you have perused this?"
"Not I!" returned my Guardian.
"But my dear sir," said Mr Kenge, "it is a Will of later date than any in 
the suit. It appears to be all in the Testator's handwriting. It is duly 
executed and attested. And even if intended to be cancelled, as might 
possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks of fire, it is not 
cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!"
"Well!" said my Guardian. "What is that to me?"
"Mr Guppy!" cried Mr Kenge, raising his voice. - "I beg your pardon, Mr 
Jarndyce."
"Sir."
"Mr Vholes of Symond's Inn. My compliments. Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Glad to 
speak with him."
Mr Guppy disappeared.
"You ask me what is this to you, Mr Jarndyce. If you had perused this 
document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest considerably, 
though still leaving it a very handsome one, still leaving it a very 
handsome one," said Mr Kenge, waving his hand persuasively and blandly. 
"You would further have seen, that the interests of Mr Richard Carstone, 
and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs Richard Carstone, are very materially 
advanced by it."
"Kenge," said my Guardian, "if all the flourishing wealth that the suit 
brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two young 
cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask me to believe that any 
good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?"
"O really, Mr Jarndyce! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is a very 
great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a very great 
system, a very great system. Really, really!"
My Guardian said no more, and Mr Vholes arrived. He was modestly impressed 
by Mr Kenge's professional eminence.
"How do you do, Mr Vholes? Will you be so good as to take a chair here by 
me, and look over this paper?"
Mr Vholes did as he was asked, and seemed to read it every word. He was not 
excited by it; but he was not excited by anything. When he had well 
examined it, he retired with Mr Kenge into a window, and shading his mouth 
with his black glove, spoke to him at some length. I was not surprised to 
observe Mr Kenge inclined to dispute what he said before he had said much, 
for I knew that no two people ever did agree about anything in Jarndyce and 
Jarndyce. But he seemed to get the better of Mr Kenge, too, in a 
conversation that sounded as if it were almost composed of the words, 
"Receiver-General," "Accountant-General," "Report," "Estate," and "Costs." 
When they had finished, they came back to Mr Kenge's table, and spoke 
aloud.
"Well! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr Vholes?" said Mr Kenge.
Mr Vholes said, "Very much so."
"And a very important document, Mr Vholes?" said Mr Kenge.
Again Mr Vholes said, "Very much so."
"And as you say, Mr Vholes, when the Cause is in the paper next Term, this 
document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in it," said Mr 
Kenge, looking loftily at my Guardian.
Mr Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep 
respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an 
authority.
"And when," asked my Guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr Kenge 
had rattled his money, and Mr Vholes had picked his pimples, "when is next 
Term?"
"Next Term, Mr Jarndyce, will be next month," said Mr Kenge. "Of course we 
shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this document, and to 
collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of course you will 
receive our usual notification of the Cause being in the paper."
"To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention."
"Still bent, my dear sir," said Mr Kenge, showing us through the the outer 
office to the door, "still bent, even with your enlarged mind, on echoing a 
popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr Jarndyce, a very 
prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr Jarndyce, we are a very 
great country. This is a great system, Mr Jarndyce, and would you wish a 
great country to have a little system? Now, really, really!"
He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it were 
a silver trowel, with which to spread the cement of his words on the 
structure of the system, and consolidate it for a thousand ages.


