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

reflect on what had passed,

he was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard’s anxiety

on this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to

Symond’s Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I

had had before that my dear girl’s little property would be

absorbed by Mr. Vholes and that Richard’s justification to himself

would be sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of

Caddy that the interview took place, and I now return to the time

when Caddy had recovered and the shade was still between me and my

darling.

 

I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard.

It a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so

radiantly willing as I had expected.

 

“My dear,” said I, “you have not had any difference with Richard

since I have been so much away?”

 

“No, Esther.”

 

“Not heard of him, perhaps?” said I.

 

“Yes, I have heard of him,” said Ada.

 

Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not

make my darling out. Should I go to Richard’s by myself? I said.

No, Ada thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with

me? Yes, Ada thought she had better go with me. Should we go now?

Yes, let us go now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with

the tears in her eyes and the love in her face!

 

We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops

of chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless

days when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at

us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any

compromise about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my

beautiful girl quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I

thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements

than I had ever seen before.

 

We had first to find out Symond’s Inn. We were going to inquire in

a shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. “We

are not likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction,”

said I. So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we

saw it written up. Symond’s Inn.

 

We had next to find out the number. “Or Mr. Vholes’s office will

do,” I recollected, “for Mr. Vholes’s office is next door.” Upon

which Ada said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes’s office in the corner

there. And it really was.

 

Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going

for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling

was right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came

to Richard’s name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.

 

I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the

handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table

covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty

mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the

ominous words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

 

He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. “If you had

come a little earlier,” he said, “you would have found Woodcourt

here. There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He

finds time to look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half

his work to do would be thinking about not being able to come. And

he is so cheery, so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so—everything

that I am not, that the place brightens whenever he comes, and

darkens whenever he goes again.”

 

“God bless him,” I thought, “for his truth to me!”

 

“He is not so sanguine, Ada,” continued Richard, casting his

dejected look over the bundles of papers, “as Vholes and I are

usually, but he is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries.

We have gone into them, and he has not. He can’t be expected to

know much of such a labyrinth.”

 

As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two

hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes

appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all

bitten away.

 

“Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?” said I.

 

“Why, my dear Minerva,” answered Richard with his old gay laugh,

“it is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun

shines here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining

brightly in an open spot. But it’s well enough for the time. It’s

near the offices and near Vholes.”

 

“Perhaps,” I hinted, “a change from both—”

 

“Might do me good?” said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished

the sentence. “I shouldn’t wonder! But it can only come in one

way now—in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit

must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my

dear girl, the suit, my dear girl!”

 

These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest

to him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I

could not see it.

 

“We are doing very well,” pursued Richard. “Vholes will tell you

so. We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them

no rest. Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are

upon them everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall

rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!”

 

His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his

despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce

in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so

conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long

touched me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly

written in his handsome face made it far more distressing than it

used to be. I say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the

fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his

brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature

anxiety, self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him

would have remained upon his features to the hour of his death.

 

“The sight of our dear little woman,” said Richard, Ada still

remaining silent and quiet, “is so natural to me, and her

compassionate face is so like the face of old days—”

 

Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.

 

“—So exactly like the face of old days,” said Richard in his

cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which

nothing ever changed, “that I can’t make pretences with her. I

fluctuate a little; that’s the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear,

and sometimes I—don’t quite despair, but nearly. I get,” said

Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room,

“so tired!”

 

He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. “I get,”

he repeated gloomily, “so tired. It is such weary, weary work!”

 

He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice

and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet,

kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight

on his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her

face to me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!

 

“Esther, dear,” she said very quietly, “I am not going home again.”

 

A light shone in upon me all at once.

 

“Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have

been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther;

I shall never go home any more!” With those words my darling drew

his head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my

life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it

then before me.

 

“Speak to Esther, my dearest,” said Richard, breaking the silence

presently. “Tell her how it was.”

 

I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms.

We neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted

to hear nothing. “My pet,” said I. “My love. My poor, poor

girl!” I pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the

impulse that I had upon me was to pity her so much.

 

“Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?”

 

“My dear,” said I, “to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great

wrong. And as to me!” Why, as to me, what had I to forgive!

 

I dried my sobbing darling’s eyes and sat beside her on the sofa,

and Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that

so different night when they had first taken me into their

confidence and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told

me between them how it was.

 

“All I had was Richard’s,” Ada said; “and Richard would not take

it, Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him

dearly!”

 

“And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame

Durden,” said Richard, “that how could we speak to you at such a

time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out

one morning and were married.”

 

“And when it was done, Esther,” said my darling, “I was always

thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And

sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I

thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John;

and I could not tell what to do, and I fretted very much.”

 

How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I

don’t know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond

of them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so

much, and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another.

I never had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one

time, and in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I

was not there to darken their way; I did not do that.

 

When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her

wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I

remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage

she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada

blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada

how I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little

thought why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all

over again, and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish

again, and to hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I

should put them out of heart.

 

Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of

returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for

then my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck,

calling me by every dear name she could think of