CHAPTER XIX.

When a clever man resolves on a villainous action, he hastens, by the

exercise of his cleverness, to get rid of the sense of his villainy.

With more than his usual alertness, Randal employed the next hour or two

in ascertaining how far Baron Levy merited the character he boasted, and

how far his word might be his bond. He repaired to young men whom he

esteemed better judges on these points than Spendquick and

Borrowell--young men who resembled the Merry Monarch, inasmuch as

"They never said a foolish thing,

And never did a wise one."

There are many such young men about town--sharp and able in all affairs

except their own. No one knows the world better, nor judges of character

mere truly, than your half-beggared _roué_. From all these, Baron Levy

obtained much the same testimonials: he was ridiculed as a would-be

dandy, but respected as a very responsible man of business, and rather

liked as a friendly accommodating species of the Sir Epicure Mammon, who

very often did what were thought handsome, liberal things; and, "in

short," said one of these experienced referees, "he is the best fellow

going--for a money-lender! You may always rely on what he promises, and

he is generally very forbearing and indulgent to _us_ of good society!

perhaps for the same reason that our tailors are;--to send one of us to

prison would hurt his custom. His foible is to be thought a gentleman. I

believe, much as I suppose he loves money, he would give up half his

fortune rather than do any thing for which we could cut him. He allows a

pension of three hundred a year to Lord S----. True; he was his man of

business for twenty years, and, before then, S---- was rather a prudent

fellow, and had fifteen thousand a year. He has helped on, too, many a

clever young man;--the best boroughmonger you ever knew. He likes having

friends in Parliament. In fact, of course he is a rogue; but if one

wants a rogue, one can't find a pleasanter. I should like to see him on

the French stage--a prosperous _Macaire_; Le Maître could hit him off to

the life."

From information in these more fashionable quarters, gleaned with his

usual tact, Randal turned to a source less elevated, but to which he

attached more importance. Dick Avenel associated with the Baron--Dick

Avenel must be in his clutches. Now Randal did justice to that

gentleman's practical shrewdness. Moreover, Avenel was by profession a

man of business. He must know more of Levy than these men of pleasure

could; and, as he was a plain-spoken person, and evidently honest, in

the ordinary acceptation of the word, Randal did not doubt that out of

Dick Avenel he should get the truth.

On arriving in Eton-square, and asking for Mr. Avenel, Randal was at

once ushered into the drawing-room. The apartment was not in such good

solid mercantile taste as had characterized Avenel's more humble

bachelor's residence at Screwstown. The taste now was the Honorable Mrs.

Avenel's; and, truth to say, no taste could be worse. Furniture of all

epochs heterogeneously clumped together;--here a sofa _à la renaissance_

in _Gobelin_--there a rosewood Console from Gillow--a tall

mock-Elizabethan chair in black oak, by the side of a modern Florentine

table of mosaic marbles. All kinds of colors in the room, and all at war

with each other. Very bad copies of the best-known pictures in the

world, in the most gaudy frames, and impudently labeled by the names of

their murdered originals--"Raffaele," "Corregio," "Titian," "Sebastian

del Piombo." Nevertheless, there had been plenty of money spent, and

there was plenty to show for it. Mrs. Avenel was seated on her sofa _à

la renaissance_, with one of her children at her feet, who was employed

in reading a new Annual in crimson silk binding. Mrs. Avenel was in an

attitude as if sitting for her portrait.

Polite society is most capricious in its adoptions or rejections. You

see many a very vulgar person firmly established in the _beau monde_;

others, with very good pretensions as to birth, fortune, &c., either

rigorously excluded, or only permitted a peep over the pales. The

Honorable Mrs. Avenel belonged to families unquestionably noble both by

her own descent and by her first marriage; and if poverty had kept her

down in her earlier career, she now, at least, did not want wealth to

back her pretensions. Nevertheless, all the dispensers of fashion

concurred in refusing their support to the Honorable Mrs. Avenel. One

might suppose it was solely on account of her plebeian husband; but

indeed it was not so. Many a woman of high family can marry a low-born

man not so presentable as Avenel, and, by the help of big money, get the

fine world at her feet. But Mrs. Avenel had not that art. She was still

a very handsome, showy woman; and as for dress, no duchess could be more

extravagant. Yet these very circumstances had perhaps gone against her

ambition; for your quiet, little plain woman, provoking no envy, slips

into the _coteries_, when a handsome, flaunting lady--whom, once seen in

your drawing-room, can be no more overlooked than a scarlet poppy amidst

a violet bed--is pretty sure to be weeded out as ruthlessly as a poppy

would be in a similar position.

Mr. Avenel was sitting by the fire, rather moodily, his hands in his

pockets, and whistling to himself. To say truth, that active mind of his

was very much bored in London, at least during the forepart of the day.

He hailed Randal's entrance with a smile of relief, and rising and

posting himself before the fire--a coat tail under each arm--he scarcely

allowed Randal to shake hands with Mrs. Avenel, and pat the child on the

head, murmuring, "Beautiful creature." (Randal was ever civil to

children--that sort of wolf in sheep's clothing always is--don't be

taken in, O you foolish young mothers!) Dick, I say, scarcely allowed

his visitor these preliminary courtesies, before he plunged far beyond

depth of both wife and child, into the political ocean "Things now were

coming right--a vile oligarchy was to be destroyed. British

respectability and British talent were to have fair play." To have heard

him you would have thought the day fixed for the millennium! "And what

is more," said Avenel, bringing down the fist of his right hand upon the

palm of his left, "if there is to be a new parliament, we must have new

men--not worn out old brooms that never sweep clean, but men who

understand how to govern the country, sir. I INTEND TO COME IN MYSELF!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Avenel, hooking in a word at last, "I am sure, Mr.

Leslie, you will think I did right. I persuaded Mr. Avenel that, with

his talents and property, he ought, for the sake of his country, to make

a sacrifice; and then you know his opinions now are all the fashion, Mr.

Leslie: formerly they would have been called shocking and--vulgar."

Thus saying she looked with fond pride at Dick's comely face, which at

that moment, however, was all scowl and frown. I must do justice to Mrs.

Avenel; she was a weak silly woman in some things, and a cunning one in

others, but she was a good wife as wives go. Scotch women generally are.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

BLEAK HOUSE.[7]

[Footnote 7: Continued from the April Number.]

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

CHAPTER V.--A MORNING ADVENTURE.

Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed heavy--I

say, seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt, that they

would have made Midsummer sunshine dim--I was sufficiently forewarned of

the discomfort within doors at that early hour, and sufficiently curious

about London, to think it a good idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when

she proposed that we should go out for a walk.

"Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a chance

if breakfast's ready for an hour afterward, they dawdle so. As to Pa, he

gets what he can, and goes to the office. He never has what you would

call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the loaf and some

milk, when there is any, over night. Sometimes there isn't any milk, and

sometimes the cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you must be tired, Miss

Summerson; and perhaps you would rather go to bed."

"I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to go

out."

"If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my things

on."

Ada said she would go, too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to

Peepy, in default of being able to do any thing better for him, that he

should let me wash him, and afterward lay him down on my bed again. To

this he submitted with the best grace possible; staring at me during the

whole operation, as if he never had been, and never could again be so

astonished in his life--looking very miserable also, certainly, but

making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep as soon as it was over.

At first I was in two minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon

reflected that nobody in the house was likely to notice it.

What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy, and the bustle of getting

myself ready, and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found Miss

Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room, which

Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlor candlestick--throwing

the candle in to make it burn better. Every thing was just as we had

left it last night, and was evidently intended to remain so. Below

stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been left ready

for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste paper were all over the house.

Some pewter-pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings; the door

stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out of a public

house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us, that she had

just been to see what o'clock it was.

But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and down

Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see us

stirring so soon, and said he would gladly share our walk. So he took

care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention that Miss

Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner, and that I really should not

have thought she liked me much, unless she had told me so.

