and that was the cold, cruel wife of the wine seller, Madame Defarge,
who had knitted the name "Evrémonde" so many times into her knitting.
III
SYDNEY CARTON'S SACRIFICE
That same night of his release all the happiness of Darnay and Lucie was
suddenly broken. Soldiers came and again arrested him. Defarge and his
wife were the accusers this time, and he was to be retried.
The first one to bring this fresh piece of bad news to Mr. Lorry was
Sydney Carton, the reckless and dissipated young lawyer. Probably he had
heard, in London, of Lucie's trouble, and out of his love for her, which
he always carried hidden in his heart, had come to Paris to try to aid
her husband. He had arrived only to hear, at the same time, of the
acquittal and the rearrest.
As Carton walked along the street thinking sadly of Lucie's new grief,
he saw a man whose face and figure seemed familiar. Following, he soon
recognized him as the English spy, Barsad, whose false testimony, years
before in London, had come so near convicting Darnay when he was tried
for treason. Barsad (who, as it happened, was now a turnkey in the very
prison where Darnay was confined) had left London to become a spy in
France, first on the side of the king and then on the side of the
people.
At the time of this story England was so hated by France that if the
people had known of Barsad's career in London they would have cut off
his head at once. Carton, who was well aware of this, threatened the spy
with his knowledge and made him swear that if worst came to worst and
Darnay were condemned, he would admit Carton to the cell to see him once
before he was taken to execution. Why Carton asked this Barsad could not
guess, but to save himself he had to promise.
Next day Darnay was tried for the second time. When the judge asked for
the accusation, Defarge laid a paper before him.
It was a letter that had been found when the Bastille fell, in the cell
that had been occupied for eighteen years by Doctor Manette. He had
written it before his reason left him, and hidden it behind a loosened
stone in the wall; and in it he had told the story of his own unjust
arrest. Defarge read it aloud to the jury. And this was the terrible
tale it told:
The Marquis de St. Evrémonde (the cruel uncle of Darnay), when he was a
young man, had dreadfully wronged a young peasant woman, had caused her
husband's death and killed her brother with his own hand. As the brother
lay dying from the sword wound, Doctor Manette, then also a young man,
had been called to attend him, and so, by accident, had learned the
whole. Horrified at the wicked wrong, he wrote of it in a letter to the
Minister of Justice. The Marquis whom it accused learned of this, and,
to put Doctor Manette out of the way, had him arrested secretly, taken
from his wife and baby daughter and thrown into a secret cell of the
Bastille, where he had lived those eighteen years, not knowing whether
his wife and child lived or died. He waited ten years for release, and
when none came, at last, feeling his mind giving way, he wrote the
account, which he concealed in the cell wall, denouncing the family of
Evrémonde and all their descendants.
The reading of this paper by Defarge, as may be guessed, aroused all the
murderous passions of the people in the court room. There was a further
reason for Madame Defarge's hatred, for the poor woman whom Darnay's
uncle had so wronged had been her own sister! In vain old Doctor Manette
pleaded. That his own daughter was now Darnay's wife made no difference
in their eyes. The jury at once found Darnay guilty and sentenced him to
die by the guillotine the next morning.
Lucie fainted when the sentence was pronounced. Sydney Carton, who had
witnessed the trial, lifted her and bore her to a carriage. When they
reached home he carried her up the stairs and laid her on a couch.
Before he went, he bent down and touched her cheek with his lips, and
they heard him whisper: "For a life you love!"
They did not know until next day what he meant.
Carton had, in fact, formed a desperate plan to rescue Lucie's husband,
whom he so much resembled in face and figure, even though it meant his
own death. He went to Mr. Lorry and made him promise to have ready next
morning passports and a coach and swift horses to leave Paris for
England with Doctor Manette, Lucie and himself, telling him that if they
delayed longer, Lucie's life and her father's also would be lost.
Next, Carton bought a quantity of a drug whose fumes would render a man
insensible, and with this in his pocket early next morning he went to
the spy, Barsad, and bade him redeem his promise and take him to the
cell where Darnay waited for the signal of death.
Darnay was seated, writing a last letter to Lucie, when Carton entered.
