Bleak House, Charles Dickens [the beginning after the end novel read .txt] 📗

CHAPTER XLIV

The Letter and the Answer

 

My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told

him what had been left untold on the previous night. There was

nothing to be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid

another such encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my

feeling and entirely shared it. He charged himself even with

restraining Mr. Skimpole from improving his opportunity. One

person whom he need not name to me, it was not now possible for him

to advise or help. He wished it were, but no such thing could be.

If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he dreaded discovery. He knew

something of him, both by sight and by reputation, and it was

certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever happened, he

repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and kindness, I

was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence.

 

“Nor do I understand,” said he, “that any doubts tend towards you,

my dear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion.”

 

“With the lawyer,” I returned. “But two other persons have come

into my mind since I have been anxious.” Then I told him all about

Mr. Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I

little understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last

interview I expressed perfect confidence.

 

“Well,” said my guardian. “Then we may dismiss him for the

present. Who is the other?”

 

I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of

herself she had made to me.

 

“Ha!” he returned thoughtfully. “That is a more alarming person

than the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a

new service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and

it was natural that you should come into her head. She merely

proposed herself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more.”

 

“Her manner was strange,” said I.

 

“Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and

showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her

death-bed,” said my guardian. “It would be useless self-distress

and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are

very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of

perilous meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You

can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through this

knowledge, as you were before you had it. It is the best you can

do for everybody’s sake. I, sharing the secret with you—”

 

“And lightening it, guardian, so much,” said I.

 

“—will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can

observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I

can stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it

is better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her

dear daughter’s sake.”

 

I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank

him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a

moment. Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his

face again; and all at once, I don’t know how, it flashed upon me

as a new and far-off possibility that I understood it.

 

“My dear Esther,” said my guardian, “I have long had something in

my thoughts that I have wished to say to you.”

 

“Indeed?”

 

“I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I

should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately

considered. Would you object to my writing it?”

 

“Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME

to read?”

 

“Then see, my love,” said he with his cheery smile, “am I at this

moment quite as plain and easy—do I seem as open, as honest and

old-fashioned—as I am at any time?”

 

I answered in all earnestness, “Quite.” With the strictest truth,

for his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute),

and his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.

 

“Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I

said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?” said he with his

bright clear eyes on mine.

 

I answered, most assuredly he did not.

 

“Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess,

Esther?”

 

“Most thoroughly,” said I with my whole heart.

 

“My dear girl,” returned my guardian, “give me your hand.”

 

He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking

down into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness

of manner—the old protecting manner which had made that house my

home in a moment—said, “You have wrought changes in me, little

woman, since the winter day in the stagecoach. First and last you

have done me a world of good since that time.”

 

“Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!”

 

“But,” said he, “that is not to be remembered now.”

 

“It never can be forgotten.”

 

“Yes, Esther,” said he with a gentle seriousness, “it is to be

forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to

remember now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you

feel quite assured of that, my dear?”

 

“I can, and I do,” I said.

 

“That’s much,” he answered. “That’s everything. But I must not

take that at a word. I will not write this something in my

thoughts until you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing

can change me as you know me. If you doubt that in the least

degree, I will never write it. If you are sure of that, on good

consideration, send Charley to me this night week—‘for the

letter.’ But if you are not quite certain, never send. Mind, I

trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything. If you are

not quite certain on that one point, never send!”

 

“Guardian,” said I, “I am already certain, I can no more be changed

in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall

send Charley for the letter.”

 

He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in

reference to this conversation, either by him or me, through the

whole week. When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as

soon as I was alone, “Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce’s door, Charley,

and say you have come from me—‘for the letter.’” Charley went up

the stairs, and down the stairs, and along the passages—the zig-zag way about the old-fashioned house seemed very long in my

listening ears that night—and so came back, along the passages,

and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and brought the letter.

“Lay it on the table, Charley,” said I. So Charley laid it on the

table and went to bed, and I sat looking at it without taking it

up, thinking of many things.

 

I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those

timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her

resolute face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with

Mrs. Rachael than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or

to look at. I passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to

find friends in all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the

time when I first saw my dear girl and was received into that

sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my life. I

recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of

those very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright

night, and which had never paled. I lived my happy life there over

again, I went through my illness and recovery, I thought of myself

so altered and of those around me so unchanged; and all this

happiness shone like a light from one central figure, represented

before me by the letter on the table.

 

I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me,

and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it

showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to

read much at a time. But I read it through three times before I

laid it down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport,

and I did. It asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.

 

It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was

written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his

face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind

protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places

were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the

feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he

past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I

was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing

all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature

deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a

marriage and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation

could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my

decision was, he was certain it would be right. But he had

considered this step anew since our late confidence and had decided

on taking it, if it only served to show me through one poor

instance that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the

stern prediction of my childhood. I was the last to know what

happiness I could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more, for

I was always to remember that I owed him nothing and that he was my

debtor, and for very much. He had often thought of our future, and

foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come

soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when

our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed

to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it. If I felt that I

could ever give him the best right he could have to be my

protector, and if I felt that I could