Bleak House No. XIV: Electronic Edition.

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870


Funding from the E. S. P. Das Educational Foundation supported the electronic publication of this title.


Illustrated by  Browne, H. K. (Hablot Knight), 1815-1882
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First edition, 2002
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Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

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Source Description

Title (from title page): Bleak House No. XIV. April.
Author: Charles Dickens
Extent: 80 p., ill.
London:
Bradbury & Evans, Bouverie Street.
1853
Dickens 21 c.2 (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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Title Page Image
[Title Page Image]

          


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No. XIV.

APRIL.

Price 1s.

BLEAK
HOUSE

BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. K. BROWNE

LONDON:

BRADBURY & EVANS, BOUVERIE STREET.

AGENTS: J. MENZIES, EDINBURGH; MURRAY AND SON, GLASGOW; J. M'GLACHAN, DUBLIN.
The Author of this Work notifies that it is his intention to reserve the [four words illegible: page cut off ]



page [ii]

          


           Sir Leicester Dedlock.



page [iii]

          


           Tom all alone's.




page 417

CHAPTER XLIII.
ESTHER'S NARRATIVE.

           IT matters little now, how much I thought of my living mother who had told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to approach her, or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I tried not to hear—I mentally counted, repeated something that I knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious, now, that I often did these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken of; but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.

           It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide asunder, before the great company of all degrees, that any link or confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little, and go on.

           When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations with my guardian, of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong; but she was so faithful to Richard, that she could not bear to blame him, even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his name with a word of reproof. “Rick is mistaken, my dear,” he would say to her. “Well, well! we have all been mistaken over and over again. We must trust to you and time to set him right.”

           We knew afterwards what we suspected then; that he did not trust to time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and misunderstanding



page 418 were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the suit out, and come through it to his right mind. This was his unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession of his whole nature, that it was impossible to place any consideration before him which he did not—with a distorted kind of reason—make a new argument in favor of his doing what he did. “So that it is even more mischievous,” said my guardian once to me, “to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow, than to leave him alone.”

           I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr. Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.

           “Adviser?” returned my guardian, laughing. “My dear, who would advise with Skimpole?”

           “Encourager would perhaps have been a better word,” said I.

           “Encourager!” returned my guardian again. “Who could be encouraged by Skimpole?”

           “Not Richard?” I asked.

           “No,” he replied. “Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature, is a relief to him, and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging, or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole.”

           “Pray, cousin John,” said Ada, who had just joined us, and now looked over my shoulder, “what made him such a child?”

           “What made him such a child?” inquired my guardian, rubbing his head, a little at a loss.

           “Yes, cousin John.”

           “Why,” he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, “he is all sentiment, and—and susceptibility, and—and sensibility—and—and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth, attached too much importance to them, and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them; and so he became what he is. Hey?” said my guardian, stopping short, and looking at us hopefully. “What do you think, you two?”

           Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an expense to Richard.

           “So it is, so it is,” returned my guardian, hurriedly. “That must not be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do.”

           And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes, for a present of five pounds.

           “Did he?” said my guardian, with a passing shade of vexation on his face. “But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is nothing mercenary in that, with him. He has no idea of the value of money. He introduces Rick; and then he is good friends with Mr. Vholes, and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it, and thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I'll be bound, my dear?”

           “O yes!” said I.

           “Exactly!” cried my guardian, quite triumphant. “There you have the man! If he had meant any harm by it, or was conscious of any harm in it, he wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he does it, in mere simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll



page 419 understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole, and caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an infant!”

           In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day, and presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole's door.

           He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don't know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of the area railings were gone; the water-butt was broken; the knocker was loose; the bell handle had been pulled off a long time, to judge from the rusty state of the wire; and dirty footprints on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited.

           A slatternly full-blown girl, who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes, like an over-ripe berry, answered our knock by opening the door a very little way, and stopping up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain which was not in good action either, and said would we go up-stairs?

           We went up-stairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce, without further ceremony, entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough, and not at all clean; but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over; but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa, in a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup—it was then about midday—and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the balcony.

           He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and received us in his usual airy manner.

           “Here I am, you see!” he said, when we were seated: not without some little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. “Here I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!”

           “This is our friend's consulting room (or would be, if he ever prescribed), his sanctum, his studio,” said my guardian to us.

           “Yes,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, “this is



page 420 the bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his feathers now and then, and clip his wings; but he sings, he sings!”

           He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, “he sings! Not an ambitious note, but still he sings.”

           “These are very fine,” said my guardian. “A present?”

           “No,” he answered. “No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should wait for the money. ‘Really, my friend,’ I said, ‘I think not—if your time is of any value to you.’ I suppose it was, for he went away.”

           My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, “is it possible to be worldly with this baby?”

           “This is a day,” said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a tumbler, “that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it the Saint Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all. They'll be enchanted.”

           He was going to summon them, when my guardian interposed, and asked him to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. “My dear Jarndyce,” he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, “as many moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what o'clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life, you'll tell me? Certainly. But we don't get on in life. We don't pretend to do it.”

           My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, “You hear him?”

           “Now Harold,” he began, “the word I have to say, relates to Rick.”

           “The dearest friend I have!” returned Mr. Skimpole, cordially. “I suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms with you. But he is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry, and I love him. If you don't like it, I can't help it. I love him.”

           The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration, really had a disinterested appearance, and captivated my guardian; if not, for the moment, Ada too.

           “You are welcome to love him as much as you like,” returned Mr. Jarndyce, “but we must save his pocket, Harold.”

           “Oh!” said Mr. Skimpole. “His pocket? Now, you are coming to what I don't understand.” Taking a little more claret, and dipping one of the cakes in it, he shook his head, and smiled at Ada and me with an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.

           “If you go with him here or there,” said my guardian, plainly, “you must not let him pay for both.”

           “My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated by the comicality of this idea, “what am I to do? If he takes me anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I had any money, I don't know anything about it. Suppose I say to a man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to



page 421 pursue the subject, with any consideration for the man. I don't go about asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish—which I don't understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and sixpence is in Money—which I don't understand?”

           “Well,” said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless reply, “if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that circumstance), and leave the calculation to him.”

           “My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “I will do anything to give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form—a superstition. Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower of money.”

           “Indeed it is not so, sir,” said Ada. “He is poor.”

           “No, really?” returned Mr. Skimpole, with his bright smile, “you surprise me.”

           “And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed,” said my guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr. Skimpole's dressing-gown, “be you very careful not to encourage him in that reliance, Harold.”

           “My dear good friend,” returned Mr. Skimpole, “and my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It's business, and I don't know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire them—as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell him so.”

           The helpless kind of candor with which he presented this before us, the lighthearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. The more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with anyone for whom I cared.

           Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr. Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters (his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty, but was now a delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of disorders.

           “This,” said Mr. Skimpole, “is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa—plays and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment daughter, Laura—plays a little but don't sing. This is my Comedy daughter, Kitty—sings a little but don't play. We all draw a little, and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.”

           Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to



page 422 strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian, and that she took every opportunity of throwing in another.

           “It is pleasant,” said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from one to the other of us, “and it is whimsically interesting, to trace peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I am the youngest.”

           The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by this droll fact; particularly the Comedy daughter.

           “My dears, it is true,” said Mr. Skimpole, “is it not? So it is, and so it must be, because, like the dogs in the hymn, ‘it is our nature to.’ Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity, and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know nothing about chops in this house. But we don't; not the least. We can't cook anything whatever. A needle and thread we don't know how to use. We admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want; but we don't quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live, and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and let us live upon you!”

           He laughed, but, as usual, seemed quite candid, and really to mean what he said.

           “We have sympathy, my roses,” said Mr. Skimpole, “sympathy for everything. Have we not?”

           “O yes, papa!” cried the three daughters.

           “In fact, that is our family department,” said Mr. Skimpole, “in this hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being interested, and we do look on, and we are interested. What more can we do! Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now, I dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all wrong in point of political economy; but it was very agreeable. We had our little festivities on those occasions, and exchanged social ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their young fledgelings have their nest up-stairs. I dare say, at some time or other, Sentiment and Comedy will bring their husbands home, and have their nests up-stairs too. So we get on; we don't know how, but somehow.”

           She looked very young indeed, to be the mother of two children; and I could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the three daughters had grown up as they could, and had had just as little hap-hazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted, I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair; the Beauty daughter being in the classic manner; the Sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing; and the Comedy daughter in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.

           Ada and I conversed with these young ladies, and found them wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinting at a change in the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not



page 423 help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously volunteered to go home with us, and had withdrawn to dress himself for the purpose.

           “My roses,” he said, when he came back, “take care of mamma. She is poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I shall hear the larks sing, and preserve my amiability. It has been tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home.”

           “That bad man!” said the Comedy daughter.

           “At the very time when he knew papa was lying down by his wall-flowers, looking at the blue sky,” Laura complained.

           “And when the smell of hay was in the air!” said Arethusa.

           “It showed a want of poetry in the man,” Mr. Skimpole assented; but with perfect good-humour. “It was coarse. There was an absence of the finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great offence,” he explained to us, “at an honest man —”

           “Not honest, Papa. Impossible!” they all three protested.

           “At a rough kind of fellow—a sort of human hedge-hog rolled up,” said Mr. Skimpole, “who is a baker in this neighbourhood, and from whom we borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs, and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man who had got them, to lend them. Well! this morose person lent them, and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. I said, ‘Can you, at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don't you know that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?’ He was unreasonable and unpersuadable, and used intemperate language. Being as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him. I said, ‘Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary, we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming summer morning here you see me’ (I was on the sofa) ‘with flowers before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime, the absurd figure of an angry baker!’ But he did,” said Mr. Skimpole, raising his laughing eyebrows in playful astonishment; “he did interpose that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore I am very glad to get out of his way, and to go home with my friend Jarndyce.”

           It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the daughters remained behind to encounter the baker; but this was so old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any other aspect in which he showed himself, and rode away with us in perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some open doors, as we went down-stairs, that his own apartment was a palace to the rest of the house.

           I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very starting to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what



page 424 ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was in such spirits on the way home, that I could do nothing but listen to him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somer's Town, veered completely round, before we were a couple of miles from it.

           Whether of questionable childishness or not, in any other matters, Mr. Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and drinking songs Italian and German by the score.

           We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music, and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined old Verulam wall, to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and had got tired of; when a card was brought in, and my guardian read aloud in a surprised voice:

           “Sir Leicester Dedlock!”

           The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me, and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it was. I heard my name, and found that my guardian was presenting me, before I could move to a chair.

           “Pray be seated, Sir Leicester.”

           “Mr. Jarndyce,” said Sir Leicester in reply, as he bowed and seated himself, “I do myself the honor of calling here—”

           “You do me the honor, Sir Leicester.”

           “Thank you—of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire, to express my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may have against a gentleman who—who is known to you and has been your host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge, from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and refined taste, at my house, Chesney Wold.”

           “You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much.”

           “It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the reasons I have mentioned I refrain from making further allusion—it is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the honor so far to misapprehend my character, as to induce you to believe that you would not have been received by my local establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy, which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse.”

           My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any verbal answer.

           “It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce,” Sir Leicester weightily proceeded. “I assure you, sir, it has given—Me—pain—to learn from the housekeeper at Chesney Wold, that a gentleman who was in your company



page 425 in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a cultivated taste for the Fine Arts, was likewise deterred, by some such cause, from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them, and which some of them might possibly have repaid.” Here he produced a card, and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his eye-glass, “Mr. Hirrold,—Herald—Harold—Skampling—Skumpling—I beg your pardon,—Skimpole.”

           “This is Mr. Harold Skimpole,” said my guardian, evidently surprised.

           “Oh!” exclaimed Sir Leicester, “I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole, and to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope, sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you will be under no similar sense of restraint.”

           “You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,” said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, “are public benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield, is to be ungrateful to our benefactors.”

           Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. “An artist, sir?”

           “No,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur.”

           Sir Leicester seemed to approve of his even more. He hoped he might have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much flattered and honored.

           “Mr. Skimpole mentioned,” pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself again to my guardian; “mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family—”

           (“That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,” Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.)

           “That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there, was Mr. Jarndyce.” Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. “And hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr. Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock, and indeed claiming some distant connection with her, and for whom (as I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I assure you, give—Me—pain.”

           “Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester,” returned my guardian. “I am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration. Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologise for it.”

           I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor, and had not even appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused, and my



page 426 instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so distressing to me, that I thought I understood nothing, through the rushing in my head and the beating of my heart.

           “I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock,” said Sir Leicester, rising, “and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards, on the occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole. Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favored my house with his presence; but those circumstances are confined to that gentleman himself, and do not extend beyond him.”

           “You know my old opinion of him,” said Mr. Skimpole, lightly appealing to us. “An amiable bull, who is determined to make every colour scarlet!”

           Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed, as if he could not possibly hear another word in reference to such an individual; and took his leave with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all possible speed, and remained there until I had recovered my self-command. It had been very much disturbed; but I was thankful to find, when I went downstairs again, that they only rallied me for having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.

           By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house,—even of Mr. Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me, receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband,—was so painful, that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance.

           When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again, and sought my guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour; and as I drew near, I saw the light shining out into the passage from his reading-lamp.

           “May I come in, guardian?”

           “Surely, little woman. What's the matter?”

           “Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet time of saying a word to you about myself.”

           He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before—on that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could readily understand.

           “What concerns you, my dear Esther,” said he “concerns us all. You cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear.”

           “I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and support. O! you don't know how much need I have to-night.”

           He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little alarmed.

           “Or how anxious I have been to speak to you,” said I, “ever since the visitor was here to-day.”



page 427

           “The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?”

           “Yes.”

           He folded his arms, and sat looking at me with an air of the profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not know how to prepare him.

           “Why, Esther,” said he, breaking into a smile, “our visitor and you are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting together!”

           “O yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago.”

           The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that), and resumed his seat before me.

           “Guardian,” said I, “do you remember, when we were overtaken by the thunderstorm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?”

           “Of course. Of course I do.”

           “And reminding you that she and her sister had differed; had ‘gone their several ways?’”

           “Of course.”

           “Why did they separate, guardian?”

           His face quite altered as he looked at me. “My child, what questions are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty as she.”

           “O guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!”

           “Seen her?”

           He paused a little, biting his lip. “Then, Esther, when you spoke to me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and that that time had had its influence on his later life—did you know it all, and know who the lady was?”

           “No, guardian,” I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke upon me. “Nor do I know yet.”

           “Lady Dedlock's sister.”

           “And why,” I could scarcely ask him, “why, guardian, pray tell me why were they parted?”

           “It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture), that some injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel with her sister, had wounded her beyond all reason; but she wrote him that from the date of that letter she died to him—as in literal truth she did—and that the resolution was exacted from her by her knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did both, I fear: certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from that hour. Nor did any one.”

           “O guardian, what have I done!” I cried, giving way to my grief; “what sorrow have I innocently caused!”

           “You caused, Esther?”



page 428

           “Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is my first remembrance.”

           “No, no!” he cried, starting.

           “Yes, guardian, yes! And her sister is my mother!”

           I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door, and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and honored him.

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



page 429 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 deathbed,” said my guardian. “It would be useless self-distress and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were before you had it. It is the best you can do, for everybody's sake. I sharing the secret with you—”

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

           “—Will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear daughter's sake.”

           I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank him! I was going out at the door, when he asked me to stay a moment. Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again; and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and far off possibility that I understood it.

           “My dear Esther,” said my guardian, “I have long had something in my thoughts that I have wished to say to you.”

           “Indeed?”

           “I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately considered. Would you object to my writing it?”

           “Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for me to read?”

           “Then see, my love,” said he, with his cheery smile; “am I at this moment quite as plain and easy—do I seem as open, as honest and old-fashioned, as I am at any time?”

           I answered, in all earnestness, “Quite.” With the strictest truth, for his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.

           “Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?” said he, with his bright clear eyes on mine.

           I answered, most assuredly he did not.

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

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

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

           He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and, looking down into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of manner—the old protecting manner which had made that house my home in a moment—said, “You have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the stage coach. First and last you have done me a world of good, since that time.”



page 430

           “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



page 431 written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind protecting manner, in every line. It addressed me as if our places were reversed: as if all the good deeds had been mine, and all the feelings they had awakened, his. It dwelt on my being young, and he past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage, and lose nothing by rejecting it; for no new relation could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew, since our late confidence, and had decided on taking it; if it only served to show me, through one poor instance, that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood. I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more; for I was always to remember that I owed him nothing, and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often thought of our future; and, foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it. If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter chances and changes than Death, even then he could not have me bind myself irrevocably, while this letter was yet so new to me; but, even then, I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the same, he knew.

           This was the substance of the letter; written throughout with a justice and a dignity, as if he were indeed my responsible guardian, impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his integrity he stated the full case.

           But he did not hint to me, that when I had been better-looking, he had had this same proceeding in his thoughts, and had refrained from it. That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my disfigurement, and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the last.

           But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means of thanking him?

           Still I cried very much; not only in the fulness of my heart after reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect—for it was strange though I had expected the contents—but as if something for which there was no name or distinct idea were indefinitely lost to



page 432 me. I was very happy, very thankful, very hopeful; but I cried very much.

           By-and-by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I said, “O Esther, Esther, can that be you!” I am afraid the face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my finger at it, and it stopped.

           “That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear, when you showed me such a change!” said I, beginning to let down my hair. “When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all.”

           I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little still, but that was because I had been crying; not because I was crying then.

           “And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men.”

           I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form, that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid them down in their basket again.

           Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my illness, and the circumstances of my birth, were only new reasons why I should be busy, busy, busy—useful, amiable, serviceable, in all honest unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not. “Don't you remember, my plain dear,” I asked myself, looking at the glass, “what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there, about your marrying—”

           Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it would be better not to keep them now.

           They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room—our sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a candle, and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand, I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and I stole in to kiss her.

           It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker than that, I took the withered flowers out, and put them for a moment to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard; though, indeed, the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own room, and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.

           On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian



page 433 just as usual; quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the morning, in and out, when there was no one there; and I thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter; but he did not say a word.

           So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week; over which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter; but he never did.

           I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not write an answer that at all began like a good answer; so I thought each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, and he never said a word.

           At last Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon going out for a ride; and I being dressed before Ada, and going down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the drawing-room window looking out.

           He turned on my coming in, and said, smiling, “Aye, it's you, little woman, is it?” and looked out again.

           I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down on purpose. “Guardian,” I said, rather hesitating and trembling, “when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came for?”

           “When it's ready, my dear,” he replied.

           “I think it is ready,” said I.

           “Is Charley to bring it?” he asked, pleasantly.

           “No. I have brought it myself, guardian,” I returned.

           I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him; and he said was this the mistress of Bleak House; and I said yes; and it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious pet about it.

CHAPTER XLV.
IN TRUST.

           ONE morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys, as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened to turn my eyes towards the house, and saw a long thin shadow going in which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that morning, of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardor in the Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to damp my dear girl's spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes's shadow.

           Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes, and tripping along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora's attendants



page 434 instead of my maid, saying, “O if you please, miss, would you step and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!”

           It was one of Charley's peculiarities, that whenever she was charged with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld, at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw Charley, asking me in her usual form of words, to “step and speak” to Mr. Jarndyce, long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she had said it so often that she was out of breath.

           I told Ada I would make haste back, and inquired of Charley, as we went in, whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce? To which Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit to my educational powers, replied, “Yes, miss. Him as come down in the country with Mr. Richard.”

           A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes, I suppose there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a table; the one so open, and the other so close; the one so broad and upright, and the other so narrow and stooping; the one giving out what he had to say in such a rich ringing voice, and the other keeping it in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner; that I thought I never had seen two people so unmatched.

           “You know Mr. Vholes, my dear,” said my guardian. Not with the greatest urbanity, I must say.

           Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.

           “Mr. Vholes,” said my guardian, eyeing his black figure, as if he were a bird of ill omen, “has brought an ugly report of our most unfortunate Rick.” Laying a marked emphasis on most unfortunate, as if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr. Vholes.

           I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immoveable, except that he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with his black glove.

           “And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to know,” said my guardian, “what you think, my dear. Would you be so good as to—as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?”

           Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed:

           “I have been saying that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C's professional adviser, that Mr. C's circumstances are at the present moment in an embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount, as owing to the peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C has incurred, and the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved off many little matters for Mr. C; but there is a limit to staving off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to realise some little independence for three dear girls at home. My apprehension is, Mr. C's circumstances being such, lest it should end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission; which at all events is desirable to be made known to his connexions.”

           Mr. Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here merged into



page 435 the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was his tone and looked before him again.

           “Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource,” said my guardian to me. “Yet what can I do?” You know him, Esther. He would never accept of help from me, now. To offer it, or hint at it, would be to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did.”

           Mr. Vholes hereupon addressed me again.

           “What Mr. Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here under the seal of confidence and mention it, in order that everything may be openly carried on, and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me. If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C, I should not be here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can be charged to nobody. I have no interest in it, except as a member of society and a father—and a son,” said Mr. Vholes, who had nearly forgotten that point.

           It appeared to us that Mr. Vholes said neither more nor less than the truth, in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such as it was, of knowing Richard's situation. I could only suggest that I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without consulting Mr. Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to propose it, while Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire, and warmed his funeral gloves.

           The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my guardian's part; but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr. Vholes.

           “Well, sir,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “Miss Summerson will communicate with Mr. Carstone, and we can only hope that his position may be yet retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey, sir.”

           “I thank you, Mr. Jarndyce,” said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long black sleeve, to check the ringing of the bell, “not any. I thank you, no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this period of the day, I don't know what the consequences might be. Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your permission take my leave.”

           “And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take our leave, Mr. Vholes,” returned my guardian, bitterly, “of a Cause you know of.”

           Mr. Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume. made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck, and slowly shook it.

           “We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think well of my professional



page 436 brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C?”

           I said I would be careful not to do it.

           “Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Jarndyce, good morning, sir.” Mr. Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, and took his long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach, passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling the seed in the ground as it glided along.

           Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going, and why I was going; and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of excuse; and in a more loving spirit still—my dear, devoted girl!—she wrote him a long letter, of which I took charge.

           Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted none, and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward, with the Kentish letters.

           It was a night's journey in those coach times; but we had the mail to ourselves, and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At one while, my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I thought that I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever have supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in the world that I should have come, and now one of the most unreasonable. In what state I should find Richard, what I should say to him, and what he would say to me, occupied my mind by turns with these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune (to which the burden of my guardian's letter set itself) over and over again all night.

           At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal: and very gloomy they were, upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they were spinning themselves into cordage.

           But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain; and numbers of ships, that we had had no idea were near, appeared. I don't know how many sail the waiter told us were then lying in the Downs. Some of these vessels were of grand size: one was a large Indiaman, just come home: and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats putting off from the shore to them



page 437 and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.

           The large Indiaman was our great attraction, because she had come into the Downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats; and we said how glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much faster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of one man. And Charley asking how that could be, I told her how we knew at home of such a case.

           I had thought of sending Richard a note, saying I was there, but it seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack yard, we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning; and I asked a serjeant standing on the guardhouse-steps, where he lived. He sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us.

           “Now then!” cried Richard, from within. So I left Charley in the little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, “Can I come in, Richard. It's only Dame Durden.”

           He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus, strewn all about the floor. He was only half-dressed—in plain clothes, I observed, not in uniform—and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his room. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me, and I was seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He was ever the same to me. Down to—ah, poor poor fellow!—to the end, he never received me but with something of his old merry boyish manner.

           “Good Heaven, my dear little woman,” said he, “how do you come here. Who could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is well?”

           “Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!”

           “Ah!” he said, leaning back in his chair. “My poor cousin! I was writing to you, Esther.”

           So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fulness of his handsome youth, leaning back in his chair, and crushing the closely written sheet of paper in his hand!

           “Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to read it after all?” I asked.

           “Oh my dear,” he returned, with a hopeless gesture. “You may read it in the whole room. It is all over here.”

           I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had heard by chance of his being in difficulty, and had come to consult with him what could best be done.

           “Like you, Esther, but useless, and so not like you!” said he with a melancholy smile. “I am away on leave this day—should have been gone in another hour—and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out. Well!



page 438 Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I only want to have been in the church, to have made the round of all the professions.”

           “Richard,” I urged, “it is not so hopeless as that?”

           “Esther,” he returned, “it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes) would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right. Apart from debts and duns, and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn't broken now,” he said, tearing the letter he had written into fragments, and moodily casting them away, by driblets, “how could I have gone abroad? I must have been ordered abroad; but how could I have gone. How could I, with my experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his back!”

           I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught the hand I had laid upon his arm, and touched my own lips with it to prevent me from going on.

           “No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid—must forbid. The first is John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell you I can't help it now, and can't be sane. But it is no such thing; it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I have bestowed upon it! O yes, true wisdom. It would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will.”

           He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took out Ada's letter, and put it in his hand.

           “Am I to read it now?” he asked.

           As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and, resting his head upon his hand, began. He had not read far, when he rested his head upon his two hands—to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if the light were bad, and went to the window. He finished reading it there, with his back towards me; and, after he had finished and had folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.

           “Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?” He spoke in a softened voice, and kissed the letter as he asked me.

           “Yes, Richard.”

           “Offers me,” he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, “the little inheritance she is certain of so soon—just as little and as much as I have wasted—and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right with it, and remain in the service.”

           “I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart,” said I. “And O, my dear Richard, Ada's is a noble heart!”

           “I am sure it is. I—I wish I was dead!”

           He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so; but I hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.

           “And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not otherwise



page 439 to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from me,” said he, indignantly. “And the dear girl makes me this generous offer from under the same John Jarndyce's roof, and with the same John Jarndyce's gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new means of buying me off.”

           “Richard!” I cried out, rising hastily, “I will not hear you say such shameful words!” I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time in my life; but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young face looking at me, as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder, and said, “If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a tone to me. Consider!”

           He blamed himself exceedingly; and told me in the most generous manner, that he had been very wrong, and that he begged my pardon a thousand times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather fluttered after being so fiery.

           “To accept this offer, my dear Esther,” said he, sitting down beside me, and resuming our conversation,—“once more, pray, pray forgive me; I am deeply grieved—to accept my dearest cousin's offer is, I need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I could show you, which would convince you it is all over here. I have done with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing Ada's interests in pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me, thank God!”

           His sanguine hopes were rising within him, and lighting up his features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been before.

           “No, no!” cried Richard, exultingly. “If every farthing of Ada's little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should be used where she has a larger stake. Don't be uneasy for me! I shall now have only one thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I shall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to compound with some small usurers, who will hear of nothing but their bond now—Vholes says so. I should have a balance in my favor any way, but that will swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of me, and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear.”

           I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly; but I saw that on the two subjects he had reserved, it was at present hopeless to make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in this very interview, the sense of my guardian's remark that it was even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as he was.

           Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was arranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Vholes had copies of these papers,



page 440 and had been in consultation with him throughout. Beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada's letter, and being (as I was going to be) Richard's companion back to London, I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he joined me there; so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach.

           There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great Indiaman's boats now, and we stopped to look.

           The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking good-humoredly to each other and to the people around, and glancing about them as if they were glad to be in England again. “Charley, Charley!” said I, “come away!” And I hurried on so swiftly that my little maid was surprised.

           It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room, and I had had time to take breath, that I began to think why I had made such haste. In one of the sun-burnt faces I had recognised Mr. Allan Woodcourt, and I had been afraid of his recognising me. I had been unwilling that he should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my courage had quite failed me.

           But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, “My dear, there is no reason—there is and there can be no reason at all—why it should be worse for you now, than it ever has been. What you were last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This is not your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!” I was in a great tremble—with running—and at first was quite unable to calm myself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it.

           The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase. I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices again—I mean I knew Mr. Woodcourt's. It would still have been a great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but I was determined not to do so. “No my dear, no. No, no, no!”

           I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up—I think I mean half down, but it matters very little—and wrote on one of my cards that I happened to be there with Mr. Richard Carstone; and I sent it in to Mr. Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw that he was very sorry for me.

           “You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “but we can hardly call that a misfortune which enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old patient poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe illness.”

           “Ah! little Miss Flite!” he said. “She lives the same life yet?”

           “Just the same.”

           I was so comfortable with myself now, as not to mind the veil, and to be able to put it aside.

           “Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most affectionate creature, as I have reason to say.”



page 441

           “You—you have found her so?” he returned. “I—I am glad of that.” He was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.

           “I assure you,” said I, “that I was deeply touched by her sympathy and pleasure at the time I have referred to.”

           “I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill.”

           “I was very ill.”

           “But you have quite recovered?”

           “I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness,” said I. “You know how good my guardian is, and what a happy life we lead; and I have everything to be thankful for, and nothing in the world to desire.”

           I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude, and new calmness, to find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He had not found himself more favoured by fortune there, than here. He had gone out a poor ship's surgeon, and had come home nothing better. While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing me, Richard came in. He had heard down-stairs who was with me, and they met with cordial pleasure.

           I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke of Richard's career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face, as if there were something in it that gave him pain; and more than once he looked towards me, as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states, and in good spirits; and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom he had always liked.

           Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr. Woodcourt having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour; and became so much more like what he used to be, that I was still more at peace to think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready, and Richard ran down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.

           I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open; but I referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr. Jarndyce, and to his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt listened with interest and expressed his regret.

           “I saw you observe him rather closely,” said I. “Do you think him so changed?”

           “He is changed,” he returned, shaking his head.

           I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was gone.

           “It is not,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “his being so much younger or older, or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety, or all weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair.”



page 442

           “You do not think he is ill?” said I.

           No. He looked robust in body.

           “That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to know,” I proceeded. “Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?”

           “To-morrow or the next day.”

           “There is nothing Richard wants so much, as a friend. He always liked you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with your companionship, if you can. You do not know of what service it might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I—how we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!”

           “Miss Summerson,” he said, more moved than he had been from the first, “before Heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!”

           “God bless you!” said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought they might, when it was not for myself. “Ada loves him—we all love him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say. Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!”

           Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words, and gave me his arm to take me to the coach.

           “Woodcourt,” he said, unconscious with what application, “pray let us meet in London!”

           “Meet?” returned the other. “I have scarcely a friend there, now, but you. Where shall I find you?”

           “Why, I must get a lodging of some sort,” said Richard, pondering. “Say at Vholes's, Symond's Inn.”

           “Good! Without loss of time.”

           They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach, and Richard was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand on Richard's shoulder, and looked at me. I understood him, and waved mine in thanks.

           And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.

CHAPTER XLVI.
STOP HIM!

           DARKNESS rests upon Tom-all-Alone's. Dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swollen until it fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of Life burns in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking—as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's—at many horrible things. But they are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on, and is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone's, and Tom is fast asleep.



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           Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind, or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise, there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.

           But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say Nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution, through every order of society, up to the proudest of the proud, and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge.

           It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by night; but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the British dominions, than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom.

           A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable byways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness, and to have studied it before.

           On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears, except in one direction where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a doorstep. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has journeyed a long distance, and is footsore and travel-stained. She sits on the doorstep in the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow or her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes towards her.

           The broken footway is so narrow, that when Allan Woodcourt comes to where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.



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           “What is the matter?”

           “Nothing, sir.”

           “Can't you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?”

           “I'm waiting till they get up at another house—a lodging-house—not here,” the woman patiently returns. “I'm waiting here because there will be sun here presently to warm me.”

           “I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the street.”

           “Thank you, sir. It don't matter.”

           A habit in him of speaking to the poor, and of avoiding patronage or condescension, or childishness (which is the favorite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books), has put him on good terms with the woman easily.

           “Let me look at your forehead,” he says, bending down. “I am a doctor. Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you for the world.”

           He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand, he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection, saying, “It's nothing;” but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.

           “Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very sore.”

           “It do ache a little, sir,” returns the woman, with a started tear upon her cheek.

           “Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won't hurt you.”

           “O dear no sir, I'm sure of that!”

           He cleanses the injured place and dries it; and having carefully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street:

           “And so your husband is a brickmaker?”

           “How do you know that, sir?” asks the woman, astonished.

           “Why, I suppose so, from the color of the clay upon your bag and on your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to their wives too.”

           The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again.

           “Where is he now?” asks the surgeon.

           “He got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the lodging-house.”

           “He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it. You have no young child?”

           The woman shakes her head. “One as I calls mine, sir, but it's Liz's.”

           “Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!”



page 445

           By this time he has finished, and is putting up his case. “I suppose you have some settled home. Is it far from here?” he asks, good-humoredly making light of what he has done, as she gets up and curtseys.

           “It's a good two or three-and-twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like, as if you did?”

           “Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in return. Have you money for your lodging?”

           “Yes, sir,” she says, “really and truly.” And she shows it. He tells her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone's is still asleep, and nothing is astir.

           Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the soiled walls—which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid—and furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth, whose face is hollow, and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so intent on getting along unseen, that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on, with his anxious hand before him, and his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They look, in color and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth, that rotted long ago.

           Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how, or where; but there is some association in his mind with such a form. He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge; still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his remembrance.

           He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's in the morning light, thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him; and looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by the woman.

           “Stop him, stop him!” cries the woman, almost breathless. “Stop him, sir!”

           He darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker than he—makes a curve—ducks—dives under his hands—comes up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still, the woman follows, crying, “Stop him, sir, pray stop him!” Allan, not knowing but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase, and runs so hard, that he runs the boy down a dozen times; but each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him, on any of these occasions, would be to fell and disable him; but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that; and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage, and a court which has no thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay, and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him until the woman comes up.

           “O you, Jo!” cries the woman. “What? I have found you at last!’



page 446

           “Jo,” repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, “Jo! Stay. To be sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the coroner.”

           “Yes, I see you once afore at the Inkwhich,” whimpers Jo. “What of that? Can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An't I unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be? I've been a chivied and a chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by another on you, till I'm worrited to skins and bones. The Inkwhich warn't my fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my crossing. It an't wery likely I should want him to be Inkwhich'd. I only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go and make a hole in the water, I'm sure I don't.”

           He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the woman, “Miserable creature, what has he done?”

           To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily: “O you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at last!”

           “What has he done?” says Allan. “Has he robbed you?”

           “No sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that's the wonder of it.”

           Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle.

           “But he was along with me, sir,” says the woman,—“O you Jo!—he was along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady Lord bless her for a good friend to me took pity on him when I durstn't, and took him home—”

           Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.

           “Yes sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night, and never has been seen or heard of since, till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady that was such a pretty dear, caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now, if it wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?” demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it, and breaking into passionate tears.

           The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans, rattles.

           Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually.

           “Richard told me,” he falters, “—I mean, I have heard of this—don't mind me for a moment, I will speak presently.”

           He turns away, and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure; except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable, that it absorbs the woman's attention.



page 447

           “You hear what she says. But get up, get up!”

           Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises, and stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it, and covertly rubbing his right hand over his left, and his left foot over his right.

           “You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here ever since?”

           “Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-alone's till this blessed morning,” replies Jo, hoarsely.

           “Why have you come here now?”

           Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers:

           “I don't know how to do nothing, and I can't get nothing to do. I'm wery poor and ill, and I thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Sangsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Sangsby she was allus a chivying on me—like everybody everywheres.”

