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

CHAPTER L

Esther’s Narrative

 

It happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from

Caddy Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), informing me

that her health, which had been for some time very delicate, was

worse and that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I

would go to see her. It was a note of a few lines, written from

the couch on which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her

husband, in which he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude.

Caddy was now the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor

little baby—such a tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that

seemed to be scarcely anything but cap-border, and a little lean,

long-fingered hand, always clenched under its chin. It would lie

in this attitude all day, with its bright specks of eyes open,

wondering (as I used to imagine) how it came to be so small and

weak. Whenever it was moved it cried, but at all other times it

was so patient that the sole desire of its life appeared to be to

lie quiet and think. It had curious little dark veins in its face

and curious little dark marks under its eyes like faint

remembrances of poor Caddy’s inky days, and altogether, to those

who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous little sight.

 

But it was enough for Caddy that SHE was used to it. The projects

with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther’s education,

and little Esther’s marriage, and even for her own old age as the

grandmother of little Esther’s little Esthers, was so prettily

expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be

tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that

I am getting on irregularly as it is.

 

To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me which

had been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago

when she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost—I

think I must say quite—believed that I did her good whenever I was

near her. Now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate

girl’s that I am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have

all the force of a fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set

off to Caddy, with my guardian’s consent, post-haste; and she and

Prince made so much of me that there never was anything like it.

 

Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again.

It was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier

in the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping

matters before leaving home.

 

But when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on

my return at night, “Now, little woman, little woman, this will

never do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant

coaching will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a

while and take possession of our old lodgings.”

 

“Not for me, dear guardian,” said I, “for I never feel tired,”

which was strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such

request.

 

“For me then,” returned my guardian, “or for Ada, or for both of

us. It is somebody’s birthday to-morrow, I think.”

 

“Truly I think it is,” said I, kissing my darling, who would be

twenty-one to-morrow.

 

“Well,” observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously,

“that’s a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some

necessary business to transact in assertion of her independence,

and will make London a more convenient place for all of us. So to

London we will go. That being settled, there is another thing—how

have you left Caddy?”

 

“Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she

regains her health and strength.”

 

“What do you call some time, now?” asked my guardian thoughtfully.

 

“Some weeks, I am afraid.”

 

“Ah!” He began to walk about the room with his hands in his

pockets, showing that he had been thinking as much. “Now, what do

you say about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?”

 

I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but

that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like

his opinion to be confirmed by some one.

 

“Well, you know,” returned my guardian quickly, “there’s

Woodcourt.”

 

I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a

moment all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr.

Woodcourt seemed to come back and confuse me.

 

“You don’t object to him, little woman?”

 

“Object to him, guardian? Oh no!”

 

“And you don’t think the patient would object to him?”

 

So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a

great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he

was no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in

his kind attendance on Miss Flite.

 

“Very good,” said my guardian. “He has been here to-day, my dear,

and I will see him about it to-morrow.”

 

I felt in this short conversation—though I did not know how, for

she was quiet, and we interchanged no look—that my dear girl well

remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no

other hands than Caddy’s had brought me the little parting token.

This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too,

that I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I

avoided that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my

own eyes of its master’s love. Therefore, when we went upstairs

and had waited listening until the clock struck twelve in order

that only I might be the first to wish my darling all good wishes

on her birthday and to take her to my heart, I set before her, just

as I had set before myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin

John and the happy life that was in store for for me. If ever my

darling were fonder of me at one time than another in all our

intercourse, she was surely fondest of me that night. And I was so

rejoiced to know it and so comforted by the sense of having done

right in casting this last idle reservation away that I was ten

times happier than I had been before. I had scarcely thought it a

reservation a few hours ago, but now that it was gone I felt as if

I understood its nature better.

 

Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and

in half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never

gone away. Mr. Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling’s

birthday, and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great

blank among us that Richard’s absence naturally made on such an

occasion. After that day I was for some weeks—eight or nine as I

remember—very much with Caddy, and thus it fell out that I saw

less of Ada at this time than any other since we had first come

together, except the time of my own illness. She often came to

Caddy’s, but our function there was to amuse and cheer her, and we

did not talk in our usual confidential manner. Whenever I went

home at night we were together, but Caddy’s rest was broken by

pain, and I often remained to nurse her.

 

With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and

their home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying, so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account,

so afraid of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted

labours of her husband and the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop; I

had never known the best of her until now. And it seemed so

curious that her pale face and helpless figure should be lying

there day after day where dancing was the business of life, where

the kit and the apprentices began early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy waltzed by himself in the

kitchen all the afternoon.

 

At Caddy’s request I took the supreme direction of her apartment,

trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and

more airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then,

every day, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my

small small namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or

read to her. It was at one of the first of these quiet times that

I told Caddy about Bleak House.

 

We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Prince, who

in his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit

softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very

little child. Whatever Caddy’s condition really was, she never

failed to declare to Prince that she was all but well—which I,

heaven forgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Prince

in such good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his

pocket and play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never

knew it to do in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never

noticed it at all.

 

Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She would come occasionally, with her

usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her

grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young

Borrioboolan on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as

serene, and as untidy, she would say, “Well, Caddy, child, and how

do you do to-day?” And then would sit amiably smiling and taking

no notice of the reply or would sweetly glide off into a

calculation of the number of letters she had lately received and

answered or of the coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This

she would always