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

Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former

husbands?”

 

I said “Not at all!”

 

“And most remarkable men!” said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence.

“Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger’s first

husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of

Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European

reputation.”

 

Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled.

 

“Yes, my dear!” Mr. Badger replied to the smile, “I was observing to

Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former

husbands—both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people

generally do, difficult to believe.”

 

“I was barely twenty,” said Mrs. Badger, “when I married Captain

Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I

am quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I

became the wife of Professor Dingo.”

 

“Of European reputation,” added Mr. Badger in an undertone.

 

“And when Mr. Badger and myself were married,” pursued Mrs. Badger,

“we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached

to the day.”

 

“So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands—two of them

highly distinguished men,” said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts,

“and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the

forenoon!”

 

We all expressed our admiration.

 

“But for Mr. Badger’s modesty,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I would take

leave to correct him and say three distinguished men.”

 

“Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!” observed Mrs.

Badger.

 

“And, my dear,” said Mr. Badger, “what do I always tell you? That

without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction

as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many

opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak—no, really,” said

Mr. Badger to us generally, “so unreasonable—as to put my

reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain

Swosser and Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr.

Jarndyce,” continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the

next drawing-room, “in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was

taken on his return home from the African station, where he had

suffered from the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it

too yellow. But it’s a very fine head. A very fine head!”

 

We all echoed, “A very fine head!”

 

“I feel when I look at it,” said Mr. Badger, “‘That’s a man I should

like to have seen!’ It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that

Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor

Dingo. I knew him well—attended him in his last illness—a

speaking likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs.

Swosser. Over the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of

Mrs. Bayham Badger IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no

copy.”

 

Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very

genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and

the professor still ran in Mr. Badger’s head, and as Ada and I had

the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full

benefit of them.

 

“Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray.

Bring me the professor’s goblet, James!”

 

Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass.

 

“Astonishing how they keep!” said Mr. Badger. “They were presented

to Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean.”

 

He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.

 

“Not that claret!” he said. “Excuse me! This is an occasion, and

ON an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.

(James, Captain Swosser’s wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that

was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago.

You will find it very curious. My dear, I shall he happy to take

some of this wine with you. (Captain Swosser’s claret to your

mistress, James!) My love, your health!”

 

After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger’s first

and second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room

a biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser

before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the

time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,

given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.

 

“The dear old Crippler!” said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. “She

was a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain

Swosser used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce

a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser

loved that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission,

he frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk,

he would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where

he fell—raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the

fire from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes.”

 

Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.

 

“It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo,” she

resumed with a plaintive smile. “I felt it a good deal at first.

Such an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined

with science—particularly science—inured me to it. Being the

professor’s sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost

forgot that I had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is

singular that the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and

that Mr. Badger is not in the least like either!”

 

We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and

Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.

In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never

madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,

never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.

The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and

Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with

great difficulty, “Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and

water!” when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the

tomb.

 

Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,

that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other’s

society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be

separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we

got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent

than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my

arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.

 

“My darling Esther!” murmured Ada. “I have a great secret to tell

you!”

 

A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!

 

“What is it, Ada?”

 

“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!”

 

“Shall I try to guess?” said I.

 

“Oh, no! Don’t! Pray don’t!” cried Ada, very much startled by the

idea of my doing so.

 

“Now, I wonder who it can be about?” said I, pretending to consider.

 

“It’s about—” said Ada in a whisper. “It’s about—my cousin

Richard!”

 

“Well, my own!” said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I

could see. “And what about him?”

 

“Oh, Esther, you would never guess!”

 

It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her

face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little

glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just

yet.

 

“He says—I know it’s very foolish, we are both so young—but he

says,” with a burst of tears, “that he loves me dearly, Esther.”

 

“Does he indeed?” said I. “I never heard of such a thing! Why, my

pet of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!”

 

To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me

round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant!

 

“Why, my darling,” said I, “what a goose you must take me for! Your

cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I

don’t know how long!”

 

“And yet you never said a word about it!” cried Ada, kissing me.

 

“No, my love,” said I. “I waited to be told.”

 

“But now I have told you, you don’t think it wrong of me, do you?”

returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the

hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no

very freely.

 

“And now,” said I, “I know the worst of it.”

 

“Oh, that’s not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!” cried Ada,

holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast.

 

“No?” said I. “Not even that?”

 

“No, not even that!” said Ada, shaking her head.

 

“Why, you never mean to say—” I was beginning in joke.

 

But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tear’s, cried, “Yes, I

do! You know, you know I do!” And then sobbed out, “With all my

heart I do! With all my whole heart, Esther!”

 

I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I

had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the

talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of

it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.

 

“Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?” she asked.

 

“Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet,” said I, “I should think my

cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know.”

 

“We want to speak to him before Richard goes,” said Ada timidly,

“and we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you

wouldn’t mind Richard’s coming in, Dame Durden?”

 

“Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?” said I.

 

“I am not quite certain,” returned Ada with a bashful simplicity

that would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, “but

I think he’s waiting at the door.”

 

There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me,

and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love

with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so

trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for

a little while—I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself—

and then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and

how there must be a lapse of several years before this early love

could come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if

it were real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution

to do their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and

perseverance, each always for the other’s sake. Well! Richard said

that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said

that she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they

called me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat

there, advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we

parted, I gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to-morrow.

 

So, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast,