Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

do with a serene contempt for our limited sphere

of action, not to be disguised.

 

Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop, who was from morning to night

and from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions.

If the baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make

him uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it

was surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy

required any little comfort that the house contained, she first

carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In

return for this consideration he would come into the room once a

day, all but blessing it—showing a condescension, and a patronage,

and a grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had

not known better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy’s life.

 

“My Caroline,” he would say, making the nearest approach that he

could to bending over her. “Tell me that you are better to-day.”

 

“Oh, much better, thank you, Mr. Turveydrop,” Caddy would reply.

 

“Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not

quite prostrated by fatigue?” Here he would crease up his eyelids

and kiss his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased

to be particular in his attentions since I had been so altered.

 

“Not at all,” I would assure him.

 

“Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson.

We must spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her.

My dear Caroline”—he would turn to his daughter-in-law with

infinite generosity and protection—“want for nothing, my love.

Frame a wish and gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house

contains, everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear.

Do not,” he would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, “even

allow my simple requirements to be considered if they should at any

time interfere with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are

greater than mine.”

 

He had established such a long prescriptive right to this

deportment (his son’s inheritance from his mother) that I several

times knew both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by

these affectionate self-sacrifices.

 

“Nay, my dears,” he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy’s thin

arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though

not by the same process. “Nay, nay! I have promised never to

leave ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no

other return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park.”

 

He would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his

hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Turveydrop no wrong, but I never

saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except

that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the

child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions

sending him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally

with a halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness

was attended with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for

before Peepy was sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with

the professor of deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the

expense of Caddy and her husband, from top to toe.

 

Last of our visitors, there was Mr. Jellyby. Really when he used

to come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she

was, and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no

attempt to say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found

me bustling about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took

his coat off, as if with an intention of helping by a great

exertion; but he never got any further. His sole occupation was to

sit with his head against the wall, looking hard at the thoughtful

baby; and I could not quite divest my mind of a fancy that they

understood one another.

 

I have not counted Mr. Woodcourt among our visitors because he was

now Caddy’s regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his

care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains

he took that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good

deal of Mr. Woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might

be supposed, for knowing Caddy to be safe in his hands, I often

slipped home at about the hours when he was expected. We

frequently met, notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself

now, but I still felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and

he still WAS sorry for me I believed. He helped Mr. Badger in his

professional engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no

settled projects for the future.

 

It was when Caddy began to recover that I began to notice a change

in my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me,

because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing

in themselves and only became something when they were pieced

together. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada

was not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her

tenderness for me was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a

moment doubt that; but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she

did not confide to me, and in which I traced some hidden regret.

 

Now, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the

happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set

me thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed

this something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came

into my head that she was a little grieved—for me—by what I had

told her about Bleak House.

 

How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don’t know. I had

no idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was

not grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy.

Still, that Ada might be thinking—for me, though I had abandoned

all such thoughts—of what once was, but was now all changed,

seemed so easy to believe that I believed it.

 

What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show

her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk

and busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along.

However, as Caddy’s illness had certainly interfered, more or less,

with my home duties—though I had always been there in the morning

to make my guardian’s breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed

and said there must be two little women, for his little woman was

never missing—I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went

about the house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and

working in a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning,

noon, and night.

 

And still there was the same shade between me and my darling.

 

“So, Dame Trot,” observed my guardian, shutting up his book one

night when we were all three together, “so Woodcourt has restored

Caddy Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?”

 

“Yes,” I said; “and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be

made rich, guardian.”

 

“I wish it was,” he returned, “with all my heart.”

 

So did I too, for that matter. I said so.

 

“Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we

not, little woman?”

 

I laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that,

for it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there

might be many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy

herself, and many others.

 

“True,” said my guardian. “I had forgotten that. But we would

agree to make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to

work with tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own

happy home and his own household gods—and household goddess, too,

perhaps?”

 

That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that.

 

“To be sure,” said my guardian. “All of us. I have a great regard

for Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him

delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an

independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses.

And yet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He

seems half inclined for another voyage. But that appears like

casting such a man away.”

 

“It might open a new world to him,” said I.

 

“So it might, little woman,” my guardian assented. “I doubt if

he expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that

he sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune

encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?”

 

I shook my head.

 

“Humph,” said my guardian. “I am mistaken, I dare say.” As there

was a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl’s

satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked

which was a favourite with my guardian.

 

“And do you think Mr. Woodcourt will make another voyage?” I asked

him when I had hummed it quietly all through.

 

“I don’t quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was

likely at present that he will give a long trip to another

country.”

 

“I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him

wherever he goes,” said I; “and though they are not riches, he will

never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least.”

 

“Never, little woman,” he replied.

 

I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian’s

chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it

was now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw,

as she looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that

tears were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be

placid and merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her

loving heart at rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but

to be myself.

 

So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder—how little thinking

what was heavy on her mind!—and I said she was not quite well, and

put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our

own room, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so

unprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I

never thought she stood in need of it.

 

“Oh, my dear good Esther,” said Ada, “if I could only make up my

mind to speak to you and my cousin John when you are together!”

 

“Why, my love!” I remonstrated. “Ada, why should you not speak to

us!”

 

Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart.

 

“You surely don’t forget, my beauty,” said I, smiling, “what quiet,

old-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the

discreetest of dames? You don’t forget how happily and peacefully

my life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that

you don’t forget by what a