The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “It would be useless to ask,” says my Lady, with the dreariness of the place in Lincolnshire still upon her, “whether anything has been done.”

  “Nothing that you would call anything, has been done today,” replies Mr. Tulkinghorn.

  “Nor ever will be,” says my Lady.

  Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a shadowy impression that for his name—the name of Dedlock—to be in a cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of confusion, as a something, devised in conjunction with a variety of other somethings, by the perfection of human wisdom, for the eternal settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole of a fixed opinion, that to give the sanction of his countenance to any complaints respecting it, would be to encourage some person in the lower classes to rise up somewhere—like Wat Tyler.

  “As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any new proceedings in a cause”; cautious man, Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no more responsibility than necessary; “and further, as I see you are going to Paris; I have brought them in my pocket.”

  (Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the bye, but the delight of the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)

  Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady’s elbow, puts on his spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.

  “ ‘In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce—’ ”

  My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal horrors as he can.

  Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles, and begins again lower down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the fire, and appears to have a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities, as ranging among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot, where my Lady sits; and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful, being priceless, but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the papers on the table—looks at them nearer—looks at them nearer still—asks impulsively:

  “Who copied that?”

  Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady’s animation and her unusual tone.

  “Is it what you people call law-hand?” she asks, looking full at him in her careless way again, and toying with her screen.

  “Not quite. Probably”—Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks—“the legal character which it has, was acquired after the original hand was formed. Why do you ask?”

  “Anything to vary this detestable monotony. O, go on, do!”

  Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater, my Lady screens her face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries “Eh? what do you say?”

  “I say I am afraid,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has risen hastily, “that Lady Dedlock is ill.”

  “Faint,” my Lady murmurs, with white lips, “only that; but it is like the faintness of death. Don’t speak to me. Ring, and take me to my room!”

  Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to return.

  “Better now,” quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down and read to him alone. “I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying—and she really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire.”

  CHAPTER 3

  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, “O 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, O 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, “O, dear godmother, tell me, pray do tell me, did mama die on my birthday?”

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

  “O, 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. O, 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 from her—so frozen as I was!—and added this:

  “Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.”

  I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll’s cheek against mine wet with tears; and holding that solitary friend upon my bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy, at any time, to anybody’s heart, and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.

  Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my birthday, and confided to her that I would try, as hard as ever I could, to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt guilty and yet innocent), and would strive as I grew up to be industrious, contented, and kind-hearted, and to do some good to some one, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to my eyes.

  There! I have wiped them away now, and can go on again properly.

  I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than ever. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and O, towards her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very diligent.

  One sunny afternoon, when I had come home from school with my books and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the parlour-door, and called me back. Sitting with her, I found—which was very unusual indeed—a stranger. A portly important-looking gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon his little finger.

  “This,” said my godmother in an undertone, “is the child.” Then she said, in her naturally stern way of speaking, “This is Esther, sir.”

  The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me, and said, “Come here, my dear!” He shook hands with me, and asked me to take off my bonnet—looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said, “Ah!” and afterwards “Yes!” And then, taking off his eye-glasses, and folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turning the case about in his two hands he gave my godmother a nod. Upon that, my godmother said, “You may go upstairs, Esther!” and I made him my curtsy and left him.

  It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen, when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o’clock, as I always did, to read the Bible to her; and was reading, from St. John, how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.

  “ ‘So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her!’ ”

  I was stopped by my godmother’s rising, putting her hand to her head, and crying out, in an awful voice, from quite another part of the book:

  “ ‘Watch ye therefore! lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!’ ”

  In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had sounded through the house, and been heard in the street.

  She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little altered outwardly; with her old handsome resolute frown that I so well knew, carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her, asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained unsoftened.

  On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs. Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone away.

  “My name is Kenge,” he said; “you may remember it, my child; Kenge and Carboy, Lincoln’s Inn.”

  I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.

  “Pray be seated—here near me. Don’t distress yourself; it’s of no use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn’t inform you who were acquainted with the late Miss Barbary’s affairs, that her means die with her; and that this young lady, now her aunt is dead—”

  “My aunt, sir!”

  “It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to be gained by it,” said Mr. Kenge, smoothly. “Aunt in fact, though not in law. Don’t distress yourself! Don’t weep! Don’t tremble! Mrs. Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of—the—a—Jarndyce and Jarndyce.”

  “Never,” said Mrs. Rachael.

  “Is it possible,” pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses, “that our young friend—I beg you won’t distress yourself!—never heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?”

  I shook my head, wondering even what it was.

  “Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” said Mr. Kenge, looking over his glasses at me, and softly turning the case about and about, as if he were petting something. “Not of one of the greates
t Chancery suits known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce—the—a—in itself a monument of Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause that could not exist, out of this free and great country. I should say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs. Rachael”—I was afraid he addressed himself to her, because I appeared inattentive—“amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty THOUSAND POUNDS!” said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair.

  I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely unacquainted with the subject, that I understood nothing about it even then.

  “And she really never heard of the cause!” said Mr. Kenge. “Surprising!”

  “Miss Barbary, sir,” returned Mrs. Rachael, “who is now among the Seraphim—”

  (“I hope so, I am sure,” said Mr. Kenge politely.)

  “—Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more.”

  “Well!” said Mr. Kenge. “Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the point,” addressing me. “Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact that is; for I am bound to observe that in law you had none), being deceased, and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs. Rachael—”

  “O dear no!” said Mrs. Rachael quickly.

  “Quite so,” assented Mr. Kenge;—“that Mrs. Rachael should charge herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won’t distress yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago, and which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow, that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and otherwise, a highly humane, but at the same time singular man, shall I compromise myself by any stretch of my professional caution?” said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair again, and looking calmly at us both.