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

animate and inanimate—only last Sunday,

my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant

Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.

 

She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul

lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it

round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect

remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been

experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging

it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when

next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star

a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a

plain—two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow

descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob’s dream!

 

Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored.

When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own

greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so

inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back

in his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance

to society.

 

“You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?” says my

Lady after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost

read a page in twenty miles.

 

“Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever.”

 

“I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s long effusions, I think?”

 

“You see everything,” says Sir Leicester with admiration.

 

“Ha!” sighs my Lady. “He is the most tiresome of men!”

 

“He sends—I really beg your pardon—he sends,” says Sir Leicester,

selecting the letter and unfolding it, “a message to you. Our

stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out

of my memory. I beg you’ll excuse me. He says—” Sir Leicester is

so long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady

looks a little irritated. “He says ‘In the matter of the right of

way—’ I beg your pardon, that’s not the place. He says—yes!

Here I have it! He says, ‘I beg my respectful compliments to my

Lady, who, I hope, has benefited by the change. Will you do me the

favour to mention (as it may interest her) that I have something to

tell her on her return in reference to the person who copied the

affidavit in the Chancery suit, which so powerfully stimulated her

curiosity. I have seen him.’”

 

My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.

 

“That’s the message,” observes Sir Leicester.

 

“I should like to walk a little,” says my Lady, still looking out of

her window.

 

“Walk?” repeats Sir Leicester in a tone of surprise.

 

“I should like to walk a little,” says my Lady with unmistakable

distinctness. “Please to stop the carriage.”

 

The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the

rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an

impatient motion of my Lady’s hand. My Lady alights so quickly and

walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous

politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of

a minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She

smiles, looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a

quarter of a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the

carriage.

 

The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three

days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more

or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly

politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme

of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady,

says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be

her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each

other. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in

hand, to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my

Lady, how recognisant of my Lord’s politeness, with an inclination

of her gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers!

It is ravishing!

 

The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like

the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose

countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in

whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the

Radical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it

after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Lady for Chesney

Wold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire.

 

Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and

through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare

trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost’s Walk, touched

at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself

to coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in

their lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the

question of the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath,

some agreeing that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some

arguing with malcontents who won’t admit it, now all consenting to

consider the question disposed of, now all breaking out again in

violent debate, incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will

persist in putting in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to

swing and caw, the travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where

fires gleam warmly through some of the windows, though not through

so many as to give an inhabited expression to the darkening mass of

front. But the brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do

that.

 

Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester’s

customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.

 

“How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you.”

 

“I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir

Leicester?”

 

“In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell.”

 

“My Lady is looking charmingly well,” says Mrs. Rouncewell with

another curtsy.

 

My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is

as wearily well as she can hope to be.

 

But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady,

who has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else

she may have conquered, asks, “Who is that girl?”

 

“A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa.”

 

“Come here, Rosa!” Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an

appearance of interest. “Why, do you know how pretty you are,

child?” she says, touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.

 

Rosa, very much abashed, says, “No, if you please, my Lady!” and

glances up, and glances down, and don’t know where to look, but

looks all the prettier.

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Nineteen, my Lady.”

 

“Nineteen,” repeats my Lady thoughtfully. “Take care they don’t

spoil you by flattery.”

 

“Yes, my Lady.”

 

My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers

and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester

pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a

panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn’t know what

to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the

days of Queen Elizabeth.

 

That evening, in the housekeeper’s room, Rosa can do nothing but

murmur Lady Dedlock’s praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so

beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling

touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this,

not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of

affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven

forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of

that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world

admires; but if my Lady would only be “a little more free,” not

quite so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more

affable.

 

“‘Tis almost a pity,” Mrs. Rouncewell adds—only “almost” because it

borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it

is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs—“that my

Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young

lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of

excellence she wants.”

 

“Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?” says

Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good

grandson.

 

“More and most, my dear,” returns the housekeeper with dignity, “are

words it’s not my place to use—nor so much as to hear—applied to

any drawback on my Lady.”

 

“I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?”

 

“If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always

reason to be.”

 

“Well,” says Watt, “it’s to be hoped they line out of their prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and

vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!”

 

“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for

joking.”

 

“Sir Leicester is no joke by any means,” says Watt, “and I humbly

ask his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family

and their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my

stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller

might?”

 

“Surely, none in the world, child.”

 

“I am glad of that,” says Watt, “because I have an inexpressible

desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood.”

 

He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.

But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa’s ears that

burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady’s maid is holding

forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.

 

My Lady’s maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in

the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed

brown woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain

feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering

the jaws too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something

indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful

way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her

head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she

is in an ill humour and near knives. Through all the good taste of

her dress and little adornments, these objections so express

themselves that she seems to go about like a very neat she-wolf

imperfectly tamed. Besides being accomplished in all the knowledge

appertaining to her post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her

acquaintance with the language; consequently, she is in no want of

words to shower upon Rosa for having attracted my Lady’s attention,

and she pours them out with such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner

that her companion, the affectionate man, is rather relieved when

she arrives at the spoon stage of that performance.

 

Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady’s service since five

years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet,

caressed—absolutely caressed—by my Lady on the moment of her

arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! “And do you know how pretty you

are, child?” “No, my Lady.” You are right there! “And how old are

you, child! And take care