           “Where have you come from?”

           Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation.

           “Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?”

           “Tramp then,” says Jo.

           “Now, tell me,” proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, “tell me how it came about that you left that house, when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you, and take you home.”

           Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation, and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs.

           Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to touch him. “Come, Jo. Tell me.”

           “No. I dustn't,” says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. “I dustn't, or I would.”

           “But I must know,” returns the other, “all the same. Come, Jo.”

           After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, “Well, I'll tell you somethink. I was took away. There!”

           “Took away? In the night?”

           “Ah!” Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him, and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding, and through the cracks in it, lest the object of his distrust should be looking over, or hidden on the other side.

           “Who took you away?”

           “I dustn't name him,” says Jo. “I dustn't do it, sir.”



page 448

           “But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear.”

           “Ah, but I don't know,” replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, “as he don't hear.”

           “Why, he is not in this place.”

           “Oh, ain't he though?” says Jo. “He's in all manner of places, all at wunst.”

           Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.

           “Aye!” says Allan. “Why, what had you been doing?”

           “Nothing, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, 'sept in not moving on and the Inkwhich. But I'm a moving on now. I'm a moving on to the berryin ground—that's the move as I'm up to.”

           “No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?”

           “Put me in a horsepittle,” replied Jo, whispering, “till I was discharged, then giv me a little money—four half bulls, wot you may call halfcrowns—and ses ‘Hook it! Nobody wants you here,’ he ses. ‘You hook it. You go and tramp,’ he ses. ‘You move on,’ he ses. ‘Don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or you'll repent it.’ So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see me if I'm above ground,” concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations.

           Allan considers a little; then remarks, turning to the woman, but keeping an encouraging eye on Jo; “He is not so ungrateful as you supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one.”

           “Thank'ee, sir, thank'ee!” exclaims Jo. “There now! See how hard you wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it's all right. For you wos wery good to me too, and I knows it.”

           “Now, Jo,” says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, “come with me, and I will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I take one side of the way and you the other, to avoid observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise.”

           “I won't, not unless I wos to see him a coming, sir.”

           “Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come along. Good day again, my good woman.”

           “Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again.”

           She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, “Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!” nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air.



page [1]

IMPORTANT FAMILY MEDICINE.

NORTON'S CAMOMILE PILLS,
THE
MOST CERTAIN PRESERVER OF HEALTH;
A MILD, YET SPEEDY, SAFE, AND
EFFECTUAL AID IN CASES OF INDIGESTION,
AND ALL STOMACH COMPLAINTS,
AND, AS A NATURAL CONSEQUENCE,
A PURIFIER OF THE BLOOD, AND A SWEETENER OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM.

           INDIGESTION is a weakness or want of power of the digestive juices in the stomach to convert what we eat and drink into healthy matter, for the proper nourishment of the whole system. It is caused by every thing which weakens the system in general, or the stomach in particular. From it proceed nearly all the diseases to which we are liable; for it is very certain, that if we could always keep the stomach right we should only die by old age or accident. Indigestion produces a great variety of unpleasant sensations: amongst the most prominent of its miserable effects are a want of, or an inordinate, appetite, sometimes attended with a constant craving for drink, a distension or feeling of enlargement of the stomach, flatulency, heartburn, pains in the stomach, acidity, unpleasant taste in the mouth, perhaps sickness, rumbling noise in the bowels: in some cases of depraved digestion there is nearly a complete disrelish for food, but still the appetite is not greatly impaired, as at the stated period of meals persons so afflicted can eat heartily, although without much gratification; a long train of nervous symptoms are also frequent attendants, general debility, great languidness, and incapacity for exertion. The minds of persons so afflicted frequently become irritable and desponding, and great anxiety is observable in the countenance; they appear thoughtful, melancholy, and dejected, under great apprehension of some imaginary danger, will start at any unexpected noise or occurrence, and become so agitated that they require some time to calm and collect themselves; yet for all this the mind is exhilarated without much difficulty; pleasing events, society, will for a time dissipate all appearance of disease but the excitement produced by an agreeable change vanishes soon after the cause has gone by. Other symptoms are, violent palpitations, restlessness, the sleep disturbed by frightful dreams and startings, and affording little or no refreshment: occasionally there is much moaning, with a sense of weight and oppression upon the chest, nightmare, &c.

           It is almost impossible to enumerate all the symptoms of this first invader upon the constitution, as in a hundred cases of Indigestion there will probably be something peculiar to each; but, be they what they may, they are all occasioned by the food becoming a burden rather than a support to the stomach; and in all its stages the medicine most wanted is that which will afford speedy and effectual assistance to the digestive organs, and give energy to the nervous and muscular systems,—nothing can more speedily or with more certainty effect so desirable an object than Norton's Extract of Camomile Flowers. The herb has from time immemorial been highly esteemed in England as a grateful anodyne, imparting an aromatic bitter to the taste, and a pleasing degree of warmth and strength to the stomach; and in all cases of indigestion, gout in the stomach, windy colic, and general weakness, it has for ages been strongly recommended by the most eminent practitioners as very useful and beneficial. The great, indeed only, objection to its use has been the large quantity of water which it takes to dissolve a small part of the flowers, and which must be taken with it into the



page 2 stomach. It requires a quarter of a pint of boiling water to dissolve the soluble portion or one drachm of camomile flowers; and, when one or even two ounces may be taken with advantage, it must at once be seen how impossible it is to take a proper dose of this wholesome herb in the form of tea; and the only reason why it has not long since been placed the very first in rank of all restorative medicines is that in taking it the stomach has always been loaded with water, which tends in a great measure to counteract, and very frequently wholly to destroy the effect. It must be evident that loading a weak stomach with a large quantity of water, merely for the purpose of conveying into it a small quantity of medicine must be injurious; and that the medicines must possess powerful renovating properties only to counteract the bad effects likely to be produced by the water. Generally speaking, this has been the case with camomile flowers, a herb possessing the highest restorative qualities, and when properly taken, decidedly the most speedy restorer, and the most certain preserver of health.

           These PILLS are wholly CAMOMILE, prepared by a peculiar process, accidentally discovered, and known only to the proprietor, and which he firmly believes to be one of the most valuable modern discoveries in medicine, by which all the essential and extractive matter of more than an ounce of the flowers is concentrated in four moderate-sized pills. Experience has afforded the most ample proof that they possess all the fine aromatic and stomachic properties for which the herb has been esteemed; and, as they are taken into the stomach unencumbered by any diluting or indigestible substance, in the same degree has their benefit been more immediate and decided. Mild in their operation and pleasant in their effect, they may be taken at any age, and under any circumstance, without danger or inconvenience. A person exposed to cold and wet a whole day or night could not possibly receive any injury from taking them, but, on the contrary, they would effectually prevent a cold being taken. After a long acquaintance with and strict observance of the medicinal properties of Norton's Camomile Pills, it is only doing them justice to say, that they are really the most valuable of all TONIC MEDICINES. By the word tonic is meant a medicine which gives strength to the stomach sufficient to digest in proper quantities all wholesome food, which increases the power of every nerve and muscle of the human body, or, in other words, invigorates the nervous and muscular systems. The solidity or firmness of the whole tissue of the body which so quickly follows the use of Norton's Camomile Pills, their certain and speedy effects in repairing the partial dilapidations from time or intemperance, and their lasting salutary influence on the whole frame, is most convincing, that in the smallest compass is contained the largest quantity of the tonic principle, of so peculiar a nature as to pervade the whole system, through which it diffuses health and strength sufficient to resist the formation of disease, and also to fortify the constitution against contagion; as such, their general use is strongly recommended as a preventative during the prevalence of malignant fever or other infectious diseases, and to persons attending sick rooms they are invaluable as in no one instance have they ever failed in preventing the taking of illness, even under the most trying circumstances.

           As Norton's Camomile Pills are particularly recommended for all stomach complaints or indigestion, it will probably be expected that some advice should be given respecting diet, though after all that has been written upon the subject, after the publication of volume upon volume, after the country has, as it were, been inundated with practical essays on diet, as a means of prolonging life, it would be unnecessary to say more, did we not feel it our duty to make the humble endeavour of inducing the public to regard them not, but to adopt that course which is dictated by nature, by reason, and by common sense. Those persons who study the wholesomes, and are governed by the opinions of writers on diet, are uniformly both unhealthy in body and weak in mind. There can be no doubt that the palate is designed to inform us what is proper for the stomach, and of course that must best instruct us what food to take and what to avoid: we want no other adviser. Nothing can be more clear than that those articles which are agreeable to the taste were by nature intended for our food and sustenance, whether liquid or solid, foreign or of native production: if they are pure and unadulterated, no harm need be dreaded by their



page 3 use; they will only injure by abuse. Consequently, whatever the palate approves, eat and drink always in moderation, but never in excess; keeping in mind that the first process of digestion is performed in the mouth, the second in the stomach; and that, in order that the stomach may be able to do its work properly, it is requisite the first process should be well performed; this consists in masticating or chewing the solid food, so as to break down and separate the fibres and small substances of meat and vegetables, mixing them well, and blending the whole together before they are swallowed; and it is particularly urged upon all to take plenty of time to their meals and never cat in haste. If you conform to this short and simple, but comprehensive advice, and find that there are various things which others eat and drink with pleasure and without inconvenience, and which would be pleasant to yourself only that they disagree, you may at once conclude that the fault is in the stomach, that it does not possess the power which it ought to do, that it wants assistance, and the sooner that assistance is afforded the better. A very short trial of this medicine will best prove how soon it will put the stomach in a condition to perform with case all the work which nature intended for it. By its use you will soon be able to enjoy, in moderation, whatever is agreeable to the taste, and unable to name one individual article of food which disagrees with or sits unpleasantly on the stomach. Never forget that a small meal well digested affords more nourishment to the system than a large one, even of the same food, when digested imperfectly. Let the dish be ever so delicious, ever so enticing a variety offered, the bottle ever so enchanting, never forget that temperance tends to preserve health, and that health is the soul of enjoyment. But should an impropriety be at any time, or ever so often, committed, by which the stomach becomes overloaded or disordered, render it immediate aid by taking a dose of Norton's Camomile Pills, which will so promptly assist in carrying off the burden thus imposed upon it that all will soon be right again.

           It is most certainly true that every person in his lifetime consumes a quantity of noxious matter, which if taken at one meal would be fatal; it is these small quantities of noxious matter, which are introduced into our food, either by accident or wilful adulteration, which we find so often upset the stomach, and not unfrequently lay the foundation of illness, and perhaps final ruination to health. To preserve the constitution, it should be our constant care, if possible, to counteract the effect of these small quantities of unwholesome matter; and whenever, in that way, an enemy to the constitution finds its way into the stomach, a friend should be immediately sent after it, which would prevent its mischievous effects, and expel it altogether; no better friend can be found, nor one which will perform the task with greater certainty, than NORTON'S CAMOMILE PILLS. And let it be observed that the longer this medicine is taken the less it will be wanted; it can in no case become habitual, as its entire action is to give energy and force to the stomach, which is the spring of life, the source from which the whole frame draws its succour and support. After an excess of eating or drinking, and upon every occasion of the general health being at all disturbed, these PILLS should be immediately taken, as they will stop and eradicate disease at its commencement. Indeed it is most confidently asserted, that by the timely use of this medicine only, and a common degree of caution, any person may enjoy all the comforts within his reach, may pass through life without an illness, and with the certainty of attaining a healthy OLD AGE.

           On account of their volatile properties, they must be kept in bottles; and if closely corked their qualities are neither impaired by time nor injured by any change of climate whatever. Price 13½d. and 2s. 9d. each, with full directions. The large bottle contains the quantity of three small ones, or PILLS equal to fourteen ounces of CAMOMILE FLOWERS.

           Sold by nearly all respectable Medicine Vendors.

           Be particular to ask for “NORTON'S PILLS,” and
do not be persuaded to purchase an imitation.