Chapter 63

Steel And Iron

George's shooting-gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and George 
himself is at Chesney Wold, attending on Sir Leicester in his rides, and 
riding very near his bridle-rein, because of the uncertain hand with which 
he guides his horse. But not today is George so occupied. He is journeying 
today into the iron country farther north, to look about him.
As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green woods as 
those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal-pits and ashes, high 
chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching fires, and a heavy 
never lightening cloud of smoke, become the features of the scenery. Among 
such objects rides the trooper, looking about him, and always looking for 
something he has come to find.
At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of iron in 
it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the trooper, swart 
with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse, and asks the workman 
does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts?"
"Why, master," quoth the workman, "do I know my own name?"
"'Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?" asked the trooper.
"Rouncewells? Ah! you're right."
"And where might he be now?" asks the trooper, with a glance before him.
"The bank, the factory, or the house?" the workman wants to know.
"Hum! Rouncewells is so great apparently," mutters the trooper, stroking 
his chin, "that I have as good as half a mind to go back again. Why I don't 
know which I want. Should I find Mr Rouncewell at the factory, do you 
think?"
"'Tain't easy to say where you'd find him - at this time of the day you 
might find either him or son there, if he's in town; but his contracts take 
him away."
And which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys - the tallest ones! 
Yes, he sees them. Well! let him keep his eye on those chimneys, going on 
as straight as ever he can, and presently he'll see 'em down a turning on 
the left, shut in by a great brick wall which forms one side of the street. 
That's Rouncewells.
The trooper thanks his informant, and rides slowly on, looking about him. 
He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much disposed to groom 
him too) at a public house where some of Rouncewell's hands are dining, as 
the ostler tells him. Some of Rouncewell's hands have just knocked off for 
dinner time, and seem to be invading the whole town. They are very sinewy 
and strong, are Rouncewell's hands - a little sooty too.
He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great 
perplexity of iron lying about, in every stage, and in a vast variety of 
shapes; in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in axles, in 
wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched into eccentric 
and perverse forms, as separate parts of machinery; mountains of it broken 
up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bubbling in 
its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about, under the blows of the 
steam hammer; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, 
an iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds.
"This is a place to make a make a man's head ache, too!" says the trooper, 
looking about him for a counting-house. "Who comes here? This is very like 
me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if likenesses run in 
families. Your servant, sir."
"Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?"
"Excuse me. Young Mr Rouncewell, I believe?"
"Yes."
"I was looking for your father, sir. I wished to have a word with him."
The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time, for his 
father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to be found. "Very 
like me before I was set up - devilish like me!" thinks the trooper, as he 
follows. They come to a building in the yard; with an office on an upper 
floor. At sight of the gentleman in the office, Mr George turns very red.
"What name shall I say to my father?" asks the young man.
George full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers "Steel," and is so 
presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office, who sits at a 
table with account-books before him, and some sheets of paper, blotted with 
hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes. It is a bare office, with 
bare windows, looking on the iron view below. Tumbled together on the table 
are some pieces of iron, purposely broken to be tested, at various periods 
of their service, in various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; 
and the smoke is seen, through the windows, rolling heavily out of the tall 
chimneys, to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other 
chimneys.
"I am at your service, Mr Steel," says the gentleman, when his visitor has 
taken a rustic chair.
"Well, Mr Rouncewell," George replies, leaning forward, with his left arm 
on his knee, and his hat in his hand; and very chary of meeting his 
brother's eye; "I am not without my expectations, that in the present visit 
I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served as a dragoon in my 
day; and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to, was, if I 
don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you had a brother who 
gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in 
keeping away?"
"Are you quite sure," returns the ironmaster, in an altered voice, "that 
your name is Steel?"
The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls him by 
his name, and grasps him by both hands.
"You are too quick for me!" cries the trooper, with the tears springing out 
of his eyes. "How do you do, my dear old fellow. I never could have thought 
you would have been half so glad to see me as all this. How do you do, my 
dear old fellow, how do you do!"
They shake hands, and embrace each other, over and over again; the trooper 
still coupling his "How do you do, my dear old fellow!" with his 
protestation that he never thought his brother would have been half so glad 
to see him as all this!
"So far from it," he declares, at the end of a full account of what has 
preceded his arrival there, "I had very little idea of making myself known. 
I thought, if you took by any means forgivingly to my name, I might 
gradually get myself up to the point of writing a letter. But I should not 
have been surprised, brother, if you had considered it anything but welcome 
news to hear of me."
"We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George," returns 
his brother. "This is a great day at home, and you could not have arrived, 
you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an agreement with my son Watt 
today, that on this day twelvemonth he shall marry as pretty and as good a 
girl as you have seen in all your travels. She goes to Germany tomorrow, 
with one of your nieces, for a little polishing up in her education. We 
make a feast of the event, and you will be made the hero of it."
Mr George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect, that he 
resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne, 
however, by his brother and his nephew - concerning whom he renews his 
protestations that he never could have thought they would have been half so 
glad to see him - he is taken home to an elegant house, in all the 
arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture of the 
originally simple habits of the father and mother, with such as are suited 
to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their children. Here, 
Mr George is much dismayed by the graces and accomplishments of his nieces 
that are; and by the beauty of Rosa, his niece that is to be; and by the 
affectionate salutations of these young ladies, which he receives in a sort 
of dream. He is sorely taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his 
nephew; and has a woful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. 
However, there is great rejoicing, and a very hearty company, and infinite 
enjoyment; and Mr George comes bluff and martial through it all; and his 
pledge to be present at the marriage and give away the bride, is received 
with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr George that night, when he 
lies down in the state-bed of his brother's house, to think of all these 
things, and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the evening in their 
floating muslins), waltzing, after the German manner, over his counterpane.
The brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster's room; where the 
elder is proceeding, in his clear, sensible way, to show how he thinks he 
may best dispose of George in his business, when George squeezes his hand 
and stops him.
"Brother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly welcome, 
and a million times more to that for your more than brotherly intentions. 
But my plans are made. Before I say a word as to them, I wish to consult 
you upon one family point. How," says the trooper, folding his arms, and 
looking with indomitable firmness at his brother, "how is my mother to be 
got to scratch me?"
"I am not sure that I understand you, George," replies the ironmaster.
"I say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must be got 
to do it, somehow."
"Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?"
"Of course I do. In short," says the trooper, folding his arms more 
resolutely yet, "I mean - to - scratch me?"
"My dear George," returns his brother, "is it so indispensable that you 
should undergo that process?"
"Quite! Absolutely! I couldn't be guilty of the meanness of coming back 
without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have not sneaked 
home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of your rights. I, who 
forfeited mine, long ago! If I am to remain, and hold up my head, I must be 
scratched. Come. You are a man of celebrated penetration and intelligence, 
and you can tell me how it's to be brought about."
"I can tell you, George," replies the ironmaster, deliberately, "how it is 
not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as well. Look 
at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she recovered you. Do 
you believe there is a consideration in the world that would induce her to 
take such a step against her favourite son? Do you believe there is any 
chance of her consent, to balance against the outrage it would be to her 
(loving dear old lady!) to propose it? If you do, you are wrong. No, 
George! You must make up your mind to remain unscratched. I think," there 
is an amused smile on the ironmaster's face, as he watches his brother, who 
is pondering, deeply disappointed, "I think you may manage almost as well 
as if the thing were done, though."
"How, brother?"
"Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the 
misfortune to inherit, in any way you like, you know."
"That's true!" says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully asks, 
with his hand on his brother's, "would you mind mentioning that, brother, 
to your wife and family?"
"Not at all."
"Thank you. You wouldn't object to say, perhaps, that although an undoubted 
vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum scarum order, and not of the mean 
sort?"
The iron master, repressing his amused smile, assents.
"Thank you. Thank you. It's a weight off my mind," says the trooper, with a 
heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms, and puts a hand on each leg; 
"though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!"
The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a certain 
massive simplicity, and absence of usage in the ways of the world, is all 
on the trooper's side.
"Well," he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, "next and last, those 
plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me to fall in 
here, and take my place among the products of your perseverance and sense. 
I thank you heartily. It's more than brotherly, as I said before; and I 
thank you heartily for it," shaking him a long time by the hand. "But the 
truth is, brother, I am a - I am a kind of a Weed, and it's too late to 
plant me in a regular garden."
"My dear George," returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady brow 
upon him, and smiling confidently; "leave that to me, and let me try."
George shakes his head. "You could do it, I have not a doubt, if anybody 
could; but it's not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas it so falls 
out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some trifle of use to Sir 
Leicester Dedlock since his illness - brought on by family sorrows; and 
that he would rather have that help from our mother's son than from anybody 
else."
"Well, my dear George," returns the other, with a very slight shade upon 
his open face, "if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester Dedlock's household 
brigade - "
"There it is, brother!" cries the trooper, checking him, with his hand upon 
his knee again: "there it is. You don't take kindly to that idea; I don't 
mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am. Everything about you is 
in perfect order and discipline; everything about me requires to be kept 
so. We are not accustomed to carry things with the same hand, or to look at 
'em from the same point. I don't say much about my garrison manners, 
because I found myself pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn't 
be noticed here, I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at 
Chesney Wold - where there's more room for a Weed than there is here; and 
the dear old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir 
Leicester Dedlock's proposals. When I come over next year to give away the 
bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep the household 
brigade in ambuscade, and not to manoeuvre it on your ground. I thank you 
heartily again, and am proud to think of the Rouncewells as they'll be 
founded by you."
"You know yourself, George," says the elder brother, returning the grip of 
his hand, "and perhaps you know me better than I know myself. Take your 
way. So that we don't quite lose one another again, take your way."
"No fear of that!" returns the trooper. "Now, before I turn my horse's head 
homewards, brother, I will ask you - if you'll be so good - to look over a 
letter for me. I brought it with me to send from these parts, as Chesney 
Wold might be a painful name just now to the person it's written to. I am 
not much accustomed to correspondence myself, and I am particular 
respecting this present letter, because I want it to be both 
straightforward and delicate."
Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but in a 
neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows:

"Miss Esther Summerson,
"A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket of a letter to 
myself being found among the papers of a certain person, I take the liberty 
to make known to you that it was but a few lines of instruction from 
abroad, when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a young and 
beautiful lady, then unmarried in England. I duly observed the same.
"I further take the liberty to make known to you, that it was got from me 
as a proof of hand-writing only, and that otherwise I would not have given 
it up as appearing to be the most harmless in my possession, without being 
previously shot through the heart.
"I further take the liberty to mention, that if I could have supposed a 
certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in existence, I never could and 
never would have rested until I had discovered his retreat, and shared my 
last farthing with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally 
been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and assuredly went over the 
side of a transport-ship at night in an Irish harbour, within a few hours 
of her arrival from the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from 
officers and men on board, and know to have been (officially) confirmed.
"I further take the liberty to state that in my humble quality as one of 
the rank and file, I am, and shall ever continue to be, your thoroughly 
devoted and admiring servant, and that I esteem the qualities you possess 
above all others, far beyond the limits of the present dispatch.
"I have the honour to be,
"GEORGE."

"A little formal," observes the elder brother, refolding it with a puzzled 
face.
"But nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?" asks the 
younger.
"Nothing at all."
Therefore it is sealed, and deposited for posting among the iron 
correspondence of the day. This done, Mr George takes a hearty farewell of 
the family party, and prepares to saddle and mount. His brother, however, 
unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to ride with him in a light 
open carriage to the place where he will bait for the night, and there 
remain with him until morning: a servant riding, for so much of the 
journey, on the thorough-bred old grey from Chesney Wold. The offer being 
gladly accepted, is followed by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a 
pleasant breakfast, all in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake 
hands long and heartily, and part; the ironmaster turning his face to the 
smoke and fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the 
afternoon, the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the 
turf in in the avenue, as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of 
accoutrements under the old elm trees.


Chapter 64

Esther's Narrative

Soon after I had had that conversation with my Guardian, he put a sealed 
paper in my hand one morning, and said, "This is for next month, my dear." 
I found in it two hundred pounds.
I now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were 
necessary. Regulating my purchases by my Guardian's taste, which I knew 
very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him, and hoped I 
should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly, because I was not 
quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be rather sorry, and 
because my Guardian was quiet himself. I had no doubt that under all the 
circumstances we should be married in the most private and simple manner. 
Perhaps I should only have to say to Ada, "Would you like to come and see 
me married tomorrow, my pet?" Perhaps our wedding might even be as 
unpretending as her own, and I might not find it necessary to say anything 
about it until it was over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would 
like this best.
The only exception I made was Mrs Woodcourt. I told her that I was going to 
be married to my Guardian, and that we had been engaged for some time. She 
highly approved. She never could do enough for me; and was remarkably 
softened now, in comparison with what she had been when we first knew her. 
There was no trouble she would have not taken to have been of use to me; 
but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to take as little, as 
gratified her kindness without tasking it.
Of course this was not a time to neglect my Guardian; and of course it was 
not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of occupation - which 
I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was absolutely not to be seen for 
needlework. To surround herself with great heaps of it - baskets full and 
tables full - and do a little, and spend a great deal of time in staring 
with her round eyes at what there was to do, and persuade herself that she 
was going to do it, were Charley's great dignities and delights.
Meanwhile, I must say I could not agree with my Guardian on the subject of 
the Will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Which of 
us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did encourage expectations. 
In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a burst of business and 
agitation that buoyed him up for a little time; but he had lost the 
elasticity even of hope now, and seemed to me to retain only its feverish 
anxieties. From something my Guardian said one day, when we were talking 
about this, I understood that my marriage would not take place until after 
the Term-time we had been told to look forward to; and I thought the more, 
for that, how rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and 
Ada were a little more prosperous.
The Term was very near indeed, when my Guardian was called out of town, and 
went down into Yorkshire on Mr Woodcourt's business. He had told me 
beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just come in 
one night from my dear girl's, and was sitting in the midst of all my new 
clothes, looking at them all around me, and thinking, when a letter from my 
Guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him in the country; and 
mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken, and at what time in the 
morning I should have to leave town. It added in a postscript that I would 
not be many hours from Ada.
I expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was ready for 
it in half-an-hour, and set off as appointed early next morning. I 
travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be wanted for at such a 
distance; now I thought it might be for this purpose, and now I thought it 
might be for that purpose; but I was never, never, never near the truth.
It was night when I came to my journey's end, and found my Guardian waiting 
for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had begun to fear 
(the more so as his letter was a very short one) that he might be ill. 
However, there he was, as well as it was possible to be; and when I saw his 
genial face again at its brightest and best, I said to myself he has been 
doing some other great kindness. Not that it required much penetration to 
say that, because I knew that his being there at all was an act of 
kindness.
Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he said:
"Full of curiosity no doubt, little woman, to know why I have brought you 
here?"
"Well, Guardian," said I, "without thinking myself a Fatima, or you a Blue 
Beard, I am a little curious about it."
"Then to ensure your night's rest, my love," he returned, gaily, "I won't 
wait until tomorrow to tell you. I have very much wished to express to 
Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor unfortunate Jo, his 
inestimable services to my young cousins, and his value to us all. When it 
was decided that he should settle here, it came into my head that I might 
ask his acceptance of some unpretending and suitable little place, to lay 
his own head in. I therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and 
such a place was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up 
for him and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day 
before yesterday, and it was reported ready, I found that I was not 
housekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to be. So 
I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly be got, to 
come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is," said my 
Guardian, "laughing and crying both together!"
Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him what I 
thought of him, but I could not articulate a word.
"Tut, tut!" said my Guardian. "You make too much of it, little woman. Why 
how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!"
"It is with exquisite pleasure, Guardian - with a heart full of thanks."
"Well, well," said he. "I am delighted that you approve. I thought you 
would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress of Bleak 
House."
I kissed him, and dried my eyes. "I know now!" said I. "I have seen this in 
your face a long while."
"No; have you really, my dear?" said he. "What a Dame Durden it is to read 
a face!"
He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be otherwise, and was 
almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I went to bed, I 
cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was with pleasure, 
though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I repeated every word of 
the letter twice over.
A most beautiful summer morning succeeded; and after breakfast we went out 
arm in arm, to see the house of which I was to give my mighty housekeeping 
opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side wall, of which he 
had the key; and the first thing I saw, was, that the beds and flowers were 
all laid out according to the manner of my beds and flowers at home.
"You see, my dear," observed my Guardian, standing still, with a delighted 
face, to watch my looks; "knowing there could be no better plan, I borrowed 
yours."
We went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were nestling 
among the green leaves, and the shadows of the apple-trees were sporting on 
the grass, to the house itself, - a cottage, quite a rustic cottage of 
doll's rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil and so beautiful, with 
such a rich and smiling country spread around it; with water sparkling away 
into the distance, here all overhung with summer growth, there turning a 
humming-mill; at its nearest point glancing through a meadow by the 
cheerful town, where cricket-players were assembling in bright groups, and 
a flag was flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. 
And still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic 
verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonades, garlanded with 
woodbine, jasmine, and honeysuckle, I saw in the papering on the walls, in 
the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all the pretty objects 
my little tastes and fancies, my little methods and inventions which they 
used to laugh at while they praised them, my odd ways everywhere.
I could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful, but one 
secret doubt arose in my mind, when I saw this. I thought, O would he be 
the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his peace that I 
should not have been so brought before him? Because, although I was not 
what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly, and it might remind him 
mournfully of what he believed he had lost. I did not wish him to forget 
me, - perhaps he might not have done so, without these aids to his memory, -
 but my way was easier than his, and I could have reconciled myself even to 
that, so that he had been made the happier for it.
"And now, little woman," said my Guardian, whom I had never seen so proud 
and joyful as in showing me these things, and watching my appreciation of 
them, "now, last of all, for the name of this house."
"What is it called, dear Guardian?"
"My child," said he, "come and see."
He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said, pausing 
before we went out:
"My dear child, don't you guess the name?"
"No!" said I.
We went out of the porch; and he showed me written over it, Bleak House.
He led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down beside me, 
and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus:
"My darling girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been 
really solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which 
you brought the answer," smiling as he referred to it, "I had my own too 
much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different circumstances, 
I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes dreamed when you were 
very young, of making you my wife one day, I need not ask myself. I did 
renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you brought your answer. You are 
following what I say, my child?"
I was cold, and I trembled violently; but not a word he uttered was lost. 
As I sat looking fixedly at him, and the sun's rays descended, softly 
shining through the leaves, upon his bare head, I felt as if the brightness 
on him must be like the brightness of the Angels.
"Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When it was 
that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really make you happy, 
is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon had no doubt at all."
I clasped him round the neck, and hung my head upon his breast, and wept. 
"Lie lightly, confidently, here, my child," said he, pressing me gently to 
him. "I am your Guardian and your father now. Rest confidingly here."
Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially, like the 
ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the sunshine; he 
went on.
"Understand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented and 
happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with whom you 
would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame Durden was blind 
to it, is no wonder; for I knew the good that could never change in her, 
better far than she did. Well! I have long been in Allan Woodcourt's 
confidence, although he was not, until yesterday, a few hours before you 
came here, in mine. But I would not have my Esther's bright example lost; I 
would not have a jot of my dear girl's virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I 
would not have her admitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap 
Kerrig, no, not for the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!"
He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh. For I 
felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise.
"Hush, little woman! Don't cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have looked 
forward to it," he said, exultingly, "for months on months! A few words 
more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to throw away one 
atom of my Esther's worth, I took Mrs Woodcourt into a separate confidence. 
'Now, madam,' said I, 'I clearly perceive - and indeed I know, to boot - 
that your son loves my ward. I am further very sure that my ward loves your 
son, but will sacrifice her love to a sense of duty and affection, and will 
sacrifice it so completely, so entirely, so religiously, that you should 
never suspect it, though you watched her night and day.' Then I told her 
all our story - ours - yours and mine. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'come you, 
knowing this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to 
hour; set what you see, against her pedigree, which is this, and this' - 
for I scorned to mince it - 'and tell me what is the true legitimacy, when 
you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.' Why, honour to her 
old Welsh blood, my dear!" cried my Guardian, with enthusiasm, "I believe 
the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less admiringly, no less 
lovingly, towards Dame Durden, than my own!"
He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his old 
fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the protecting manner I 
had thought about.
"One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he spoke 
with my knowledge and consent - but I gave him no encouragement, not I, for 
these surprises were my great reward, and I was too miserly to part with a 
scrap of it. He was to come, and tell me all that passed; and he did. I 
have no more to say. My dearest, Allan Woodcourt stood beside your father 
when he lay dead - stood beside your mother. This is Bleak House. This day 
I give this house its little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest 
day in all my life!"
He rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My husband - I 
have called him by that name full seven happy years now - stood at my side.
"Allan," said my Guardian, "take from me, a willing gift, the best wife 
that ever a man had. What more can I say for you than that I know you 
deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You know what 
she will make it, Allan; you know what she has made its namesake. Let me 
share its felicity sometimes, and what do I sacrifice? Nothing, nothing."
He kissed me once again; and now the tears were in his eyes, as he said 
more softly:
"Esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is a kind of parting in 
this too. I know that my mistake has caused you some distress. Forgive your 
old Guardian, in restoring him to his old place in your affections; and 
blot it out of your memory. Allan, take my dear!"
He moved away from under the green roof of leaves, stopping in the sunlight 
outside, and turning cheerfully towards us, said:
"I shall be found about here somewhere. It's a West wind, little woman, due 
West! Let no one thank me any more; for I am going to revert to my bachelor 
habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I'll run away and never 
come back!"
What happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope, what 
gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before the month was out; but 
when we were to come and take possession of our own house, was to depend on 
Richard and Ada.
We all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in town, 
Allan went straight to see Richard, and to carry our joyful news to him and 
my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few minutes before 
lying down to sleep; but I went home with my Guardian first, to make his 
tea for him, and to occupy the old chair by his side; for I did not like to 
think of its being empty so soon.
When we came home, we found that a young man had called three times in the 
course of that one day, to see me; and that, having been told, on the 
occasion of his third call, than I was not expected to return before ten 
o'clock at night, he had left word, "that he would call about then." He had 
left his card three times. Mr Guppy.
As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I always 
associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out that in 
laughing about Mr Guppy I told my Guardian of his old proposal, and his 
subsequent retraction. "After that," said my Guardian, "we will certainly 
receive this hero." So, instructions were given that Mr Guppy should be 
shown in, when he came again; and they were scarcely given when he did come 
again.
He was embarrassed when he found my Guardian with me, but recovered 
himself, and said, "How de do, sir?"
"How do you do, sir?" returned my Guardian.
"Thank you, sir, I am tolerable," returned Mr Guppy. "Will you allow me to 
introduce my mother, Mrs Guppy of the Old Street Road, and my particular 
friend, Mr Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by the name of 
Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling."
My Guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down.
"Tony," said Mr Guppy to his friend, after an awkward silence. "Will you 
open the case?"
"Do it yourself," returned the friend, rather tartly.
"Well, Mr Jarndyce, sir," Mr Guppy, after a moment's consideration, began; 
to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by nudging Mr 
Jobling with her elbow, and winking at me in a most remarkable manner; "I 
had an idea that I should see Miss Summerson by herself, and was not quite 
prepared for your esteemed presence. But Miss Summerson has mentioned to 
you, perhaps, that something has passed between us on former occasions?"
"Miss Summerson," returned my Guardian smiling, "has made a communication 
to that effect to me."
"That," said Mr Guppy, "makes matters easier. Sir, I have come out of my 
articles at Kenge and Carboy's, and I believe with satisfaction to all 
parties. I am now admitted (after undergoing an examination that's enough 
to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that he don't want to 
know) on the roll of attorneys, and have taken out my certificate, if it 
would be any satisfaction to you to see it."
"Thank you, Mr Guppy," returned my Guardian. "I am quite willing - I 
believe I use a legal phrase - to admit the certificate."
Mr Guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket, and 
proceeded without it.
"I have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which takes 
the form of an annuity;" here Mr Guppy's mother rolled her head as if she 
never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and put her handkerchief to 
her mouth, and again winked at me; "and a few pounds for expenses out of 
pocket in conducting business, will never be wanting, free of interest, 
which is an advantage, you know," said Mr Guppy, feelingly.
"Certainly an advantage," returned my Guardian.
"I have some connection," pursued Mr Guppy, and it lays in the direction of 
Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a ouse in that locality, 
which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow bargain (taxes ridiculous, 
and use of fixtures included in the rent), and intend setting up 
professionally for myself there, forthwith."
Here Mr Guppy's mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling her 
head, and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her.
"It's a six roomer, exclusive of kitchens," said Mr Guppy, "and in the 
opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my friends, I 
refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I believe has known me," Mr 
Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, "from boyhood's hour?"
Mr Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs.
"My friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of clerk, 
and will live in the ouse," said Mr Guppy. "My mother will likewise live in 
the ouse, when her present quarter in the Old Street Road shall have ceased 
and expired; and consequently there will be no want of society. My friend 
Jobling is naturally aristocratic by taste; and besides being acquainted 
with the movements of the upper circles, fully backs me in the intentions I 
am now developing."
Mr Jobling said "certainly," and withdrew a little from the elbow of Mr 
Guppy's mother.
"Now, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the 
confidence of Miss Summerson," said Mr Guppy, "(mother, I wish you'd be so 
good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson's image was formerly imprinted 
on my art, and that I made her a proposal of marriage."
"That I have heard," returned my Guardian.
"Circumstances," pursued Mr Guppy, "over which I had no control but quite 
the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time. At which 
time, Miss Summerson's conduct was highly genteel; I may even add, 
magnanimous."
My Guardian patted me on the shoulder, and seemed much amused.
"Now, sir," said Mr Guppy, "I have got into that state of mind myself, that 
I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish to prove to Miss 
Summerson that I can rise to a height, of which perhaps she hardly thought 
me capable. I find that the image which I did suppose had been eradicated 
from my art, is not eradicated. It's influence over me is still tremenjous; 
and yielding to it I am willing to overlook the circumstances over which 
none of us have had any control, and to renew those proposals to Miss 
Summerson which I had the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay 
the ouse in Walcot Square, the business, and myself, before Miss Summerson 
for her acceptance."
"Very magnanimous, indeed, sir," observed my Guardian.
"Well, sir," returned Mr Guppy, with candour, "my wish is to be 
magnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss Summerson, 
I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the opinion of my 
friends. Still there are circumstances which I submit may be taken into 
account as a set-off against any little drawbacks of mine, and so a fair 
and equitable balance arrived at."
"I take upon myself, sir," said my Guardian, laughing as he rang the bell, 
"to reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Summerson. She is very 
sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good evening, and 
wishes you well."
"Oh!" said Mr Guppy, with a blank look. "Is that tantamount, sir, to 
acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?"
"To decided rejection, if you please," returned my Guardian.
Mr Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who 
suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling.
"Indeed?" said he. "Then, Jobling, if you was the friend you represent 
yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of the gangway, 
instead of allowing her to remain where she ain't wanted."
But Mrs Guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. She wouldn't 
hear of it. "Why, get along with you," said she to my Guardian, "what do 
you mean? Ain't my son good enough for you? You ought to be ashamed of 
yourself. Get out with you!"
"My good lady!" returned my Guardian, "it is hardly reasonable to ask me to 
get out of my own room."
"I don't care for that," said Mrs Guppy. "Get out with you. If we ain't 
good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good enough. Go along 
and find 'em."
I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs Guppy's power of 
jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest offence.
"Go along and find somebody that is good enough for you," repeated Mrs 
Guppy. "Get out!" Nothing seemed to astonish Mr Guppy's mother so much, and 
to make her so very indignant, as our not getting out. "Why don't you get 
out?" said Mrs Guppy. "What are you stopping here for?"
"Mother," interposed her son, always getting before her, and pushing her 
back with one shoulder, as she sidled at my Guardian, "will you hold your 
tongue?"
"No, William," she returned; "I won't! not unless he gets out, I won't!"
However, Mr Guppy and Mr Jobling together closed on Mr Guppy's mother (who 
began to be quite abusive), and took her, very much against her will, 
downstairs; her voice rising a stair higher every time her figure got a 
stair lower, and insisting that we should immediately go and find somebody 
who was good enough for us, and above all things that we should get out.


Chapter 65

Beginning The World

The term had commenced, and my Guardian found an intimation from Mr Kenge 
that the Cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient hopes of the 
will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to go down to the 
Court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated, and was so weak and 
low, though his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl indeed had 
sore occasion to be supported. But she looked forward - a very little way 
now - to the help that was to come to her, and never drooped.
It was at Westminister that the Cause was to come on. It had come on there, 
I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest myself of an 
idea that it might lead to some result now. We left home directly after 
breakfast, to be at Westminister Hall in good time; and walked down there 
through the lively streets - so happily and strangely it seemed! - 
together. As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard 
and Ada, I heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And 
there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little 
carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so 
many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I had 
written her a note to tell her of all that my Guardian had done, but had 
not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back; and the 
affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so overjoyed to 
talk about the night when she brought me the flowers, and was so determined 
to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her hands, and go on in a wild 
manner altogether, calling me all kinds of precious names, and telling 
Allan I had done I don't know what for her, that I was just obliged to get 
into the little carriage and calm her down, by letting her say and do 
exactly what she liked. Allan, standing at the window, was as pleased as 
Caddy; and I was as pleased as either of them; and I wonder that I got away 
as I did, rather than that I came off, laughing, and red, and anything, but 
tidy, and looking after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window 
as long as she could see us.
This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to Westminster 
Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse than that, we found 
such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery that it was full to the 
door, and we could neither see nor hear what was passing within. It 
appeared to be something droll, for occasionally there was a laugh, and a 
cry of "Silence!" It appeared to be something interesting, for every one 
was pushing and striving to get nearer. It appeared to be something that 
made the professional gentlemen very merry, for there were several young 
counsellors in wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one 
of them told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, 
and quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about the 
pavement of the hall.
We asked a gentleman by us, if he knew what cause was on? He told us 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it? He 
said, really no he did not, nobody ever did; but as well as he could make 
out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No he said; over for 
good.
Over for good!
When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another quite 
lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the Will had set things right 
at last, and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich? It seemed too good 
to be true. Alas, it was!
Our suspense was short; for a break up soon took place in the crowd, and 
the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot, and bringing a 
quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all exceedingly amused, and 
were more like people coming out from a Farce or a Juggler than from a 
court of Justice. We stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew; and 
presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out - bundles in bags, 
bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all 
shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for 
the time being, anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring 
out more. Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at these papers, and 
seeing Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person 
who was standing in the midst of them, whether the cause was over. "Yes," 
he said; "it was all up with it at last!" and burst out laughing too.
At this juncture, we perceived Mr Kenge coming out of court with an affable 
dignity upon him, listening to Mr Vholes, who was deferential, and carried 
his own bag. Mr Vholes was the first to see us. "Here is Miss Summerson, 
sir," he said. "And Mr Woodcourt."
"O, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr Kenge, raising his hat to me with polished 
politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr Jarndyce is not here?"
No. He never came there, I reminded him.
"Really," returned Mr Kenge, "it is as well that he is not here today, for 
his - shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his indomitable singularity 
of opinion? - might have been strengthened, perhaps; not reasonably, but 
might have been strengthened."
"Pray what has been done today?" asked Allan.
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr Kenge, with excessive urbanity.
"What has been done today?"
"What has been done," repeated Mr Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not much has 
been done; not much. We have been checked - brought up suddenly, I would 
say - upon the - shall I term it threshold?"
"Is this Will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan; "will you 
tell us that?"
"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr Kenge; "but we have not gone into 
that, we have not gone into that."
"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr Vholes, as if his low inward 
voice were an echo.
"You are to reflect, Mr Woodcourt," observed Mr Kenge, using his silver 
trowel, persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a great cause, 
that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause. 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not inaptly, a Monument of Chancery 
practice."
"And Patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.
"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr Kenge, with a certain condescending 
laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect, Mr Woodcourt," 
becoming dignified to severity, "that on the numerous difficulties, 
contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of procedure in this great 
cause, there has been expended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, 
intellect, Mr Woodcourt, high intellect. For many years, the - a - I would 
say the flower of the Bar, and the - a - I would presume to add, the 
matured autumnal fruits of the Woolsack - have been lavished upon Jarndyce 
and Jarndyce. If the public have the benefit, and if the country have the 
adornment, of this great Grasp, it must be paid for, in money or money's 
worth, sir."
"Mr Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me, 
our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have 
been absorbed in costs?"
"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr Kenge. "Mr Vholes, what do you say?"
"I believe so," said Mr Vholes.
"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"
"Probably," returned Mr Kenge. "Mr Vholes?"
"Probably," said Mr Vholes.
"My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's heart!"
There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew Richard so 
perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my 
dear girl had said to me in the fulness of her foreboding love, sounded 
like a knell in my ears.
"In case you should be wanting Mr C, sir," said Mr Vholes, coming after us, 
"you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself a little. Good 
day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me that slowly devouring 
look of his, while twisting up the strings of his bag, before he hastened 
with it, after Mr Kenge, the benignant shadow of whose conversational 
presence he seemed afraid to leave, he gave one gasp as if he had swallowed 
the last morsel of this client, and his black buttoned-up unwholesome 
figure glided away to the low door at the end of the hall.
"My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me for a little while, the charge you 
gave me. Go home with this intelligence, and come to Ada's by-and-by."
I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to Richard 
without a moment's delay, and leave me to do as he wished. Hurrying home, I 
found my Guardian, and told him gradually with what news I had returned. 
"Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for himself, "to have done with the 
suit on any terms, is a greater blessing than I had looked for. But my poor 
young cousins!"
We talked about them all the morning, and discussed what it was possible to 
do. In the afternoon, my Guardian walked with me to Symond's Inn, and left 
me at the door. I went upstairs. When my darling heard my footsteps, she 
came out into the small passage and threw her arms round my neck; but she 
composed herself directly, and said that Richard had asked for me several 
times. Allan had found him sitting in a corner of the court, she told me, 
like a stone figure. On being roused, he had broken away, and made as if he 
would have spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his 
mouth being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.
He was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, when I went in. There were 
restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as possible, and was 
darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan stood behind him, watching 
him gravely. His face appeared to me to be quite destitute of colour, and, 
now that I saw him without his seeing me, I fully saw, for the first time, 
how worn away he was. But he looked handsomer than I had seen him look for 
many a day.
I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by-and-by, he said, in 
a weak voice, but with his old smile,
"Dame Durden, kiss me, my dear!"
It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low state 
cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our intended 
marriage, than he could find words to tell me. My husband had been a 
guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both, and wished us all 
the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if my own heart would 
have broken, when I saw him take my husband's hand, and hold it to his 
breast.
We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times that 
he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his feet. Ada 
would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely, dearest 
Richard!" But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so serene and 
beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so near, - I knew - I 
knew!
It was not good for him to talk too much; and when he was silent, we were 
silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for my dear, 
as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada leaned upon his 
pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often; and whenever he 
awoke without seeing him, said, first of all, "Where is Woodcourt?"
Evening had come on, when I lifted up my eyes, and saw my Guardian standing 
in the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard asked me. The door 
was behind him, but he had observed in my face that some one was there.
I looked to Allen for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over Richard and 
told him. My Guardian saw what passed, came softly by me in a moment, and 
laid his hand on Richard's. "O sir," said Richard, "you are a good man, you 
are a good man!" and burst into tears for the first time.
My Guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping his 
hand on Richard's.
"My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is bright 
now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or less. What 
matters! And how are you, my dear boy?"
"I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin the 
world."
"Ay, truly; well said!" cried my Guardian.
"I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad smile. "I 
have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one; but you shall be 
assured, indeed, that I have learned it."
"Well, well," said my Guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well, dear 
boy!"
"I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on earth I 
should so much like to see as their house - Dame Durden's and Woodcourt's 
house. If I could be moved there when I begin to recover my strength, I 
feel as if I should get well there, sooner than anywhere."
"Why, so have I been thinking, too, Rick," said my Guardian, "and our 
little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it, this very day. I 
dare say her husband won't object. What do you think?"
Richard smiled; and lifted up his arm to touch him, as he stood behind the 
head of his couch.
"I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have thought 
of her very much. Look at her! see her here, sir, bending over this pillow 
when she has so much need to rest upon it herself, my dear love, my poor 
girl!"
He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually released 
her; and she looked upon us, and looked up to Heaven, and moved her lips.
"When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to tell 
you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't you?"
"Undoubtedly, dear Rick."
"Thank you; like you like you," said Richard. "But it's all like you. They 
have been telling me how you planned it, and how you remembered all 
Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It will be like coming to the old Bleak 
House again."
"And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now, you 
know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come to me, my 
love!" he repeated to Ada, as he gently passed his hand over her golden 
hair, and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed within himself to 
cherish her if she were left alone.)
"It was all a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my Guardian's 
hands eagerly.
"Nothing more, Rick; nothing more."
"And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the 
dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?"
"Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?"
"I will begin the world!" said Richard, with a light in his eyes.
My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly lift up 
his hand to warn my Guardian.
"When shall I go from this place, to that pleasant country where the old 
times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been to me, 
where I shall be able to recall my many faults and blindnesses, where I 
shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn child?" said Richard. "When 
shall I go?"
"Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my Guardian.
"Ada, my darling!"
He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she could 
hold him on her bosom: which was what he wanted.
"I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray 
shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have 
scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my Ada, 
before I begin the world?"
A smile irradiated his face, as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid his 
face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck, and with one 
parting sob began the world. Not this world, O not this! The world that 
sets this right.
When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came weeping to 
me, and told me she had given her birds their liberty.


