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

class="calibre1">screens that let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest

corners, there is a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will

dispel.

 

The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are

complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs.

Rouncewell’s place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and

rouge pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but

indifferent comforts to the invalid under present circumstances.

Volumnia, not being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what

is the matter, has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate

observations and consequently has supplied their place with

distracting smoothings of the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on

tiptoe, vigilant peeping at her kinsman’s eyes, and one

exasperating whisper to herself of, “He is asleep.” In disproof of

which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has indignantly written on

the slate, “I am not.”

 

Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old

housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,

sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow

and listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears

of his old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old

picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the

silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, “Who will tell

him!”

 

He has been under his valet’s hands this morning to be made

presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow.

He is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual

manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a

responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready

to his hand. It is necessary—less to his own dignity now perhaps

than for her sake—that he should be seen as little disturbed and

as much himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a

Dedlock, is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is

little doubt, to prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very

ill, but he makes his present stand against distress of mind and

body most courageously.

 

The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot

long continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the

dragon Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a

series of undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress

those yawns by any other process than conversation, she compliments

Mrs. Rouncewell on her son, declaring that he positively is one of

the finest figures she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person,

she should think, as what’s his name, her favourite Life Guardsman

—the man she dotes on, the dearest of creatures—who was killed at

Waterloo.

 

Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares

about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it

necessary to explain.

 

“Miss Dedlock don’t speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my

youngest. I have found him. He has come home.”

 

Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. “George? Your son

George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?”

 

The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. “Thank God. Yes, Sir

Leicester.”

 

Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so

long gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes?

Does he think, “Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely

after this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are

years in his?”

 

It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and

he does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough

to be understood.

 

“Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?”

 

“It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your

being well enough to be talked to of such things.”

 

Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream

that nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell’s son

and that she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests,

with warmth enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would

have told Sir Leicester as soon as he got better.

 

“Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?” asks Sir Leicester,

 

Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the

doctor’s injunctions, replies, in London.

 

“Where in London?”

 

Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.

 

“Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly.”

 

The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir

Leicester, with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself

a little to receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again

at the falling sleet and snow and listens again for the returning

steps. A quantity of straw has been tumbled down in the street to

deaden the noises there, and she might be driven to the door

perhaps without his hearing wheels.

 

He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor

surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper

son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow,

squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily

ashamed of himself.

 

“Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!” exclaims Sir

Leicester. “Do you remember me, George?”

 

The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from

that sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and

being a little helped by his mother, he replies, “I must have a

very bad memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember

you.”

 

“When I look at you, George Rouncewell,” Sir Leicester observes

with difficulty, “I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold—I

remember well—very well.”

 

He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he

looks at the sleet and snow again.

 

“I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester,” says the trooper, “but would

you accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir

Leicester, if you would allow me to move you.”

 

“If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good.”

 

The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him,

and turns him with his face more towards the window. “Thank you.

You have your mother’s gentleness,” returns Sir Leicester, “and

your own strength. Thank you.”

 

He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly

remains at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.

 

“Why did you wish for secrecy?” It takes Sir Leicester some time

to ask this.

 

“Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I—I should

still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed—which I hope

you will not be long—I should still hope for the favour of being

allowed to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations

not very hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not

very creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a

variety of subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed,

Sir Leicester, that I am not much to boast of.”

 

“You have been a soldier,” observes Sir Leicester, “and a faithful

one.”

 

George makes his military bow. “As far as that goes, Sir

Leicester, I have done my duty under discipline, and it was the

least I could do.”

 

“You find me,” says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted

towards him, “far from well, George Rouncewell.”

 

“I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester.”

 

“I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have

had a sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens,” making an

endeavour to pass one hand down one side, “and confuses,” touching

his lips.

 

George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The

different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the

younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold

arise before them both and soften both.

 

Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his

own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into

silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more.

George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and

places him as he desires to be. “Thank you, George. You are

another self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at

Chesney Wold, George. You are familiar to me in these strange

circumstances, very familiar.” He has put Sir Leicester’s sounder

arm over his shoulder in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow

in drawing it away again as he says these words.

 

“I was about to add,” he presently goes on, “I was about to add,

respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with

a slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not

mean that there was any difference between us (for there has been

none), but that there was a misunderstanding of certain

circumstances important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a

little while, of my Lady’s society. She has found it necessary to

make a journey—I trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make

myself intelligible? The words are not quite under my command in

the manner of pronouncing them.”

 

Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers

himself with far greater plainness than could have been supposed

possible a minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written

in the anxious and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but

the strength of his purpose enables him to make it.

 

“Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence—and in the

presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose

truth and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her

son George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth

in the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold—in case I should

relapse, in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both

my speech and the power of writing, though I hope for better

things—”

 

The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest

agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with

his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.

 

“Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to witness—

beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly—that I am on

unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever

of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest

affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to

herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you

will be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me.”

 

Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions

to the letter.

 

“My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished,

too superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is

surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let

it be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound

mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have

made in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon

her. I am on unaltered terms with her, and I recall—having the

full power to do it if I were so disposed, as you see—no act I

have done for her advantage and happiness.”

 

His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has

often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it