Pretending that he wished him to write something that he dictated,
Carton stood over him and held the phial of the drug to his face. In a
moment the other was unconscious. Then Carton changed clothes with him
and called in the spy, directing him to take the unconscious man, who
now seemed to be Sydney Carton instead of Charles Darnay, to Mr. Lorry's
house. He himself was to take the prisoner's place and suffer the
penalty.
The plan worked well. Darnay, who would not have allowed this sacrifice
if he had known, was carried safely and without discovery, past the
guards. Mr. Lorry, guessing what had happened when he saw the
unconscious figure, took coach at once with him, Doctor Manette and
Lucie, and started for England that very hour. Miss Pross was left to
follow them in another carriage.
While Miss Pross sat waiting in the empty house, who should come in but
the terrible Madame Defarge! The latter had made up her mind, as Carton
had suspected, to denounce Lucie also. It was against the law to mourn
for any one who had been condemned as an enemy to France, and the woman
was sure, of course, that Lucie would be mourning for her husband, who
was to die within the hour. So she stopped on her way to the execution
to see Lucie and thus have evidence against her.
When Madame Defarge entered, Miss Pross read the hatred and evil purpose
in her face. The grim old nurse knew if it were known that Lucie had
gone, the coach would be pursued and brought back. So she planted
herself in front of the door of Lucie's room, and would not let Madame
Defarge open it.
The savage Frenchwoman tried to tear her away, but Miss Pross seized her
around the waist, and held her back. The other drew a loaded pistol from
her breast to shoot her, but in the struggle it went off and killed
Madame Defarge herself.
Then Miss Pross, all of a tremble, locked the door, threw the key into
the river, took a carriage and followed after the coach.
Not long after the unconscious Darnay, with Lucie and Doctor Manette,
passed the gates of Paris, the jailer came to the cell where Sydney
Carton sat and called him. It was the summons to die. And with his
thoughts on Lucie, whom he had always hopelessly loved, and on her
husband, whom he had thus saved to her, he went almost gladly.
A poor little seamstress rode in the death cart beside him. She was so
small and weak that she feared to die, and Carton held her cold hand all
the way and comforted her to the end. Cruel women of the people sat
about the guillotine knitting and counting with their stitches, as each
poor victim died. And when Carton's turn came, thinking he was Darnay,
the hated Marquis de St. Evrémonde, they cursed him and laughed.
Men said of him about the city that night that it was the peacefullest
man's face ever beheld there. If they could have read his thought, if he
could have spoken it in words it would have been these:
"I see the lives, for which I lay down mine, peaceful and happy in that
England I shall see no more. I see Lucie and Darnay with a child that
bears my name, and I see that I shall hold a place in their hearts for
ever. I see her weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see the
blot I threw upon my name faded away, and I know that till they die
neither shall be more honored in the soul of the other than I am honored
in the souls of both. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I
have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have
ever known!"
BLEAK HOUSE
Published 1852-1853
_Scene_: London and the Country
_Time_: 1832 to 1852
CHARACTERS
Mr. Jarndyce Master of Bleak House
Mr. Boythorn His friend
Sir Leicester Dedlock An aged nobleman
Mr. Boythorn's neighbor
Lady Dedlock His wife
Mr. Tulkinghorn His lawyer
Captain Hawdon A dissipated and poverty-stricken copyist
in London, known as "Nemo"
Esther Summerson Mr. Jarndyce's ward
In reality a daughter of Captain Hawdon and Lady Dedlock
Ada Clare }
} Wards of Mr. Jarndyce
Richard Carstone }
Vholes Richard's lawyer
Mrs. Rouncewell Sir Leicester's housekeeper
"Mr. George" Proprietor of a London shooting-gallery
Her son
Hortense Lady Dedlock's French maid
Miss Flite A little, old, demented woman
Mrs. Jellyby A lady greatly interested in the welfare
of the heathen
Caddy Jellyby Her daughter
Harold Skimpole A trifler with life, preferring to
live at other people's expense
Allan Woodcourt A young surgeon
Grandfather Smallweed A money-lender
Mrs. Smallweed His crazy wife
Mr. Turveydrop The proprietor of a dancing school
and a model of deportment
Prince Turveydrop His son. Later, Caddy's husband
Joe A crossing sweeper
Krook A dealer in rags and old bottles
"Lady Jane" His cat
BLEAK HOUSE
I
THE COURT OF CHANCERY
An Englishman named Jarndyce, once upon a time having made a great
fortune, died and left a great will. The persons appointed to carry out
its provisions could not agree; they fell to disputing among themselves
and went to law over it.
The court which in England decides such suits is called the Court of
Chancery. Its action is slow and its delays many, so that men generally
consider it a huge misfortune to be obliged to have anything to do with
it. Sometimes it has kept cases undecided for many years, till the heirs
concerned were dead and gone; and often when the decision came at last
there was no money left to be divided, because it had all been eaten up
by the costs of the suit. Lawyers inherited some cases from their
fathers, who themselves had made a living by them, and many suits had
become so twisted that nobody alive could have told at last what they
really meant.
Such came to be the case with the Jarndyce will. It had been tried for
so many years that the very name had become a joke. Those who began it
were long since dead and their heirs either knew nothing of it or had
given up hope of its ever being ended.
The only one who seemed to be interested in it was a little old woman
named Miss Flite, whom delay and despair in a suit of her own had made
half crazy. For many years she had attended the Chancery Court every day
and many thoughtless people made fun of her.
She was wretchedly poor and lived in a small room over a rag-and-bottle
shop kept by a man named Krook. Here she had a great number of birds in
little cages--larks and linnets and goldfinches. She had given them
names to represent the different things which the cruel Chancery Court
required to carry on these shameful suits, such as Hope, Youth, Rest,
Ashes, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Folly, Words, Plunder and Jargon. She
used to say that when the Jarndyce case was decided she would open the
cages and let the birds all go.
The last Jarndyce that was left had given up in disgust all thought of
the famous lawsuit and steadfastly refused to have anything to do with
it. He lived quietly in the country in a big, bare building called Bleak
House. He was past middle-age, and his hair was silver-gray, but he was
straight and strong and merry.
He was rich, yet was so tender-hearted and benevolent that all who knew
him loved him. Most of his good deeds he never told, for he had a great
dislike to being thanked. It used to be said that once, after he had
done an extremely generous thing for a relative of his, seeing her
coming in the front gate to thank him, he escaped by the back door and
was not seen again for three months. He never spoke ill of his
neighbors, and whenever he was vexed he would pretend to look for a
weather-cock and say, "Dear, dear! The wind must be coming from the
east!"
It happened, finally, that all the other Jarndyce heirs had died except
two, a young girl named Ada Clare and a young man named Richard
Carstone. These two, who were cousins, were left orphans. The master of
Bleak House, therefore, in the goodness of his heart, offered them a
home with him, and this they thankfully accepted. Mr. Jarndyce now
wished to find a companion for Ada Clare; and this is how Esther
Summerson comes into this story.
Esther was a sweet girl who had been brought up by a stern, hard-hearted
woman whom she had always called "godmother," in ignorance of her
parentage. She had never known who were her mother or father, for from
earliest babyhood her godmother had forbidden her to ask questions
concerning them, and she would have had a sad and lonely youth but for
her sunny disposition.
It was not till her godmother died suddenly that she found she had a
guardian, and that he was Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House. How he came to
be her guardian was a mystery to her, but she was glad to find herself
not altogether friendless. Although he had taken the pains to see her
more than once, and had noticed with pleasure what a cheerful, loving
nature she had, yet Esther had never, so far as she knew, seen him, so
that she received his invitation to come and live at Bleak House with
joyful surprise.
She went, on the day appointed, to London, and there she met Ada, whom
she began to love at once, and Richard, a handsome, careless young
fellow of nineteen. They spent the day together and got well acquainted
before they took the morrow's coach to Bleak House.
At the Chancery Court they met poor, crazy little Miss Flite, who
insisted on taking them to her room above the rag-and-bottle shop to
show them her caged birds. And that night (as they had been directed)
they stayed at the house of a Mrs. Jellyby, of whom Mr. Jarndyce had
heard as a woman of great charity.
Mrs. Jellyby was a woman with a mission, which mission was the education
of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, in Africa, and the cultivation there
of the coffee-bean. She thought of nothing else, and was for ever
sending out letters or pamphlets about it.
But she seemed unable to see or think of anything nearer home than
Africa. The house was unswept, the children dirty and always under
foot, and the meals half-cooked. She would sit all day in slipshod
slippers and a dress that did not meet in the back, drinking coffee and
dictating to her eldest daughter Caddy (who hated Africa and all its
natives) letters about coffee cultivation and the uplifting of the
natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
A very strange sort of philanthropist both Esther and Ada thought Mrs.
Jellyby. Perhaps, however, Mr. Jarndyce sent them there for a useful
lesson, for he afterward asked them what they thought of her, and he
seemed well pleased to learn that they considered her ideas of doing
good in the world extremely odd.
Next day they drove to Bleak House. Not one of them had ever seen Mr.
Jarndyce, but they found him all they had imagined and more--the
kindest, pleasantest and most thoughtful person in the world. Before
they had been there two days they felt as if they had known him all
their lives.
Bleak House was a building where one went up and down steps from one
room to another, and where there were always more rooms when one thought
he had seen them all. In the daytime there was horseback riding or
walking to amuse them, and in the evenings Ada often sang and played to
the rest. Altogether the time flew by most pleasantly, and, judging by
Mr. Jarndyce's jollity, the wind seldom showed any signs of coming from
the east.
It was soon clear to everybody that Richard was in love with Ada and
that Ada was beginning to love him in return. This pleased Mr. Jarndyce,
for he was fond of both.
But he was fondest of Esther. He made her his housekeeper and she
carried a big bunch of keys and kept the house as clean as a new pin. He
used to say she reminded him of:
"Little old woman and whither so high?
To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky."
She was so cheerful, he said, she would sweep the cobwebs out of
anybody's sky. And from this they took to calling her "Little Old
Woman," and "Cobweb," and "Mother Hubbard," till none of them thought of
her real name at all.
Bleak House had a number of visitors who came more or less often. One of
these was an old school friend of Mr. Jarndyce's, named Boythorn. He was
a big, blustering man with a laugh as big as himself. Wherever he went
he carried a tiny tame canary, that used to sit at meal-time perched on
the top of his great shaggy head. It was odd to see this wee bird
sitting there unafraid, even at one of his "ha-ha-ha's" that shook the
whole house.
Mr. Boythorn was exceedingly tender-hearted, but took delight in
pretending to be the stubbornest, most cross-grained, worst-tempered
individual possible. His neighbor was Sir Leicester Dedlock, a dignified
and proud old baronet, and him Mr. Boythorn loved to keep in perpetual
anger by bringing against him all manner of lawsuits regarding the
boundary between their land.
Another visitor whom Esther found amusing was Harold Skimpole, a light,
bright creature of charming manners, with a large head and full of
simple gaiety. He was a man who seemed to trifle with everything. He
sang a little, composed a little and sketched a little. But his songs
were never completed and his sketches never finished.
His aim in life seemed to be to avoid all responsibility, and to find
some one else to pay his debts. He always spoke of himself as a "child,"
though he was middle-aged. He claimed to have no idea whatever of the
value of money. He would take a handful of coins from his pocket and say
laughing, "Now, there's some money. I have no idea how much. I don't
know how to count it. I dare say I owe more than that. If good-natured
people don't stop letting me owe them, why should I? There you have
Harold Skimpole." Mr. Jarndyce was far too honest and innocent himself
to see through the man's hollow selfishness and was continually paying
his debts, as they soon learned.
Most of all Bleak House's visitors, Esther came to like Allan Woodcourt,
a handsome dark-haired young surgeon, and before long she found herself
unconsciously looking and longing for his coming. Woodcourt was poor,
however, and although he was in love with Esther he did not tell her,
but soon sailed away on a long voyage as a ship's doctor.
II
LADY DEDLOCK'S SECRET
Sir Leicester Dedlock, whom Mr. Boythorn so loved to torment, was
seventy years old. His wife, many years younger than himself, he had
married for love. Lady Dedlock was not noble by birth--no one, indeed,
knew who she had been before her marriage--but she was very beautiful.
She was as proud and haughty, too, as she was lovely, and was much
sought after. But with all her popularity she had few close friends, and
no one in whom she confided.
Even her housekeeper, Mrs. Rouncewell, a fine, handsome old woman who
had been Sir Leicester's servant for fifty years, thought her cold and
reserved. Mrs. Rouncewell herself had had a son George, who many years
before had gone off to be a soldier and had never come back; and,
looking at her mistress's face, she often wondered if the shadow of pain
there was the mark of some old grief or loss of which no one knew.
However that may have been, the old baronet loved his wife and was very
proud of her.
Sir Leicester's family lawyer was named Tulkinghorn. He was a dull,
dignified man who always dressed in black and seldom spoke unless he
had to. His one passion was the discovery of other people's secrets. He
knew more family secrets than any one else in London, and to discover a
new one he would have risked all his fortune.
Now, among the very many persons connected in some way or other with the
famous Jarndyce case, which seemed destined never to end, was Sir
Leicester Dedlock, and one day (the Chancery Court having actually made
a little progress) Mr. Tulkinghorn brought the baronet some legal papers
to read to him.
As the lawyer held one in his hand, Lady Dedlock, seeing the
handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. He answered
that it was the work of one of his copyists. A moment later, as he went
on reading, they found that Lady Dedlock had fainted away.
Her husband did not connect her faintness with the paper, but Mr.
Tulkinghorn did, and that instant he determined that Lady Dedlock had a
secret, that this secret had something to do with the copyist, and that
what this secret was, he, Tulkinghorn, would discover.
He easily found that the writing had been done by a man who called
himself "Nemo," and who lived above Krook's rag-and-bottle shop, a
neighbor to crazy little Miss Flite of the Chancery Court and the many
bird-cages.
Krook himself was an ignorant, spectacled old rascal, whose sole
occupations seemed to be to sleep and to drink gin, a bottle of which
stood always near him. His only intimate was a big, gray, evil-tempered
cat called "Lady Jane," who, when not lying in wait for Miss Flite's
birds, used to sit on his shoulder with her tail sticking straight up
like a hairy feather. People in the neighborhood called his dirty shop
the "Court of Chancery," because, like that other court, it had so many
old things in it and whatever its owner once got into it never got out
again.
In return for Mr. Tulkinghorn's money Krook told him all he knew about
his lodger. Nemo, it seemed, was surly and dissipated and did what legal
copying he could get to do in order to buy opium with which he drugged
himself daily. So far as was known, he had but one friend--Joe, a
wretched crossing sweeper, to whom, when he had it, he often gave a
coin.
Thus much the lawyer learned, but from the strange lodger himself he
learned nothing. For when Krook took him to the room Nemo occupied, they
found the latter stretched on his couch, dead (whether by accident or
design no one could tell) of an overdose of opium.
Curious to see how Lady Dedlock would receive this news, Mr. Tulkinghorn
called on her and told her of the unknown man's death. She pretended to
listen with little interest, but his trained eye saw that she was deeply
moved by it, and he became more anxious than ever to find out what
connection there could be between this proud and titled woman and the
miserable copyist who had lived and died in squalor.
Chance favored Mr. Tulkinghorn's object. One night he saw Joe, the
ragged crossing sweeper pointing out to a woman whose face was hidden by
a veil, and whose form was closely wrapped in a French shawl, the gate
of the cemetery where Nemo had been buried. Later, at Sir Leicester's,
he saw Lady Dedlock's maid, Hortense--a black-haired, jealous French
woman, with wolf-like ways--wearing the same shawl.
He cunningly entrapped the maid into coming to his house one night
wearing both veil and shawl, and there brought her unexpectedly face to
face with Joe. By the boy's actions Mr. Tulkinghorn decided at once that
Joe had never seen Hortense before, and that instant, he guessed the
truth--that the veiled woman who had gone to the cemetery was really
Lady Dedlock herself, and that she had worn her maid's clothes to
mislead any observer.
This was a clever trick in the lawyer, but it proved too clever for his
own good, for, finding she had been enticed there for some deeper
purpose, Hortense flew into a passion with him. He sneered at her and
turned her out into the street, threatening if she troubled him to have
her put into prison. Because of this she began to hate him with a
fierceness which he did not guess.
Mr. Tulkinghorn felt himself getting nearer to his goal. But he now had
to find out who Nemo really had been.
If he had only known it, Krook could have aided him. The old man had
found a bundle of old letters in Nemo's room after his death, and these
were all addressed to "Captain Hawdon."
Krook himself could not read, except enough to spell out an address, and
he had no idea what the letters contained. But he was quick to think the
bundle might be worth some money. So he put it carefully away.