"Where would you wish to go?" she asked.

"Any where, my dear," I replied.

"Any where's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.

"Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.

She then walked me on very fast.

"I don't care!" she said. "Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I

say I don't care--but if he was to come to our house, with his great,

shining, lumpy forehead, night after night till he was as old as

Methuselah, I wouldn't have any thing to say to him. Such ASSES as he

and Ma make of themselves!"

"My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet, and the vigorous

emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. "Your duty as a child--"

"O! don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty as

a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then let

the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their affair

than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I shocked, too;

so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!"

She walked me on faster yet.

"But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and I

won't have any thing to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any

stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma

talk. I wonder the very paving stones opposite our house can have the

patience to stay there, and be a witness of such inconsistencies and

contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!"

I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young

gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the

disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject, by Richard and Ada

coming up at a round pace, laughing, and asking us if we meant to run a

race? Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent, and walked moodily

on at my side; while I admired the long successions and varieties of

streets, the quantity of people already going to and fro, the number of

vehicles passing and repassing, the busy preparations in the setting

forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the

extraordinary creatures in rags, secretly groping among the swept-out

rubbish for pins and other refuse.

"So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada, behind me. "We

are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to our

place of meeting yesterday, and--by the Great Seal, here's the old lady

again!"

Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, courtesying and

smiling, and saying, with her yesterday's air of patronage:

"The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"

"You are out early, ma'am," said I, as she courtesied to me.

"Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the Court sits. It's retired.

I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day," said the old

lady, mincingly. "The business of the day requires a great deal of

thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to follow."

"Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm

tighter through her own.

The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for

herself directly.

"A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honor to attend court

regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing another

of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the old lady, recovering

herself, with her head on one side, from a very low courtesy.

Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,

good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the

suit.

"Ha!" said the old lady. "She does not expect a judgment? She will still

grow old. But not so old. O dear, no! This is the garden of Lincoln's

Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the summer-time. Where

the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater part of the long vacation

here. In contemplation. You find the long vacation exceedingly long,

don't you?"

We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.

"When the leaves are falling from the trees, and there are no more

flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's

court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled; and the Sixth

Seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see my

lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and beauty are

very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a visit from

either."

She had taken my hand, and, leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned

Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself, and

looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious, and

all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offense, she

continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow; our

strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling

condescension, that she lived close by.

It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by, that we

had not time to have done humoring her for a few moments, before she was

at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady stopped

most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some courts and lanes

immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said, "This is my lodging.

Pray walk up!"

She had stopped at a shop, over which was written, KROOK, RAG AND BOTTLE

WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE STORES.

In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill, at which a

cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In another, was the

inscription, BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT. In another,

OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE PAPER BOUGHT. In another, LADIES' AND

GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Every thing seemed to be bought, and

nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the window, were quantities of

dirty bottles: blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and

soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles: I am

reminded by mentioning the latter, that the shop had, in several little

particulars, the air of being in a legal neighborhood, and of being, as

it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the law. There were

a great many ink bottles. There was a little tottering bench of shabby

old volumes, outside the door, labeled, "Law Books, all at 9_d._" Some

of the inscriptions I have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the

papers I had seen in Kenge and Carboy's office, and the letters I had so

long received from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing,

having nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that

a respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to

execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr. Krook

within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up. A

little way within the shop door, lay heaps of old crackled parchment

scrolls, and discolored and dog's-eared law-papers. I could have fancied

that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been hundreds huddled

together as old iron, had once belonged to doors of rooms or strong

chests in lawyers' offices. The litter of rags tumbled partly into and

partly out of a one-legged wooden scale, hanging without any

counterpoise from a beam, might have been counselors' bands and gowns

torn up. One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while

we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together

and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture

complete.

As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides by

the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a couple of

yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern that an

old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the shop.

Turning toward the door, he now caught sight of us. He was short,

cadaverous, and withered; with his head sunk sideways between his

shoulders, and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth, as if

he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows, were so frosted

with white hairs, and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin, that he

looked, from his breast upward, like some old root in a fall of snow.

"Hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door. "Have you any thing to

sell?"

We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been

trying to open the house door with a key she had taken from her pocket,

and to whom Richard now said, that, as we had had the pleasure of seeing

where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for time. But she

was not to be so easily left. She became so fantastically and pressingly

earnest in her entreaties that we would walk up, and see her apartment

for an instant; and was so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in,

as part of the good omen she desired; that I (whatever the others might

do) saw nothing for it but to comply. I suppose we were all more or less

curious;--at any rate, when the old man added his persuasions to hers,

and said, "Ay, ay! Please her! It won't take a minute! Come in, come in!

Come in through the shop, if t'other door's out of order!" we all went

in, stimulated by Richard's laughing encouragement, and relying on his

protection.

"My landlord, Krook!" said the little old lady, condescending to him

from her lofty station, as she presented him to us. "He is called among

the neighbors the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the Court of

Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh, I assure

you he is very odd!"

She shook her head a great many times, and tapped her forehead with her

finger, to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse him,

"For he is a little--you know!--M--!" said the old lady, with great

stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.

"It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern, "that

they call me the Lord Chancellor, and call my shop Chancery. And why do

you think they call me the Lord Chancellor, and my shop Chancery?"

"I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard, rather carelessly.

"You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they--Hi!

Here's lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but

none so beautiful and fine as this. What color, and what texture!"

"That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving of his

having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand. "You can

admire as the rest of us do, without taking that liberty."

The old man darted at him a sudden look, which even called my attention

from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably beautiful that

she seemed to fix the wondering attention of the little old lady

herself. But as Ada interposed, and laughingly said she could only feel

proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook shrunk into his former self

as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.

"You see I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the

lantern, "of so many kinds, and all, as the neighbors think (but they

know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's why

they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many old

parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and

must and cobwebs. And all's fish that comes to my net. And I can't abear

to part with any thing I once lay hold of (or so my neighbors think,

but what do _they_ know?) or to alter any thing, or to have any

sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on about me.

That's the way I've got the ill name of Chancery, _I_ don't mind. I go

to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day, when he sits

in the Inn. He don't notice me, but I notice him. There's no great odds

betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi, Lady Jane!"

A large gray cat leaped from some neighboring shelf on his shoulder, and

startled us all.

"Hi! Show 'em how you can scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!" said her master.

The cat leaped down, and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish

claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.

"She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old man. "I

deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was offered to

me. It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn't have it stripped

off! _That_ warn't like Chancery practice though, says you."

He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in the

back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his hand

upon the lock, the old lady graciously observed to him before passing

out:

"That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are tiresome. My young friends

are pressed for time. I have none to spare myself, having to attend

court very soon. My young friends are the wards in Jarndyce."

"Jarndyce!" said the old man, with a start.

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook," returned his lodger.

"Hi!" exclaimed the old man, in a tone of thoughtful amazement, and with

a wider stare than before. "Think of it!"

He seemed so rapt all in a moment, and looked so curiously at us, that

Richard said:

"Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about the causes before

your noble and learned brother, the other Chancellor!"

"Yes," said the old man, abstractedly. "Sure! _Your_ name now will be--"

"Richard Carstone."

"Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his

forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention, upon a

separate finger. "Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of

Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."

"He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!" said

Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.

"Ay!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. "Yes! Tom

Jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being related; but he was never known about

court by any other name, and was as well known there, as--she is now;"

nodding slightly at his lodger; "Tom Jarndyce was often in here. He got

into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause was on, or

expected, talking to the little shopkeepers, and telling 'em to keep

out of Chancery, whatever they did. 'For,' says he, 'it's being ground

to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being

stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going

mad by grains.' He was as near making away with himself, just where the

young lady stands, as near could be."

We listened with horror.

"He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an imaginary

track along the shop, "on the day he did it--the whole neighborhood had

said for months before, that he would do it, of a certainty, sooner or

later--he come in at the door that day, and walked along there, and sat

himself on a bench that stood there, and asked me (you'll judge I was a

mortal sight younger then) to fetch him a pint of wine. 'For,' says he,

'Krook, I am much depressed; my cause is on again, and I think I'm

nearer Judgment than I ever was.' I hadn't a mind to leave him alone;

and I persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t'other side

my lane (I mean Chancery-lane); and I followed and looked in at the

window, and saw him, comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the

fire, and company with him. I hadn't hardly got back here, when I heard

a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran

out--neighbors ran out--twenty of us cried at once, 'Tom Jarndyce!'"

The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern,

blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.

"We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure, how

the neighborhood poured into court that afternoon while the cause was

on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of 'em, grubbed

and muddled away as usual, and tried to look as if they hadn't heard a

word of the last fact in the case; or as if they had--O dear me! nothing

at all to do with it, if they had heard of it by any chance!"

Ada's color had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less pale.

Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no party in

the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh, it was a shock to come

into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the minds of

many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another uneasiness,

in the application of the painful story to the poor half-witted creature

who had brought us there; but, to my surprise, she seemed perfectly

unconscious of that, and only led the way up-stairs again; informing us,

with the toleration of a superior creature for the infirmities of a

common mortal, that her landlord was "a little--M--, you know!"

She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which

she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her

principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there. She

could look at it, she said, in the night: especially in the moonshine.

Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the scantiest

necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from books, of

Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and some

half-dozen reticules and work-bags, "containing documents," as she

informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw

no articles of clothing any where, nor any kind of food. Upon a shelf in

an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth; but

all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched

appearance, I thought, as I looked round, than I had understood before.

"Extremely honored, I am sure," said our poor hostess, with the greatest

suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very much

indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering, I am

limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of attending on

the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my days in court;

my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights long, for I sleep but

little, and think much. That is, of course, unavoidable; being in

Chancery. I am sorry I can not offer chocolate. I expect a judgment

shortly, and shall then place my establishment on a superior footing. At

present, I don't mind confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict

confidence), that I sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel

appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper

than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse the introduction of such

mean topics."

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret-window, and

called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there: some,

containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches--I

should think at least twenty.

"I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object that

the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them

to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison,

though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with

Chancery proceedings, that, one by one, the whole collection has died

over and over again. I doubt, do you know, whether one of these, though

they are all young, will live to be free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"

Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a

reply; but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so, when no

one but herself was present.

"Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure you,

whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or Great Seal

still prevails, _I_ may not one day be found lying stark and senseless

here, as I have found so many birds!"

Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took the

opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the

chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine the

birds.

"I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for

(you'll think this curious) I had my mind confused by the idea that

they are singing, while I am following the arguments in court. And my

mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I'll tell you

their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they shall sing

as much as they like. In honor of youth," a smile and curtsey; "hope," a

smile and curtsey; "and beauty," a smile and curtsey. "There! We'll let

in the full light."

The birds began to stir and chirp.

"I can not admit the air freely," said the little old lady; the room was

close, and would have been the better for it; "because the cat you saw

down stairs--called Lady Jane--is greedy for their lives. She crouches

on the parapet outside, for hours and hours. I have discovered,"

whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is sharpened by a

jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In consequence of the

judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly, and full of malice. I

half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat, but the wolf of the old

saying. It is so very difficult to keep her from the door."

Some neighboring bells reminding the poor soul that it was half-past

nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an end, than

we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly took up her

little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the table on coming in,

and asked if we were also going into court? On our answering no, and

that we would on no account detain her, she opened the door to attend us

down stairs.

"With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I should

be there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he might

mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he _will_

mention it the first thing this morning."

She stopped to tell us, in a whisper, as we were going down, that the

whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had bought

piecemeal, and had no wish to sell--in consequence of being a

little--M--. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous

stoppage on the second floor, and had silently pointed at a dark door

there.

"The only other lodger," she now whispered, in explanation; "a

law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to

the devil. I don't know what he can have done with the money. Hush!"

She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her, even there; and

repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe, as though even the sound of

her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.

Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it on

our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of waste

paper, in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working hard,

with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece of chalk

by him; with which, as he put each separate package or bundle down, he

made a crooked mark on the paneling of the wall.

Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone by

him, and I was going, when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and

chalked the letter _J_ upon the wall--in a very curious manner,

beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was a

capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any clerk

in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's office would have made.

"Can you read it?" he asked me, with a keen glance.

"Surely," said I. "It's very plain."

"What is it?"

"J."

With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out,

and turned an _a_ in its place (not a capital letter this time), and

said, "What's that?"

I told him. He then rubbed that out, and turned the letter _r_, and

asked me the same question. He went on quickly, until he had formed, in

the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the

letters, the word JARNDYCE, without once leaving two letters on the wall

together.

"What does that spell?" he asked me.

When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same

rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters

forming the words BLEAK HOUSE. These, in some astonishment, I also read;

and he laughed again.

"Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk, "I have a turn for

copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor

write."

[Illustration: THE LORD CHANCELLOR COPIES FROM MEMORY.]

He looked so disagreeable, and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if I

were a blood-relation of the birds up-stairs, that I was quite relieved

by Richard's appearing at the door and saying:

"Miss Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your

hair. Don't be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr.

Krook!"

I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good-morning, and joining my friends

outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave us her

blessing with great ceremony, and renewed her assurance of yesterday in

reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada and me. Before we

finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back, and saw Mr. Krook

standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles, looking after us, with his

cat upon his shoulder, and her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy

cap, like a tall feather.

"Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard, with a sigh.

"Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery."

"It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned Ada. "I

am grieved that I should be the enemy--as I suppose I am--of a great

number of relations and others; and that they should be my enemies--as I

suppose they are; and that we should all be ruining one another, without

knowing how or why, and be in constant doubt and discord all our lives.

It seems very strange, as there must be right somewhere, that an honest

judge in real earnest has not been able to find out through all these

years where it is."

"Ah, cousin!" said Richard. "Strange, indeed! all this wasteful, wanton

chess-playing is very strange. To see that composed Court yesterday

jogging on so serenely, and to think of the wretchedness of the pieces

on the board, gave me the headache and the heartache both together. My

head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were neither fools nor

rascals; and my heart ached to think they could possibly be either. But

at all events, Ada--I may call you Ada?"

"Of course you may, cousin Richard."

"At all events, Ada, Chancery will work none of its bad influence on

_us_. We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman,

and it can't divide us now!"

"Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada, gently.

Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze, and me a very significant look. I

smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very pleasantly.

In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in the

course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast straggled

one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs. Jellyby had

gone to bed, and got up in the usual manner, but she presented no

appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly occupied during

breakfast; for the morning's post brought a heavy correspondence

relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her (she said) to pass

a busy day. The children tumbled about, and notched memoranda of their

accidents in their legs, which were perfect little calendars of

distress; and Peepy was lost for an hour and a half, and brought home

from Newgate market by a policeman. The equable manner in which Mrs.

Jellyby sustained both his absence, and his restoration to the family

circle, surprised us all.

She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was

fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At one

o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our luggage.

Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good friend, Mr.

Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me in the

passage, and stood, biting her pen, and sobbing on the steps; Peepy, I

am happy to say, was asleep, and spared the pain of separation (I was

not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate market in search of

me); and all the other children got up behind the barouche and fell off,

and we saw them, with great concern, scattered over the surface of

Thavies Inn, as we rolled out of its precincts.

CHAPTER VI.--QUITE AT HOME.

The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went

westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air,

wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy of

the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the

pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-colored flowers.