Chapter 66

Down In Lincolnshire

There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is upon a 
portion of the family history. The story goes, that Sir Leicester paid some 
who could have spoken out, to hold their peace; but it is a lame story, 
feebly whispering and creeping about, and any brighter spark of life it 
shows soon dies away. It is known for certain that the handsome Lady 
Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly 
overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence 
she was brought home, to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, 
or how she died, is all mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be 
found among the peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once 
occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large fans - like 
charmers reduced to flirting with grim Death, after losing all their other 
beaux - did once occasionally say, when the World assembled together, that 
they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks, entombed in the mausoleum, never 
rose against the profanation of her company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks 
take it very calmly, and have never been known to object.
Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road among 
the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of horses' hoofs. 
Then may be seen Sir Leicester - invalided, bent, and almost blind, but of 
worthy presence yet - riding with a stalwart man beside him, constant to 
his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain spot before the mausoleum 
door, Sir Leicester's accustomed horse stops of his own accord, and Sir 
Leicester, pulling off his hat, is still for a few moments before they ride 
away.
War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain intervals, 
and now hotly, and now coolly; flickering like an unsteady fire. The truth 
is said to be, that when Sir Leicester came down to Lincolnshire for good, 
Mr Boythorn showed a manifest desire to abandon his right of way, and do 
whatever Sir Leicester would: which Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a 
condescension to his illness or misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and 
was so magnificently aggrieved by, that Mr Boythorn found himself under the 
necessity of committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to 
himself. Similarly Mr Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the 
disputed thoroughfare, and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth 
vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home; 
similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church, by 
testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is whispered 
that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is really most 
considerate; and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of being implacable, 
little supposes how much he is humoured. As little does he think how near 
together he and his antagonist have suffered, in the fortunes of two 
sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now, is not the man to tell him. 
So the quarrel goes on to the satisfaction of both.
In one of the lodges of the park; that lodge within sight of the house 
where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down at Lincolnshire, my 
Lady used to see the Keeper's child; the stalwart man, the trooper 
formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling hang upon the walls, 
and these it is the chosen recreation of a little lame man about the stable-
yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy little man he always is, in the 
polishing at harness-house doors, of stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, 
harness-bosses, anything in the way of a stable-yard that will take a 
polish: leading a life of friction. A shaggy little damaged man, withal, 
not unlike an old dog of some mongrel breed, who has been considerably 
knocked about. He answers to the name of Phil.

A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of hearing 
now) going to church on the arm of her son, and to observe - which few do, 
for the house is scant of company in these times - the relations of both 
towards Sir Leicester, and his towards them. They have visitors in the high 
summer weather, when a grey cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at 
other periods, are seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are 
occasionally found gambolling, in sequestered saw-pits, and such nooks of 
the park; and when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant 
evening air, from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within 
the lodge on the inspiring topic of the British Grenadiers; and, as the 
evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while two men 
pace together up and down, "But I never own to it before the old girl. 
Discipline must be maintained."
The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no longer; 
yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long drawing-room for all 
that, and reposes in his old place before my Lady's picture. Closed in by 
night with broad screens, and illumined only in that part, the light of the 
drawing-room seems gradually contracting and dwindling until it shall be no 
more. A little more, in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir 
Leicester; and the damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and 
looks so obdurate, will have opened and received him.
Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her face, 
and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the long evenings, 
and is driven to various artifices to conceal her yawns: of which the chief 
and most efficacious is the insertion of the pearl necklace between her 
rosy lips. Longwinded treatises on the Buffy and Boodle question, showing 
how Buffy is immaculate and Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost 
by being all Boodle and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle 
(it must be one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of 
her reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is, and does not 
appear to follow it very closely; further than that he always comes broad 
awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously repeating 
her last word, begs with some displeasure to know if she finds herself 
fatigued? However, Volumnia, in the course of her bird-like hopping about 
and pecking at papers, has lighted on a memorandum concerning herself, in 
the event of "anything happening" to her kinsman, which is handsome 
compensation for an extensive course of reading, and holds even the dragon 
Boredom at bay.
The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dulness, but 
take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard in the 
plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at the old places 
of appointment, for low-spirited twos and threes of cousins. The 
debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the deariness of the place, gets 
into a fearful state of depression, groaning under penitential sofa-pillows 
in his gunless hours, and protesting that such fernal old jail's - nough 
t'sew fler up - frever.
The only great occasions for Volumnia, in this changed aspect of the place 
in Lincolnshire, are those occasions, rare and widely separated, when 
something is to be done for the county, or the country, in the way of 
gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered slyph come out in 
fairy form, and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the exhausted old 
assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off; which, during three hundred and 
sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of Antipodean 
lumber-room, full of old chairs and tables, upside down. Then, indeed, does 
she captivate all hearts by her condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and 
by her skipping about as in the days when the hideous old general with the 
mouth too full of teeth, had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then 
does she twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the 
mazes of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with 
sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and 
unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular kind of 
parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of another age, 
embellishing that assembly-room; which, with their meagre stems, their 
spare little drops, their disappointing knobs were no drops are, their bare 
little stalks from which knobs and drops have both departed, and their 
little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem Volumnias.
For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of overgrown 
house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their hands, bowing their 
heads, and casting their tears upon the window-panes in monotonous 
depression. A labyrinth of grandeur, less the property of an old family of 
human beings and their ghostly likenesses, than of an old family of 
echoings and thunderings which start out of their hundred graves at every 
sound, and go resounding through the building. A waste of unused passages 
and staircases, in which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to 
send a stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few 
people care to go about alone; where a maid screams if an ash drops from 
the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the victim of a 
low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and departs.
Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and 
vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry 
lowering; so sombre and motionless always - no flag flying now by day, no 
rows of light sparkling by night; with no family to come and go, no 
visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life 
about it; - passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have died away 
from the place of Lincolnshire, and yielded it to dull repose.


