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

Chancellor and all his satellites, and

equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs.

That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary

means, has melted away.”

 

“But it was, sir,” said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub

his head, “about a will?”

 

“Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything,” he

returned. “A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great

fortune, and made a great will. In the question how the trusts

under that will are to be administered, the fortune left by the

will is squandered away; the legatees under the will are reduced to

such a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punished

if they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them,

and the will itself is made a dead letter. All through the

deplorable cause, everything that everybody in it, except one man,

knows already is referred to that only one man who don’t know, it to

find out—all through the deplorable cause, everybody must have

copies, over and over again, of everything that has accumulated

about it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them

without having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wants

them) and must go down the middle and up again through such an

infernal country-dance of costs and fees and nonsense and

corruption as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a

witch’s Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law, law sends

questions back to equity; law finds it can’t do this, equity finds

it can’t do that; neither can so much as say it can’t do anything,

without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for

A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B;

and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple

pie. And thus, through years and years, and lives and lives,

everything goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, and

nothing ever ends. And we can’t get out of the suit on any terms,

for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to it, whether

we like it or not. But it won’t do to think of it! When my great

uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the

beginning of the end!”

 

“The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?”

 

He nodded gravely. “I was his heir, and this was his house,

Esther. When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the

signs of his misery upon it.”

 

“How changed it must be now!” I said.

 

“It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its

present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the

wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to

disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In

the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled

through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof,

the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought

what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have

been blown out of the house too, it was so shattered and ruined.”

 

He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a

shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat

down again with his hands in his pockets.

 

“I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?”

 

I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.

 

“Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some

property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was

then; I say property of ours, meaning of the suit’s, but I ought to

call it the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth

that will ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for

anything but an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of

perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a pane

of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank

shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder, the iron

rails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, the

stone steps to every door (and every door might be death’s door)

turning stagnant green, the very crutches on which the ruins are

propped decaying. Although Bleak House was not in Chancery, its

master was, and it was stamped with the same seal. These are the

Great Seal’s impressions, my dear, all over England—the children

know them!”

 

“How changed it is!” I said again.

 

“Why, so it is,” he answered much more cheerfully; “and it is

wisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture.” (The

idea of my wisdom!) “These are things I never talk about or even

think about, excepting in the growlery here. If you consider it

right to mention them to Rick and Ada,” looking seriously at me,

“you can. I leave it to your discretion, Esther.”

 

“I hope, sir—” said I.

 

“I think you had better call me guardian, my dear.”

 

I felt that I was choking again—I taxed myself with it, “Esther,

now, you know you are!”—when he feigned to say this slightly, as

if it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave

the housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to

myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on

the basket, looked at him quietly.

 

“I hope, guardian,” said I, “that you may not trust too much to my

discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be

a disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really

is the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the

honesty to confess it.”

 

He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told

me, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well

indeed and that I was quite clever enough for him.

 

“I hope I may turn out so,” said I, “but I am much afraid of it,

guardian.”

 

“You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives

here, my dear,” he returned playfully; “the little old woman of the

child’s (I don’t mean Skimpole’s) rhyme:

 

“‘Little old woman, and whither so high?’

‘To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.’

 

“You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your

housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to

abandon the growlery and nail up the door.”

 

This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old

Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame

Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became

quite lost among them.

 

“However,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to return to our gossip. Here’s

Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise. What’s to be done with

him?”

 

Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!

 

“Here he is, Esther,” said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his

hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. “He must have

a profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be

a world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be

done.”

 

“More what, guardian?” said I.

 

“More wiglomeration,” said he. “It’s the only name I know for the

thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will

have something to say about it; Master Somebody—a sort of

ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a

back room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane—will have

something to say about it; counsel will have something to say about

it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the

satellites will have something to say about it; they will all have

to be handsomely feed, all round, about it; the whole thing will be

vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I

call it, in general, wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be

afflicted with wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people

ever fell into a pit of it, I don’t know; so it is.”

 

He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind.

But it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that

whether he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face

was sure to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine;

and he was sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his

pockets and stretch out his legs.

 

“Perhaps it would be best, first of all,” said I, “to ask Mr.

Richard what he inclines to himself.”

 

“Exactly so,” he returned. “That’s what I mean! You know, just

accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet

way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are

sure to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little

woman.”

 

I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was

attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me.

I had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to

Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would

do my best, though I feared (I realty felt it necessary to repeat

this) that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which

my guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.

 

“Come!” he said, rising and pushing back his chair. “I think we

may have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding

word. Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?”

 

He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and

felt sure I understood him.

 

“About myself, sir?” said I.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Guardian,” said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly

colder than I could have wished, in his, “nothing! I am quite sure

that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to

know, I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole

reliance and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard

heart indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world.”

 

He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada.

From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite

content to know no more, quite happy.

 

We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had

to become acquainted with many residents in and out of the

neighbourhood who knew Mr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that

everybody knew him who wanted to do anything with anybody else’s

money. It amazed us when we began to sort his letters and to

answer some of them for him in the growlery of a morning to find

how the great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondents

appeared to be to form themselves into committees for getting in

and laying out money. The ladies were as desperate as the

gentlemen; indeed, I think they were even more so. They threw

themselves into committees in the most impassioned manner and

collected subscriptions with a vehemence