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

it? I did not think it

necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that,

in any case, but merely told him where I did reside.

 

“A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he said, kissing his right

glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils, “will look

leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish—

polish—polish!”

 

He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I

thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the

sofa. And really he did look very like it.

 

“To polish—polish—polish!” he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff

and gently fluttering his fingers. “But we are not, if I may say

so to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art—” with the

high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make

without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes “—we are not

what we used to be in point of deportment.”

 

“Are we not, sir?” said I.

 

“We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking his head, which he

could do to a very limited extent in his cravat. “A levelling age

is not favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I

speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say

that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop,

or that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to

inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at

Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he?

Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But

these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am—

still repeated occasionally among the upper classes.”

 

“Indeed?” said I.

 

He replied with the high-shouldered bow. “Where what is left among

us of deportment,” he added, “still lingers. England—alas, my

country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.

She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to

succeed us but a race of weavers.”

 

“One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated

here,” said I.

 

“You are very good.” He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again.

“You flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my

poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should

disparage my dear child, but he has—no deportment.”

 

“He appears to be an excellent master,” I observed.

 

“Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that

can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can

impart. But there ARE things—” He took another pinch of snuff

and made the bow again, as if to add, “This kind of thing, for

instance.”

 

I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby’s

lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater

drudgery than ever.

 

“My amiable child,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.

 

“Your son is indefatigable,” said I.

 

“It is my reward,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “to hear you say so. In

some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother.

She was a devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman,” said Mr.

Turveydrop with very disagreeable gallantry, “what a sex you are!”

 

I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her

bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there

was a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the

unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don’t

know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a

dozen words.

 

“My dear,” said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, “do you know

the hour?”

 

“No, father.” The son had no watch. The father had a handsome

gold one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to

mankind.

 

“My son,” said he, “it’s two o’clock. Recollect your school at

Kensington at three.”

 

“That’s time enough for me, father,” said Prince. “I can take a

morsel of dinner standing and be off.”

 

“My dear boy,” returned his father, “you must be very quick. You

will find the cold mutton on the table.”

 

“Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?”

 

“Yes, my dear. I suppose,” said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes

and lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, “that I

must show myself, as usual, about town.”

 

“You had better dine out comfortably somewhere,” said his son.

 

“My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think,

at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade.”

 

“That’s right. Good-bye, father!” said Prince, shaking hands.

 

“Good-bye, my son. Bless you!”

 

Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to

do his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him,

so dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it

were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe

implicitly in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by

Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I

saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his

almost childish character. I felt a liking for him and a

compassion for him as he put his little kit in his pocket—and with

it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy—and went away

good-humouredly to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington,

that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the

censorious old lady.

 

The father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a

manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the

same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street,

on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going

to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some

moments, I was so lost in reconsidering what I had heard and seen

in Newman Street that I was quite unable to talk to Caddy or even

to fix my attention on what she said to me, especially when I began

to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any

other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and

founded a reputation entirely on their deportment. This became so

bewildering and suggested the possibility of so many Mr.

Turveydrops that I said, “Esther, you must make up your mind to

abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy.” I

accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to

Lincoln’s Inn.

 

Caddy told me that her lover’s education had been so neglected that

it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not

so anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear,

he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into

short words that they sometimes quite lost their English

appearance. “He does it with the best intention,” observed Caddy,

“but it hasn’t the effect he means, poor fellow!” Caddy then went

on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar when he had

passed his whole life in the dancing-school and had done nothing

but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And

what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as

she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable

than learned. “Besides, it’s not as if I was an accomplished girl

who had any right to give herself airs,” said Caddy. “I know

little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!

 

“There’s another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,”

continued Caddy, “which I should not have liked to mention unless

you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours

is. It’s of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be

useful for Prince’s wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a

state of muddle that it’s impossible, and I have only been more

disheartened whenever I have tried. So I get a little practice

with—who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning I

help her to tidy her room and clean her birds, and I make her cup

of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to

make it so well that Prince says it’s the very best coffee he ever

tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very

particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings

too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and

butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my

needle, yet,” said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy’s frock,

“but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been engaged to

Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I

hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out at first this

morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty and to

feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the whole I hope I am

better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to Ma.”

 

The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched

mine. “Caddy, my love,” I replied, “I begin to have a great

affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends.”

 

“Oh, do you?” cried Caddy. “How happy that would make me!”

 

“My dear Caddy,” said I, “let us be friends from this time, and let

us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right

way through them.” Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could

in my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would

not have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop that day for any smaller

consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.

 

By this time we were come to Mr. Krook’s, whose private door stood

open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room

to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we

proceeded upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an

inquest and that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The

door and window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It

was the room with the dark door to which Miss Flite had secretly

directed my attention when I was last in the house. A sad and

desolate place it was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a

strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. “You look pale,”

said Caddy when we came out, “and cold!” I felt as if the room had

chilled me.

 

We had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada

were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite’s garret. They

were looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so

good as to attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion

spoke with her cheerfully by the fire.

 

“I have finished my professional visit,” he said, coming forward.

“Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is

set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I

understand.”

 

Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a

general curtsy to us.

 

“Honoured, indeed,” said she, “by another visit from the wards in

Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath