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

class="calibre1">She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a

failure in consequence of the king of Borrioboola wanting to sell

everybody—who survived the climate—for rum, but she has taken up

with the rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me

it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. I

had almost forgotten Caddy’s poor little girl. She is not such a

mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I believe there never was a

better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals of

leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the affliction of

her child.

 

As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of

Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and

doing extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still

exhibits his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old

manner, is still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his

patronage of Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a

favourite French clock in his dressing-room—which is not his

property.

 

With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house

by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which

we inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to

see us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full

in drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have

their way.

 

I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a

good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to

me he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that?

He is my husband’s best and dearest friend, he is our children’s

darling, he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet

while I feel towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so

familiar with him and so easy with him that I almost wonder at

myself. I have never lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor

do I ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my

old chair at his side, Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman—all

just the same as ever; and I answer, “Yes, dear guardian!” just the

same.

 

I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment

since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I

remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now,

and he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter

on that very day.

 

I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow

that has been in her face—for it is not there now—seems to have

purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a

diviner quality. Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the

black dress that she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel—it

is difficult to express—as if it were so good to know that she

remembers her dear Esther in her prayers.

 

I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am

one.

 

We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we

have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the

people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear

his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at

night but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated

pain and soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know

that from the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have

often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his patient

ministration. Is not this to be rich?

 

The people even praise me as the doctor’s wife. The people even

like me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite

abashed. I owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for

his sake, as I do everything I do in life for his sake.

 

A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling

and my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was

sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable

porch, when Allan came home. So he said, “My precious little

woman, what are you doing here?” And I said, “The moon is shining

so brightly, Allan, and the night is so delicious, that I have been

sitting here thinking.”

 

“What have you been thinking about, my dear?” said Allan then.

 

“How curious you are!” said I. “I am almost ashamed to tell you,

but I will. I have been thinking about my old looks—such as they

were.”

 

“And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?” said

Allan.

 

“I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you

COULD have loved me any better, even if I had retained them.”

 

“‘Such as they were’?” said Allan, laughing.

 

“Such as they were, of course.”

 

“My dear Dame Durden,” said Allan, drawing my arm through his, “do

you ever look in the glass?”

 

“You know I do; you see me do it.”

 

“And don’t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?”

 

“I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I

know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my

darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome,

and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face

that ever was seen, and that they can very well do without much

beauty in me—even supposing—.”

 

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