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

CHAPTER VIII

Covering a Multitude of Sins

 

It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of

window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two

beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the

indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the

day came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and

disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark,

like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the

unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they

were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later

stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began

to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have

found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles

became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in

my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful

landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its

massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than

seemed compatible with its rugged character. But so from rough

outsides (I hope I have learnt), serene and gentle influences often

proceed.

 

Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so

attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,

though what with trying to remember the contents of each little

store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a

slate about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and

glass, and china, and a great many other things; and what with

being generally a methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little

person, I was so busy that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell ring. Away I ran, however, and made

tea, as I had already been installed into the responsibility of the

tea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late and nobody was down

yet, I thought I would take a peep at the garden and get some

knowledge of that too. I found it quite a delightful place—in

front, the pretty avenue and drive by which we had approached (and

where, by the by, we had cut up the gravel so terribly with our

wheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at the back, the

flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing it

open to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that

distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then

a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little

farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its three peaks in the

roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large, some so small, and

all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the southfront for roses

and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look—it

was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with her arm through

that of its master, worthy of her cousin John, a bold thing to say,

though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.

 

Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been

overnight. There was honey on the table, and it led him into a

discourse about bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I

should think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he

protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He didn’t

at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him;

he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn’t do it—

nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a

merit of his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the

world banging against everything that came in his way and

egotistically calling upon everybody to take notice that he was

going to his work and must not be interrupted, the world would be

quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was a ridiculous

position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone as soon as

you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a

Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say

he thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea.

The drone said unaffectedly, “You will excuse me; I really cannot

attend to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so

much to see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the

liberty of looking about me and begging to be provided for by

somebody who doesn’t want to look about him.” This appeared to Mr.

Skimpole to be the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good

philosophy, always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good

terms with the bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow

always was, if the consequential creature would only let him, and

not be so conceited about his honey!

 

He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of

ground and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as

serious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I

left them still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my

new duties. They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing

through the passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm

when Mr. Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber,

which I found to be in part a little library of books and papers

and in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes.

 

“Sit down, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “This, you must know, is

the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.”

 

“You must be here very seldom, sir,” said I.

 

“Oh, you don’t know me!” he returned. “When I am deceived or

disappointed in—the wind, and it’s easterly, I take refuge here.

The growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware

of half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!”

 

I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that

benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so

happy and so honoured there, and my heart so full—

 

I kissed his hand. I don’t know what I said, or even that I spoke.

He was disconcerted and walked to the window; I almost believed

with an intention of jumping out, until he turned and I was

reassured by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide. He

gently patted me on the head, and I sat down.

 

“There! There!” he said. “That’s over. Pooh! Don’t be foolish.”

 

“It shall not happen again, sir,” I returned, “but at first it is

difficult—”

 

“Nonsense!” he said. “It’s easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good

little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head

to be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my

good opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is

there in all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores,

and I have before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again.”

 

I said to myself, “Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really

is not what I expected of you!” And it had such a good effect that

I folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr.

Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me

as confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with

him every morning for I don’t know how long. I almost felt as if I

had.

 

“Of course, Esther,” he said, “you don’t understand this Chancery

business?”

 

And of course I shook my head.

 

“I don’t know who does,” he returned. “The lawyers have twisted it

into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the

case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about

a will and the trusts under a will—or it was once. It’s about

nothing but costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing,

and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and

arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting,

and revolving about the Lord