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

CHAPTER III

A Progress

 

I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion

of these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I

can remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say

to my doll when we were alone together, “Now, Dolly, I am not

clever, you know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a

dear!” And so she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair,

with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips, staring at me—or not

so much at me, I think, as at nothing—while I busily stitched away

and told her every one of my secrets.

 

My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom

dared to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody

else. It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be

to me when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my

room and say, “Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be

expecting me!” and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the

elbow of her great chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we

parted. I had always rather a noticing way—not a quick way, oh,

no!—a silent way of noticing what passed before me and thinking I

should like to understand it better. I have not by any means a

quick understanding. When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it

seems to brighten. But even that may be my vanity.

 

I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance—like some of the

princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming—by my

godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good,

good woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to

morning prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever

there were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if

she had ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an

angel—but she never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She

was so very good herself, I thought, that the badness of other

people made her frown all her life. I felt so different from her,

even making every allowance for the differences between a child and

a woman; I felt so poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never

could be unrestrained with her—no, could never even love her as I

wished. It made me very sorry to consider how good she was and how

unworthy of her I was, and I used ardently to hope that I might

have a better heart; and I talked it over very often with the dear

old doll, but I never loved my godmother as I ought to have loved

her and as I felt I must have loved her if I had been a better

girl.

 

This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally

was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at

ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing

that helped it very much.

 

I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa

either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn

a black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my

mama’s grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never

been taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more

than once approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael,

our only servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another

very good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said,

“Esther, good night!” and gone away and left me.

 

Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I

was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther

Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older

than I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but

there seemed to be some other separation between us besides that,

and besides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much

more than I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the

school (I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party,

to my great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining

for me, and I never went. I never went out at all.

 

It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other

birthdays—none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other

birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one

another—there were none on mine. My birthday was the most

melancholy day at home in the whole year.

 

I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know

it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed

I don’t), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My

disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel

such a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with

the quickness of that birthday.

 

Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table

before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another

sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don’t know

how long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across

the table at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily

at me, “It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had

had no birthday, that you had never been born!”

 

I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, “Oh, dear godmother,

tell me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?”

 

“No,” she returned. “Ask me no more, child!”

 

“Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear

godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose

her? Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my

fault, dear godmother? No, no, no, don’t go away. Oh, speak to

me!”

 

I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her

dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while,

“Let me go!” But now she stood still.

 

Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the

midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp

hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but

withdrew it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering

heart. She raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before

her, said slowly in a cold, low voice—I see her knitted brow and

pointed finger—“Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you

were hers. The time will come—and soon enough—when you will

understand this better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman

can. I have forgiven her”—but her face did not relent—“the wrong

she did to me, and I say no more of it, though it was greater than

you will ever know—than any one will ever know but I, the

sufferer. For yourself, unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded

from the first of these evil anniversaries, pray daily that the

sins of others be not visited upon your head, according to what is

written. Forget your mother and leave all other people to forget

her who will do her unhappy child that greatest kindness. Now,

go!”

 

She checked me, however, as I was about to depart