By-and-by we began to leave the wonderful city, and to proceed through

suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a pretty large town, in my

eyes; and at last we got into a real country road again, with

wind-mills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers' wagons, scents of old hay,

swinging signs, and horse-troughs: trees, fields, and hedge-rows. It was

delightful to see the green landscape before us, and the immense

metropolis behind; and when a wagon with a train of beautiful horses,

furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells, came by us with

its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so

cheerful were the influences around.

"The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake, Whittington," said

Richard, "and that wagon is the finishing touch. Halloa! what's the

matter?"

We had stopped, and the wagon had stopped, too. Its music changed as the

horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except when a

horse tossed his head, or shook himself, and sprinkled off a little

shower of bell-ringing.

"Our postillion is looking after the wagoner," said Richard; "and the

wagoner is coming back after us. Good-day, friend!" The wagoner was at

our coach-door. "Why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added Richard,

looking closely at the man. "He has got your name, Ada, in his hat!"

He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band, were three

small notes; one, addressed to Ada; one, to Richard, one, to me. These

the wagoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name aloud

first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he briefly

answered, "Master, sir, if you please;" and, putting on his hat again

(which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened his music,

and went melodiously away.

"Is that Mr. Jarndyce's wagon?" said Richard, calling to our post-boy.

"Yes, sir," he replied. "Going to London."

We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other, and contained

these words, in a solid, plain hand:

"I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily, and without

constraint on either side. I therefore have to propose that we meet

as old friends, and take the past for granted. It will be a relief

to you possibly, and to me certainly, and so my love to you.

JOHN JARNDYCE."

I had, perhaps, less reason to be surprised than either of my

companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one who

had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so many

years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude lying

too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how I could

meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very difficult

indeed.

The notes revived, in Richard and Ada, a general impression that they

both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their cousin,

Jarndyce, could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he

performed, and that, sooner than receive any, he would resort to the

most singular expedients and evasions, or would even run away. Ada dimly

remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very little

child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity, and that

on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see her through a

window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by the back gate, and

was not heard of for three months. This discourse led to a great deal

more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us all day, and we talked

of scarcely any thing else. If we did, by any chance, diverge into

another subject, we soon returned to this; and wondered what the house

would be like, and when we should get there, and whether we should see

Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived, or after a delay, and what he would

say to us, and what we should say to him. All of which we wondered

about, over and over again.

The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was generally

good; so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked it so well

that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got to the top.

At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us; but as they had only

just been fed, we had to wait for them, too, and got a long fresh walk,

over a common and an old battle-field, before the carriage came up.

These delays so protracted the journey, that the short day was spent,

and the long night had closed in, before we came to Saint Albans; near

to which town Bleak House was, we knew.

By that time we were so anxious and nervous, that even Richard

confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to feeling

an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me, whom he had

wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and frosty, we

trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the town, round a

corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had for a long time

sympathized with our heightened expectation, was looking back and

nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard holding Ada, lest

she should be jolted down), and gazed round upon the open country and

the starlight night, for our destination. There was a light sparkling on

the top of a hill before us, and the driver, pointing to it with his

whip and crying, "That's Bleak House!" put his horses into a canter, and

took us forward at such a rate, up-hill though it was, that the wheels

sent the road-drift flying about our heads like spray from a water-mill.

Presently we lost the light, presently saw it, presently lost it,

presently saw it, and turned into an avenue of trees, and cantered up

toward where it was beaming brightly. It was in a window of what seemed

to be an old-fashioned house, with three peaks in the roof in front, and

a circular sweep leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up,

and amidst the sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant

barking of some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the

smoking and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of

our own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.

"Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see you!

Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!"

The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable voice,

had one of his arms round Ada's waist, and the other round mine, and

kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall into a

ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he kissed us

again, and, opening his arms, made us sit down side-by-side, on a sofa

ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been at all

demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.

"Now, Rick," said he, "I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is as

good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home. Warm

yourself!"

Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect and

frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that rather

alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce's suddenly disappearing),

"You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to you!" laid aside

his hat and coat, and came up to the fire.

"And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my

dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.

While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say with

how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick face,

full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered iron-gray. I took

him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was upright, hearty, and

robust. From the moment of his first speaking to us, his voice had

connected itself with an association in my mind that I could not define;

but now, all at once, a something sudden in his, manner, and a pleasant

expression in his eyes, recalled the gentleman in the stage-coach, six

years ago, on the memorable day of my journey to Reading. I was certain

it was he. I never was so frightened in my life as when I made the

discovery, for he caught my glance, and appearing to read my thoughts,

gave such a look at the door that I thought we had lost him.

However, I am happy to say that he remained where he was, and asked me

what _I_ thought of Mrs. Jellyby.

"She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir," I said.

"Nobly!" returned Mr. Jarndyce. "But you answer like Ada," whom I had

not heard. "You all think something else, I see."

"We rather thought," said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who entreated

me with their eyes to speak, "that perhaps she was a little unmindful of

her home."

"Floored!" cried Mr. Jarndyce.

I was rather alarmed again.

"Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent you

there on purpose."

"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin

with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are

overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted

for them?"

"The little Jellybys," said Richard, coming to my relief, "are really--I

can't help expressing myself strongly, sir--in a devil of a state."

"She means well," said Mr. Jarndyce, hastily. "The wind's in the east."

"It was in the north, sir, as we came down," observed Richard.

"My dear Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire; "I'll take an oath

it's either in the east, or going to be. I am always conscious of an

uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the

east."

"Rheumatism, sir?" said Richard.

"I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell--I had

my doubts about 'em--are in a--oh, Lord, yes, it's easterly!" said Mr.

Jarndyce.

He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering

these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing his

hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation, at once so whimsical

and so lovable, that I am sure we were more delighted with him than we

could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an arm to Ada and an

arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was leading the way out,

when he suddenly turned us all back again.

"Those little Jellybys. Couldn't you--didn't you--now, if it had rained

sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or any thing of that

sort!" said Mr. Jarndyce.

"O cousin--!" Ada hastily began.

"Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is better."

"Then, cousin John!--" Ada laughingly began again.

"Ha, ha! Very good indeed!" said Mr. Jarndyce, with great enjoyment.

"Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?"

"It did better than that. It rained Esther."

"Ay?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "What did Esther do?"

"Why, cousin John," said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm, and

shaking her head at me across him--for I wanted her to be quiet: "Esther

was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed them to sleep,

washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them quiet, bought them

keepsakes."--My dear girl! I had only gone out with Peepy, after he was

found, and given him a little, tiny horse!--"and, cousin John, she

softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much, and was so thoughtful

for me and so amiable!--No, no, I won't be contradicted, Esther dear!

You know, you know, it's true!"

The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John, and kissed me;

and then, looking up in his face, boldly said, "At all events, cousin

John, I _will_ thank you for the companion you have given me." I felt as

if she challenged him to run away. But he didn't.

"Where did you say the wind was, Rick?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.

"In the north, as we came down, sir."

"You are right. There's no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come girls,

come and see your home!"

It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and

down steps, out of one room into another, and where you come upon more

rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is a

bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you find

still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places, with lattice windows and

green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we entered first, was of

this kind, with an up-and-down roof, that had more corners in it than I

ever counted afterward, and a chimney (there was a wood-fire on the

hearth) paved all round with pure white tiles, in every one of which a

bright miniature of the fire was blazing. Out of this room, you went

down two steps, into a charming little sitting-room, looking down upon a

flower-garden, which room was henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of

this you went up three steps, into Ada's bed-room, which had a fine

broad window, commanding a beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of

darkness lying underneath the stars), to which there was a hollow

window-seat, in which, with a spring-lock, three dear Adas might have

been lost at once. Out of this room, you passed into a little gallery,

with which the other best rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a

little staircase of shallow steps, with a great number of corner stairs

in it, considering its length, down into the hall. But if, instead of

going out at Ada's door, you came back into my room, and went out at the

door by which you had entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that

branched off in an unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself

in passages, with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a

Native-Hindoo chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and

looked, in every form, something between a bamboo skeleton and a great

bird-cage, and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom, or when.

From these, you came on Richard's room, which was part library, part

sitting-room, part bed-room, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound of

many rooms. Out of that, you went straight, with a little interval of

passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year round,

with his window open, his bedstead, without any furniture, standing in

the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold-bath gaping for him

in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that, you came into another passage,

where there were back-stairs, and where you could hear the horses being

rubbed down, outside the stable, and being told to Hold up, and Get

over, as they slipped about very much on the uneven stones. Or you

might, if you came out at another door (every room had at least two

doors), go straight down to the hall again by half-a-dozen steps and a

low archway, wondering how you got back there, or had ever got out of

it.

The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as

pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers--in chintz and

paper; in velvet, in needle-work, in the brocade of two stiff courtly

chairs, which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool for

greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room was

green; and had, framed and glazed, upon the walls, numbers of surprising

and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real trout in a case,

as brown and shining as if it had been served with gravy; at the death

of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of preparing tea in China, as

depicted by Chinese artists. In my room there were oval engravings of

the months--ladies hay-making, in short waists, and large hats tied

under the chin, for June--smooth-legged noblemen, pointing, with

cocked-hats, to village steeples, for October. Half-length portraits, in

crayons, abounded all through the house; but were so dispersed that I

found the brother of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet, and

the gray old age of my pretty young bride, with a flower in her boddice,

in the breakfast-room. As substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen

Anne's reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with

some difficulty; and a composition in needle-work, representing fruit, a

kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the

chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and

scent-bottles on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety.

They agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the

whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a

drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of

rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows,

softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the

starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its

hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with the

face of its generous master brightening every thing we saw; and just

wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to every thing we

heard; were our first impressions of Bleak House.

"I am glad you like it," said Mr. Jarndyce, when he had brought us round

again to Ada's sitting-room. "It makes no pretensions; but it is a

comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such bright

young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner. There's

no one here but the finest creature upon earth--a child."

"More children, Esther!" said Ada.

"I don't mean literally a child," pursued Mr. Jarndyce; "not a child in

years. He is grown up--he is at least as old as I am--but in simplicity,

and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all

worldly affairs, he is a perfect child."

We felt that he must be very interesting.

"He knows Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Jarndyce. "He is a musical man; an

Amateur, but might have been a Professional. He is an Artist, too; an

Amateur, but might have been a Professional. He is a man of attainments

and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in his affairs, and

unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his family; but he don't

care--he's a child!"

"Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired Richard.

"Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But he

has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look

after _him_. He is a child, you know!" said Mr. Jarndyce.

"And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired

Richard.

"Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr. Jarndyce: his countenance

suddenly falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are not

brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have tumbled up

somehow or other.--The wind's getting round again, I am afraid. I feel

it rather!"

Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.

"It is exposed," said Mr. Jarndyce. "No doubt that's the cause. Bleak

House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!"

Our luggage having arrived, and being all at hand, I was dressed in a

few minutes, and engaged in putting my worldly goods away, when a maid

(not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another whom I had not seen)

brought a basket into my room, with two bunches of keys in it, all

labeled.

"For you, miss, if you please," said she.

"For me?" said I.

"The housekeeping keys, miss."

I showed my surprise; for she added, with some little surprise on her

own part: "I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss. Miss

Summerson, if I don't deceive myself?"

"Yes," said I. "That is my name."

"The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the

cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning, I

was to show you the presses and things they belong to."

I said I would be ready at half-past six; and, after she was gone, stood

looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust. Ada

found me thus; and had such a delightful confidence in me when I showed

her the keys, and told her about them, that it would have been

insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be

sure, that it was the dear girl's kindness; but I liked to be so

pleasantly cheated.

When we went down stairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was

standing before the fire, telling Richard how fond he used to be, in his

school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature, with a rather

large head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a

perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and

spontaneous, and was said with such a captivating gayety, that it was

fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr.

Jarndyce, and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked

younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance, in all respects, of a

damaged young man, than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy

negligence in his manner, and even in his dress (his hair carelessly

disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen

artists paint their own portraits), which I could not separate from the

idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of

depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like the manner or

appearance of a man who had advanced in life, by the usual road of

years, cares, and experiences.

I gathered from the conversation, that Mr. Skimpole had been educated

for the medical profession, and had once lived, in his professional

capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however, that

as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and measures, and

had never known any thing about them (except that they disgusted him),

he had never been able to prescribe with the requisite accuracy of

detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for detail. And he told us,

with great humor, that when he was wanted to bleed the prince, or physic

any of his people, he was generally found lying on his back in bed,

reading the newspapers, or making fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't

come. The prince, at last, objecting to this, "in which," said Mr.

Skimpole, in the frankest manner, "he was perfectly right," the

engagement terminated; and Mr. Skimpole having (as he added with

delightful gayety) "nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, and

married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks." His good friend

Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker

or slower succession, to several openings in life; but to no purpose,

for he must confess to two of the oddest infirmities in the world: one

was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of

money. In consequence of which, he never kept an appointment, never

could transact any business, and never knew the value of any thing!

Well! So he had got on in life, and here he was! He was very fond of

reading the papers, very fond of making fancy-sketches with a pencil,

very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society was, to

let him live. _That_ wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the

papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in season,

a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no

more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon.

He said to the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats,

blue coats, lawn-sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go

after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only--let

Harold Skimpole live!"

All this, and a great deal more, he told us, not only with the utmost

brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious candor--speaking

of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if Skimpole were

a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singularities, but

still had his claims too, which were the general business of the

community, and must not be slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt

at all confused at that early time, in endeavoring to reconcile any

thing he said with any thing I had thought about the duties and

accountabilities of life (which I am far from sure of), I was confused

by not exactly understanding why he was free of them. That he was free

of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so very clear about it himself.

"I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole, in the same light way. "Possession

is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent house. I feel

obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it, and alter it. I can

set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient possession of it, and

have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility. My steward's name, in

short, is Jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. We have been mentioning Mrs.

Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a strong will and immense

power of business-detail, who throws herself into objects with

surprising ardor! I don't regret that _I_ have not a strong will and an

immense power of business-detail, to throw myself into objects with

surprising ardor. I can admire her without envy. I can sympathize with

the objects. I can dream of them. I can lie down on the grass in fine

weather--and float along an African river, embracing all the natives I

meet, as sensible of the deep silence, and sketching the dense

overhanging tropical growth as accurately, as if I were there. I don't

know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but it's all I can do, and

I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven's sake, having Harold Skimpole, a

confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of

practical people of business habits, to let him live and admire the

human family, do it somehow or other, like good souls, and suffer him

to ride his rocking-horse!"

It was plain enough that Mr. Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the

adjuration. Mr. Skimpole's general position there would have rendered it

so, without the addition of what he presently said.

"It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr. Skimpole,

addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I envy you

your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel in, myself. I

don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if _you_ ought

to be grateful to _me_, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the

luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For any thing I can tell, I

may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing

your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you,

by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little

perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly

affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it

therefore."

Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what they

expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce than

this. I had often new temptations, afterward, to wonder whether it was

really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was probably the

most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should so desire to

escape the gratitude of others.

We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging

qualities of Ada and Richard, that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the

first time, should be so unreserved, and should lay himself out to be so

exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were naturally

pleased for similar reasons, and considered it no common privilege to be

so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The more we listened,

the more gayly Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with his fine hilarious

manner, and his engaging candor, and his genial way of lightly tossing

his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, "I am a child, you know!

You are designing people compared with me;" (he really made me consider

myself in that light); "but I am gay and innocent; forget your worldly

arts and play with me!"--the effect was absolutely dazzling.

He was so full of feeling too, and had such a delicate sentiment for

what was beautiful or tender, that he could have won a heart by that

alone. In the evening when I was preparing to make tea, and Ada was

touching the piano in the adjoining room, and softly humming a tune to

her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat

down on the sofa near me, and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved him.

"She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those blue

eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning.

The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely

young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is

the child of the universe."

Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us, with his hands behind him,

and an attentive smile upon his face.

"The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I am

afraid."

"O! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole, buoyantly.

"I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce.

"Well!" cried Mr. Skimpole, "you know the world (which in your sense is

the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your way. But

if I had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no brambles of

sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be strewn with roses;

it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor

winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change should never wither it. The

base word money should never be breathed near it!"

Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been

really a child; and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment,

glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a

benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again: which

has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they were,

communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by the fire.

Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending down. Upon the

wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by strange forms, not

without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady fire, though reflected

from motionless objects. Ada touched the notes so softly, and sang so

low, that the wind, sighing away to the distant hills, was as audible as

the music. The mystery of the future, and the little clew afforded to it

by the voice of the present, seemed expressed in the whole picture.

But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I recall

the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast, in

respect of meaning and intention, between the silent look directed that

way, and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though Mr.

Jarndyce's glance, as he withdrew it, rested for but a moment on me, I

felt as if, in that moment, he confided to me--and knew that he confided

to me, and that I received the confidence--his hope that Ada and Richard

might one day enter on a dearer relationship.

Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano, and the violoncello; and he was a

composer--had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it--and

played what he composed, with taste. After tea we had quite a little

concert, in which Richard--who was enthralled by Ada's singing, and told

me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were written--and Mr.

Jarndyce, and I, were the audience. After a little while I missed, first

Mr. Skimpole, and afterward Richard; and while I was thinking how could

Richard stay away so long, and lose so much, the maid who had given me

the keys looked in at the door, saying, "If you please, miss, could you

spare a minute?"

When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her

hands, "Oh, if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come

up-stairs to Mr. Skimpole's room. He has been took miss!"

"Took?" said I.

"Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.

I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind; but,

of course, I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one; and

collected myself, as I followed her quickly up-stairs, sufficiently to

consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove to

be a fit. She threw open a door, and I went into a chamber; where, to my

unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched upon the

bed, or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before the fire

smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great embarrassment,

looked at a person on a sofa, in a white great coat, with smooth hair

upon his head and not much of it, which he was wiping smoother, and

making less of, with a pocket-handkerchief.

"Miss Summerson," said Richard, hurriedly, "I am glad you are come. You

will be able to advise us. Our friend, Mr. Skimpole--don't be

alarmed!--is arrested for debt."

"And, really, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mr. Skimpole, with his

agreeable candor, "I never was in a situation, in which that excellent

sense, and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which any body must

observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter of an hour in

your society, was more needed."

The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave

such a very loud snort, that he startled me.

"Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr. Skimpole.

"My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I don't

know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were

mentioned.

"It's twenty-four pound, sixteen and seven pence ha'penny," observed the

stranger. "That's wot it is."

"And it sounds--somehow it sounds," said Mr. Skimpole, "like a small

sum?"

The strange man said nothing, but made an other snort. It was such a

powerful one, that it seemed quite to lift him up out of his seat.

"Mr. Skimpole," said Richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my

cousin Jarndyce, because he has lately--I think, sir, I understood you

that you had lately--"

"Oh, yes!" returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. "Though I forgot how much it

was, and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again; but I have the

epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help; that I would

rather," and he looked at Richard and me, "develop generosity in a new

soil, and in a new form of flower."

"What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?" said Richard, aside.

I ventured to inquire generally, before replying, what would happen if

the money were not produced.

"Jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into his

hat, which was on the floor at his feet. "Or Coavinses."

"May I ask, sir, what is--"

"Coavinses?" said the strange man. "A 'ouse."

Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular thing

that the arrest was our embarrassment, and not Mr. Skimpole's. He

observed us with a genial interest; but there seemed, if I may venture

on such a contradiction nothing selfish in it. He had entirely washed

his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.

"I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that,

being parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large

amount of property, Mr. Richard, or his beautiful cousin, or both, could

sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of

undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don't know what the business name of

it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their power

that would settle this?"

"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.

"Really," returned Mr. Skimpole; "that seems odd, now, to one who is no

judge of these things!"

"Odd or even," said the stranger, gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on

it!"

"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole

gently reasoned with him, as he made a little drawing of his head on the

fly-leaf of a book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can

separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from the

pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private life you

are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal of poetry in

your nature, of which you may not be conscious."

The stranger only answered with another violent snort; whether in

acceptance of the poetry-tribute, or in disdainful rejection of it, he

did not express to me.

"Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr. Richard," said Mr.

Skimpole, gayly, innocently, and confidingly, as he looked at his

drawing with his head on one side; "here you see me utterly incapable of

helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free. The

butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole

what it concedes to the butterflies!"

"My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard, in a whisper, "I have ten pounds

that I received from Mr. Kenge. I must try what that will do."

I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my

quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that some

accident might happen which would throw me, suddenly, without any

relation or any property, on the world; and had always tried to keep

some little money by me, that I might not be quite penniless. I told

Richard of my having this little store, and having no present need of

it; and I asked him delicately to inform Mr. Skimpole, while I should be

gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his debt.

When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand, and seemed quite touched.

Not on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing and

extraordinary contradiction), but on ours; as if personal considerations

were impossible with him, and the contemplation of our happiness alone

affected him. Richard, begging me, for the greater grace of the

transaction, as he said, to settle with Coavinses (as Mr. Skimpole now

jocularly called him), I counted out the money and received the

necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr. Skimpole.

[Illustration: COAVINSES.]

His compliments were so delicately administered, that I blushed less

than I might have done; and settled with the stranger in the white coat,

without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket, and shortly

said, "Well then, I'll wish you a good-evening, miss."

"My friend," said Mr. Skimpole; standing with his back to the fire,

after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like to

ask you something without offense."

I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"

"Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this

errand?" said Mr. Skimpole.

"Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea time," said Coavinses.

"It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"

"Not a bit," said Coavinses. "I know'd if you wos missed to-day, you

wouldn't be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds."

"But when you came down here," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "it was a fine

day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and shadows

were passing across the fields, the birds were singing."

"Nobody said they warn't, in _my_ hearing," returned Coavinses.

"No," observed Mr. Skimpole. "But what did you think upon the road?"

"Wot do you mean?" growled Coavinses, with an appearance of strong

resentment. "Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to get for

it, without thinking. Thinking!" (with profound contempt.)

"Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "to this

effect. 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine; loves to hear the

wind blow; loves to watch the changing lights and shadows; loves to hear

the birds, those choristers in Nature's great cathedral. And does it

seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold Skimpole of his share in

such possessions, which are his only birthright!' You thought nothing to

that effect?"

"I--certainly--did--NOT," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly

renouncing the idea was of that intense kind, that he could only give

adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each word,

and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have dislocated his

neck.

"Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of

business!" said Mr. Skimpole, thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend.

Good-night."

As our absence had been long enough already, to seem strange down

stairs, I returned at once, and found Ada sitting at work by the

fireside talking to her cousin John. Mr. Skimpole presently appeared,

and Richard shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged, during the

remainder of the evening, in taking my first lesson in backgammon from

Mr. Jarndyce, who was very fond of the game, and from whom I wished of

course to learn it as quickly as I could, in order that I might be of

the very small use of being able to play when he had no better

adversary. But I thought, occasionally when Mr. Skimpole played some

fragments of his own compositions; or when, both at the piano and the

violoncello, and at our table, he preserved, with an absence of all

effort, his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation; that

Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having been

arrested since dinner, and that it was very curious altogether.

It was late before we separated: for when Ada was going at eleven

o'clock, Mr. Skimpole went to the piano, and rattled, hilariously, that

the best of all ways, to lengthen our days, was to steal a few hours

from Night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and

his radiant face out of the room; and I think he might have kept us

there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and Richard were

lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs. Jellyby

had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr. Jarndyce, who had

been out of the room, returned.

"Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this?" he said, rubbing his head and

walking about with his good-humored vexation. "What's this, they tell

me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why did you

do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it?--The wind's round

again. I feel it all over me!"

We neither of us quite knew what to answer.

"Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are you

out of pocket? You two made the money up you know! Why did you? How

could you?--O Lord, yes, it's due east--must be!"

"Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honorable in me

to tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon us--"

"Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon every body!" said Mr.

Jarndyce, giving his head a great rub, and stopping short.

"Indeed, sir?"

"Every body! And he'll be in the same scrape again, next week!" said Mr.

Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his hand that

had gone out. "He's always in the same scrape. He was born in the same

scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the newspapers when

his mother was confined, was 'On Tuesday last, at her residence in

Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son in difficulties.'"

Richard laughed heartily, but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to shake

his confidence, or to break his confidence; and if I submit to your

better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope you will

consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do press me,

sir, I shall know I am wrong, and will tell you."

"Well!" cried Mr. Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent

endeavors to put his candlestick in his pocket. "I--here! Take it away,

my dear. I don't know what I am about with it; it's all the

wind--invariably has that effect--I won't press you, Rick; you may be

right. But, really--to get hold of you and Esther--and to squeeze you

like a couple of tender young Saint Michael's oranges!--It'll blow a

gale in the course of the night!"

He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets, as if he were

going to keep them there a long time; and taking them out again, and

vehemently rubbing them all over his head.

I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Skimpole, being

in all such matters quite a child--

"Eh, my dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce catching at the word.

"--Being quite a child, sir," said I, "and so different from other

people--"

"You are right!" said Mr. Jarndyce, brightening. "Your woman's wit hits

the mark. He is a child--an absolute child. I told you he was a child,

you know, when I first mentioned him."

"Certainly! certainly!" we said.

"And he _is_ a child. Now isn't he?" asked Mr. Jarndyce, brightening

more and more.

He was indeed, we said.

"When you come to think of it, it's the height of childishness in you--I

mean me--" said Mr. Jarndyce, "to regard him for a moment as a man. You

can't make _him_ responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with designs

or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!"

It was so delicious to see the clouds about his face clearing, and to

see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible not to

know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which was

tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any one,

that I saw the tears in Ada's eyes while she echoed his laugh, and felt

them in my own.

"Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I am," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to

require reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from

beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling

_you_ two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have

thought of _your_ having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds, it

would have been just the same!" said Mr. Jarndyce, with his whole face

in a glow.

We all confirmed it from our night's experience.

"To be sure, to be sure!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "However, Rick, Esther, and

you too, Ada, for I don't know that even your little purse is safe from

his inexperience--I must have a promise all round, that nothing of this

sort shall ever be done anymore. No advances! Not even sixpences."

We all promised faithfully; Richard, with a merry glance at me, touching

his pocket, as if to remind me that there was no danger of _our_

transgressing.

"As to Skimpole," said Mr. Jarndyce, "a habitable doll's house, with

good board, and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow money

of, would set the boy up in life. He is in a child's sleep by this time,

I suppose; it's time I should take my craftier head to my more worldly

pillow. Good-night, my dears. God bless you!"

He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our

candles, and said, "O! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I find

it was a false alarm about the wind. It's in the south!" And went away,

singing to himself.

Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while up-stairs,

that this caprice about the wind was a fiction; and that he used the

pretense to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather

than he would blame the real cause of it, or disparage or depreciate any

one. We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness;

and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the

weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had

chosen for such a different purpose) the stalking-horse of their

splenetic and gloomy humors.

Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening to

my gratitude, that I hoped I already began to understand him through

that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr. Skimpole, or in

Mrs. Jellyby, I could not expect to be able to reconcile; having so

little experience or practical knowledge. Neither did I try; for my

thoughts were busy when I was alone, with Ada and Richard, and with the

confidence I had seemed to receive concerning them. My fancy, made a

little wild by the wind perhaps, would not consent to be all unselfish

either, though I would have persuaded it to be so if I could. It

wandered back to my godmother's house, and came along the intervening

track, raising up shadowy speculations which had sometimes trembled

there in the dark, as to what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest

history--even as to the possibility of his being my father--though that

idle dream was quite gone now.

It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was not

for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit and a

grateful heart. So I said to myself, "Esther, Esther, Esther! Duty, my

dear!" and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a shake, that

they sounded like little bells, and rang me hopefully to bed.

CHAPTER VII.--THE GHOST'S WALK.

While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather

down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling, drip, drip,

drip, by day and night, upon the broad flag terrace-pavement, The

Ghost's Walk. The weather is so very bad, down in Lincolnshire, that the

liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being fine again.

Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination on the spot, for

Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he were, would not do

much for it in that particular), but is in Paris with my Lady; and

solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon Chesney Wold.

There may be some notions of fancy among the lower animals at Chesney

Wold. The horses in the stables--the long stables in a barren, red-brick

court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a clock with a

large face, which the pigeons who live near it, and who love to perch

upon its shoulders, seem to be always consulting--_they_ may contemplate

some mental pictures of fine weather, on occasions, and may be better

artists at them than the grooms. The old roan, so famous for

cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the grated window near

his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that glisten there at other

times, and the scents that stream in, and may have a fine run with the

hounds, while the human helper, clearing out the next stall, never stirs

beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The gray, whose place is opposite

the door, and who, with an impatient rattle of his halter, pricks his

ears, and turns his head so wistfully when it is opened, and to whom the

opener says, "Woa gray, then, steady! Noabody wants you to-day!" may

know it quite as well as the man. The whole seemingly monotonous and

uncompanionable half-dozen, stabled together, may pass the long wet

hours, when the door is shut, in livelier communication than is held in

the servants' hall, or at the Dedlock Arms; or may even beguile the time

by improving (perhaps corrupting) the pony in the loose box in the

corner.

So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel, in the court-yard, with his large

head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine, when the shadows of the

stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing, and leave him, at

one time of the day, no broader refuge than the shadow of his own house,

where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very much wanting

something to worry, besides himself and chain. So now, half-waking and

all-winking, he may recall the house full of company, the coach-houses

full of vehicles, the stables full of horses, and the outbuildings full

of attendants upon horses, until he is undecided about the present, and

comes forth to see how it is. Then, with an impatient shake of himself,

he may growl, in the spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain--and no

family here!" as he goes in again, and lies down with a gloomy yawn.

So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have their

restless fits, and whose doleful voices, when the wind has been very

obstinate, have even made it known in the house itself: up-stairs, down

stairs, and in my lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole country-side,

while the rain-drops are pattering round their inactivity. So the

rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking in and out of holes at

roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of the breezy days when their

ears are blown about, or of those seasons of interest when there are

sweet young plants to gnaw. The turkey in the poultry-yard, always

troubled with a class-grievance (probably Christmas), may be reminiscent

of that summer morning wrongfully taken from him, when he got into the

lane among the felled trees, where there was a barn and barley. The

discontented goose, who stoops to pass under the old gateway, twenty

feet high, may gabble out, if we only knew it, a waddling preference for

weather when the gateway casts its shadow on the ground.

Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at Chesney

Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a little

noise in that old echoing place, a long way, and usually leads off to

ghosts and mystery.

It has rained so hard and rained so long, down in Lincolnshire, that

Mrs. Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several times

taken off her spectacles and cleaned them, to make certain that the

drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Rouncewell might have been

sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather deaf,

which nothing will induce her to believe. She is a fine old lady,

handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back, and such a

stomacher, that if her stays should turn out when she dies to have been

a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows her would have

cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell little. The house

is there in all weathers, and the house, as she expresses it, "is what

she looks at." She sits in her room (in a side passage on the ground

floor, with an arched window commanding a smooth quadrangle, adorned at

regular intervals with smooth round trees and smooth round blocks of

stone, as if the trees were going to play at bowls with the stones), and

the whole house reposes on her mind. She can open it on occasion, and be

busy and fluttered; but it is shut-up now, and lies on the breadth of

Mrs. Rouncewell's iron-bound bosom, in a majestic sleep.

It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney

Wold without Mrs. Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years.

Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer, "fifty year

three months and a fortnight, by the blessing of Heaven, if I live 'till

Tuesday." Mr. Rouncewell died some time before the decease of the pretty

fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took it with him)

in a corner of the church-yard in the park, near the mouldy porch. He

was born in the market town, and so was his young widow. Her progress in

the family began in the time of the last Sir Leicester, and originated

in the still-room.

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He

supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual

characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born

to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a

discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--would never

recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is an

excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so. He has

a great liking for Mrs. Rouncewell; he says she is a most respectable,

creditable woman. He always shakes hands with her, when he comes down to

Chesney Wold, and when he goes away; and if he were very ill, or if he

were knocked down by accident, or run over, or placed in any situation

expressive of a Dedlock at a disadvantage, he would say if he could

speak, "Leave me, and send Mrs. Rouncewell here!" feeling his dignity,

at such a pass, safer with her than with any body else.

Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the

younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even to

this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when she

speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover about

her in an agitated manner, as she says, what a likely lad, what a fine

lad, what a gay, good-humored, clever lad he was! Her second son would

have been provided for at Chesney Wold, and would have been made steward

in due season; but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to constructing

steam-engines out of sauce-pans, and setting birds to draw their own

water, with the least possible amount of labor; so assisting them with

artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure, that a thirsty canary had

only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to the wheel, and the job

was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell great uneasiness. She

felt it with a mother's anguish, to be a move in the Wat Tyler

direction: well knowing that Sir Leicester had that general impression

of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tall chimney might be

considered essential. But the doomed young rebel (otherwise a mild

youth, and very persevering), showing no sign of grace as he got older,

but, on the contrary, constructing a model of a power-loom, she was

fain, with many tears, to mention his backslidings to the baronet. "Mrs.

Rouncewell," said Sir Leicester, "I can never consent to argue, as you

know, with any one on any subject. You had better get rid of your boy,

you had better get him into some Works. The iron country farther north

is, I suppose, the congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies."

Farther north he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir

Leicester Dedlock ever saw him, when he came to Chesney Wold to visit

his mother, or ever thought of him afterward, it is certain that he only

regarded him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy

and grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torch-light, two or

three nights in the week, for unlawful purposes.

Nevertheless Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and art,

grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto him Mrs.

Rouncewell's grandson: who, being out of his apprenticeship, and home

from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to enlarge his

knowledge and complete his preparation for the venture of this life,

stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day, in Mrs.

Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.

"And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I am

glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs. Rouncewell. "You are a fine young

fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!" Mrs. Rouncewell's

hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.

"They say I am like my father, grandmother."

"Like him, also, my dear--but most like your poor uncle George! And your

dear father." Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. "He is well?"

"Thriving, grandmother, in every way."

"I am thankful!" Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son, but has a plaintive

feeling toward him--much as if he were a very honorable soldier, who had

gone over to the enemy.

"He is quite happy?" says she.

"Quite."

"I am thankful! So, he has brought you up to follow in his ways, and has

sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows best. There

may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't understand. Though I am

not young, either. And I have seen a quantity of good company too!"

"Grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what a very

pretty girl that was, I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?"

"Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so

hard to teach, nowadays, that I have put her about me young. She's an

apt scholar, and will do well. She shows the house already, very pretty.

She lives with me, at my table here."

"I hope I have not driven her away?"

"She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She is

very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer," says

Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits, "than it

formerly was!"

The young man inclines his head, in acknowledgment of the precepts of

experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.

"Wheels!" says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears of

her companion. "What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious sake?"

After a short interval, a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-eyed,

dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fresh in her rosy and yet

delicate bloom, that the drops of rain, which have beaten on her hair,

look like the dew upon a flower fresh-gathered.

"What company is this, Rosa?" says Mrs. Rouncewell.

"It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house--yes, and

if you please, I told them so!" in quick reply to a gesture of dissent

from the housekeeper. "I went to the half-door, and told them it was the

wrong day, and the wrong hour; but the young man who was driving took

off his hat in the wet, and begged me to bring this card to you."

"Read it, my dear Watt," said the housekeeper.

Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him, that they drop it between them,

and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is

shyer than before.

"Mr. Guppy," is all the information the card yields.

"Guppy!" repeats Mrs. Rouncewell. "Mr. Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard of

him!"

"If you please, he told _me_ that!" says Rosa. "But he said that he and

the other young gentleman came from London only last night by the mail,

on business at the magistrates' meeting ten miles off, this morning; and

that as their business was soon over, and they had heard a great deal

said of Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do with themselves,

they had come through the wet to see it. They are lawyers. He says he is

not in Mr. Tulkinghorn's office, but is sure he may make use of Mr.

Tulkinghorn's name, if necessary." Finding, now she leaves off, that she

has been making quite a long speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.

Now, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place; and,

besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Rouncewell's will. The old lady

relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favor, and

dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden wish

to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The grandmother,

who is pleased that he should have that interest, accompanies

him--though, to do him justice, he is exceedingly unwilling to trouble

her.

"Much obliged to you, ma'am!" says Mr. Guppy, divesting himself of his

wet dreadnought in the hall. "Us London lawyers don't often get an out;

and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know."

The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves her

hand toward the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow Rosa,

Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them, a young gardener goes

before to open the shutters.

As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and his

friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle about in

wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things,

gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits,

and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter,

Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a

window-seat, or other such nook, and listens with stately approval to

Rosa's exposition. Her grandson is so attentive to it, that Rosa is

shyer than ever--and prettier. Thus they pass on from room to room,

raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few brief minutes as the young

gardener admits the light, and reconsigning them to their graves as he

shuts it out again. It appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his

inconsolable friend, that there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose

family-greatness seems to consist in their never having done any thing

to distinguish themselves, for seven hundred years.

Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold can not revive Mr. Guppy's

spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold, and has hardly

strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,

painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a

charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon interest;

he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.

"Dear me!" says Mr. Guppy. "Who's that?"

"The picture over the fire-place," says Rosa, "is the portrait of the

present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the best

work of the master."

"'Blest!" says Mr. Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend, "if

I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been engraved,

miss?"

"The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always refused

permission."

"Well!" says Mr. Guppy, in a low voice, "I'll be shot if it an't very

curious how well I know that picture! So that's Lady Dedlock, is it?"

"The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The

picture on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester."

Mr. Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. "It's unaccountable

to me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how well I know that

picture! I'm dashed!" adds Mr. Guppy, looking round, "if I don't think I

must have had a dream of that picture, you know!"

As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Guppy's dreams, the

probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by the

portrait, that he stands immovable before it until the young gardener

has closed the shutters; when he comes out of the room in a dazed state,

that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for interest, and follows

into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare, as if he were looking

every where for Lady Dedlock again.

He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown, as

being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she

looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death. All

things have an end--even houses that people take infinite pains to see,

and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to the end

of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her

description; which is always this:

"The terrace below is much admired. It is called, from an old story in

the family, The Ghost's Walk."

"No?" says Mr. Guppy, greedily curious; "what's the story, miss? Is it

any thing about a picture?"

"Pray tell us the story," says Watt, in a half whisper.

"I don't know it, sir." Rosa is shyer than ever.

"It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten," says the

housekeeper, advancing, "It has never been more than a family anecdote."