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