Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.
Please do not remove this.
This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
need about what they can legally do with the texts.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states. Please feel
free to ask to check the status of your state.
International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.
These donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Title: The Garotters
Author: William D. Howells
Release Date: May, 2002 [Etext #3237]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[The actual date this file first posted = 02/05/01]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Project Gutenberg Etext of The Garotters, by William D. Howells
*****This file should be named gartt10.txt or gartt10.zip*****
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gartt11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gartt10a.txt
This etext was produced from the 1897 David Douglas edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
the official publication date.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.
Most people start at our sites at:
http://gutenberg.net
http://promo.net/pg
Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
We need your donations more than ever!
Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada,
Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states.
These donations should be made to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
additional states.
All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Mail to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Avenue
Oxford, MS 38655-4109 [USA]
We need your donations more than ever!
You can get up to date donation information at:
http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
***
If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:
Michael S. Hart
hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
We would prefer to send you information by email.
***
Example command-line FTP session:
ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
**The Legal Small Print**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to
let us know your plans and to work out the details.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.
The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
PREFACE
A Chancery judge once had the kindness
to inform me,
as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy,
that the Court of Chancery,
though the shining subject of much popular prejudice
(at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my direction),
was almost immaculate.
There had been,
he admitted,
a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress,
but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing
to the
"parsimony of the public,"
which guilty public,
it appeared,
had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by Richard the Second,
but any other king will do as well.
This seemed
to me too profound a joke
to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it
to Conversation Kenge or
to Mr. Vholes,
with one or other of whom I think it must have originated.
In such mouths I might have coupled it
with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
"My nature is subdued
to what it works in,
like the dyer's hand:
Pity me,
then,
and wish I were renewed!"
But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing,
and still is doing,
in this connexion,
I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true,
and within the truth.
The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence,
made public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted
with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning
to end.
At the present moment
(August,
1853)
there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago,
in which from thirty
to forty counsel have been known
to appear at one time,
in which costs have been incurred
to the amount of seventy thousand pounds,
which is A FRIENDLY SUIT,
and which is
(I am assured)
no nearer
to its termination now than when it was begun.
There is another well-known suit in Chancery,
not yet decided,
which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs.
If I wanted other authorities
for Jarndyce and Jarndyce,
I could rain them on these pages,
to the shame of--a parsimonious public.
There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark.
The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook;
and my good friend Mr. Lewes
(quite mistaken,
as he soon found,
in supposing the thing
to have been abandoned by all authorities)
published some ingenious letters
to me at the time when that event was chronicled,
arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be.
I have no need
to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains
to investigate the subject.
There are about thirty cases on record,
of which the most famous,
that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate,
was minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini,
a prebendary of Verona,
otherwise distinguished in letters,
who published an account of it at Verona in 1731,
which he afterwards republished at Rome.
The appearances,
beyond all rational doubt,
observed in that case are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case.
The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier,
and the historian in that case is Le Cat,
one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France.
The subject was a woman,
whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered her;
but on solemn appeal
to a higher court,
he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given.
I do not think it necessary
to add
to these notable facts,
and that general reference
to the authorities which will be found at page 30,
vol.
ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors,
French,
English,
and Scotch,
in more modern days,
contenting myself
with observing that I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.
In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of familiar things.
1853 * Another case,
very clearly described by a dentist,
occurred at the town of Columbus,
in the United States of America,
quite recently.
The subject was a German who kept a liquor-shop aud was an inveterate drunkard.
CHAPTER I 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 chimney-pots,
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,
undistinguishable 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 foot-hold 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 deified 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 spongey 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 her--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 horsehair 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 judgment
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 a 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 dreary 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 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 off-hand 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 tsubmit--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 to-day 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 to-morrow 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 dexterously 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 II 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 to-morrow,
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--fairy-land
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 professionaly 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 Dedlocks.
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,
gentlemen,"
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 connexion,
sir,"
says Mr. Sladdery,
the librarian,
"or if you want
to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,
sir,
or if you want
to secure
to this entertainment the patronage of my high connexion,
sir,
you must leave it,
if you please,
to me,
for I have been accustomed
to study the leaders of my high connexion,
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 to-day,"
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 hand-screen.
"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 to-day,"
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 everything.
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 by,
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 file 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 which it has was acquired after the original hand was formed.
Why do you ask?"
"Anything
to vary this detestable monotony.
Oh,
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 had 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 III 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 arm-chair,
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 came home from school of a day
to run upstairs
to my room and say,
"Oh,
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,
oh,
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,
"Oh,
dear godmother,
tell me,
pray do tell me,
did Mama die on my birthday?"
"No,"
she returned.
"Ask me no more,
child!"
"Oh,
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.
Oh,
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 very 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 oh,
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 eye-glasses,
and a large seal-ring upon his little finger.
"This,"
said my godmother in an undertone,
"is the child."
Then she said in her naturally stern way of speaking,
"This is Esther,
sir."
The gentleman put up his eye-glasses
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 eye-glasses and folding them in a red case,
and leaning back in his arm-chair,
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 curtsy 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 immovable.
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 is really 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 eye-glasses,
"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 SIX-ty
to SEVEN-ty 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 stagecoach,
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 hearth-rug
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 de-vil 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 genfleman,
"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 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 the unreal air of everything 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 really lived my old life at my godmother's.
Nothing could be more precise,
exact,
and orderly than Greenleaf.
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 new-comers 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 regular 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 Oh,
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 good-bye
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
"Oh,
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.
"Oh,
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.
"Oh,
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 a 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 arm-chair
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 from its being night in the day-time,
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,
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 frequenfly 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 arm-chair 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 curtsy 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 part,
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 curtsying and smiling up
to us
with an air of great ceremony.
"Oh!"
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,"
curtsying 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 judgment.
Shortly.
On the Day of Judgment.
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 curtsy and a smile between every little sentence,
"Youth.
And hope.
And beauty.
And Chancery.
And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray accept my blessing!"
CHAPTER IV 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 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 to-morrow.
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'm 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!"
"Oh,
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 pattens,
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 onto 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 my 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 plaster 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.
Oh,
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.
"Oh,
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 skuttle 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 Borriohoola-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 saving,
"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 dragon 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 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