Chapter 67

The Close Of Esther's Narrative

Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The few 
words that I have to add to what I have written, are soon penned; then I, 
and the unknown friend to whom I write, will part for ever. Not without 
much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope, on his or hers.
They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never left her. 
The little child who was to have done so much, was born before the turf was 
planted on his father's grave. It was a boy; and I, my husband, and my 
Guardian, gave him his father name.
The help that my dear counted on, did come to her; though it came in the 
Eternal Wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore his 
mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power was mighty 
to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand, and how its 
touch could heal my darling's heart, and raise up hope within her, I felt a 
new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of God.
They throve; and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country garden, 
and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married then. I was the 
happiest of the happy.
It was at this time that my Guardian joined us, and asked Ada when she 
would come home.
"Both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older Bleak House 
claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do it, come and 
take possession of your home.
Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, No, it must be 
Guardian now. He was her Guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and he had an 
old association with the name. So she called him Guardian, and has called 
him Guardian ever since. The children know him by no other name - I say the 
children; I have two little daughters.
It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at all 
grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so it is; and 
even now, looking up from my desk as I write, early in the morning at my 
summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go round. I hope the miller 
will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond of her, and Charley is rather 
vain of such a match - for he is well to do, and was in great request. So 
far as my small maid is concerned, I might suppose Time to have stood for 
seven years as still as the mill did half an hour ago; since little Emma, 
Charley's sister, is exactly what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley's 
brother, I am really afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but 
I think it was Decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was; 
and is a good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody, and 
being ashamed of it.
Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us, and was a dearer 
creature than ever; perpetually dancing in and out of the house with the 
children, as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life. Caddy 
keeps her own little carriage now, instead of hiring one, and lives full 
two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works very hard, her 
husband (an excellent one) being lame, and able to do very little. Still, 
she is more than contented, and does all she has to do with all her heart. 
Mr Jellyby spends his evenings at her new house with his head against the 
wall, as he used to do in her old one. I have heard that Mrs Jellyby was 
understood to suffer great mortification, from her daughter's ignoble 
marriage and pursuits; but I hope she got over it in time. She has been 
disappointed in Borrioboola Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence 
of the King of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody - who survived the 
climate - for Rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in 
Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more 
correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy's poor little 
girl. She is not such a mite now; but she is deaf and dumb. I believe there 
never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals 
of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts, to soften the affliction of her 
child.
As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of Peepy and 
old Mr Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom-house, and doing extremely well. 
Old Mr Turveydrop, very apolectic, still exhibits his Deportment about 
town; still enjoys himself in the old manner; is still believed in, in the 
old way. He is constant in his patronage of Peepy, and is understood to 
have bequeathed him a favourite French clock in his dressing-room - which 
is not his property.
With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house by 
throwing out a little Growlery expressly for my Guardian; which we 
inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see us. I 
try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in drawing to an 
end; but when I write of him, my tears will have their way.
I never look at him, but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a good 
man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me, he is what 
he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is my husband's best 
and dearest friend, he is our children's darling, he is the object of our 
deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel towards him as if he were a 
superior being, I am so familiar with him, and so easy with him, that I 
almost wonder at myself. I have never lost my old names, nor has he lost 
his; nor do I ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my 
old chair at his side. Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman! - all just the 
same as ever; and I answer, Yes, dear Guardian! just the same.
I have never known the wind to be in the East for a single moment, since 
the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I remarked to him, 
once, that the wind seemed never in the East now: and he said, No, truly: 
it had finally departed from that quarter on that very day.
I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that has 
been in her face - for it is not there now - seems to have purified even 
its innocent expression, and to have given it a diviner quality. Sometimes, 
when I raise my eyes and see her, in the black dress that she still wears, 
teaching my Richard, I feel - it is difficult to express - as if it were so 
good to know that she remembers her dear Esther in her prayers.
I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am one.
We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we have 
quite enough. I never walk out with my husband, but I hear the people bless 
him. I never go into a house of any degree, but I hear his praises, or see 
them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night, but I know that in the 
course of that day he has alleviated pain, and soothed some fellow-creature 
in the time of need. I know that from the beds of those who were past 
recovery, thanks have often, often gone up in the last hour for his patient 
ministration. Is not this to be rich?
The people even praise Me as the doctor's wife. The people even like Me as 
I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I owe it all to 
him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I do everything I do 
in life for his sake.
A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and my 
Guardian and little Richard, who are coming tomorrow, I was sitting out in 
the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, when Allan came home. 
So he said, "My precious little woman, what are you doing here?" And I 
said, "The moon is shining so brightly, Allan, and the night is so 
delicious, that I have been sitting here, thinking."
"What have you been thinking about, my dear?" said Allan then.
"How curious you are!" said I. "I am almost ashamed to tell you, but I 
will. I have been thinking about my old looks - such as they were."
"And what have you been thinking about them, my busy bee?" said Allan.
"I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you could have 
loved me any better, even if I had retained them."
" - Such as they were?" said Allan laughing.
"Such as they were, of course."
"My dear Dame Durden," said Allan, drawing my arm through his, "do you ever 
look in the glass?"
"You know I do; you see me do it."
"And don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?"
I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know that 
my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very 
beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my Guardian has 
the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen; and that they 
can very well do without much beauty in me - even supposing -.