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

by Lynn Shepherd

  I really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only have brushed up his hair, or turned up his collar, it would have been bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing naturally. As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the box, I could not bear to do that; because I knew Richard and Ada relied on having me next them, and that they could never have talked together so happily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not knowing where to look—for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Guppy’s eyes were following me—and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this young man was putting himself on my account.

  Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. Then I feared that the young man would lose his situation, and that I might ruin him. Sometimes, I thought of confiding in Richard; but was deterred by the possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy, and giving him black eyes. Sometimes, I thought, should I frown at him, or shake my head. Then I felt I could not do it. Sometimes, I considered whether I should write to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a correspondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Guppy’s perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly—where I am sure I saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful spikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The upholsterer’s where we lodged, being at the corner of two streets, and my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one moonlight night) leaning against the post, and evidently catching cold. If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the daytime, I really should have had no rest from him.

  While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring us to town was not neglected. Mr. Kenge’s cousin was a Mr. Bayham Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea, and attended a large public Institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard into his house, and to superintend his studies; and as it seemed that those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger’s roof, and Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger “well enough,” an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor’s consent was obtained, and it was all settled.

  On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr. Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger’s house. We were to be “merely a family party,” Mrs. Badger’s note said; and we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add, to the little list of her accomplishments, that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it.

  Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking gentleman, with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised eyes: some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands. We had barely taken our seats, when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite triumphantly:

  “You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham Badger’s third!”

  “Indeed?” said Mr. Jarndyce.

  “Her third!” said Mr. Badger. “Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the appearance, 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 be 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 accoun
t 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 quarterdeck 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?”

  “O Esther, you would never guess!”

  “Shall I try to guess?” said I.

  “O 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?”

  “O 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, and laugh, 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.”

  “O, 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 tears, 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?”

  “O! 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 tomorrow.

  So, when tomorrow came, I went to my Guardian after breakfast, in the room that was our town-substitute for the Growlery, and told him that I had it in trust to tell him something.

  “Well, little woman,” said he, shutting up his book, “if you have accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it.”

  “I hope not, Guardian,” said I. “I can guarantee that there is no secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday.”

  “Aye? And what is it, Esther?”

  “Guardian,” said I, “you remember the happy night when first we came down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?”

  I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then. Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.

  “Because—” said I, with a little hesitation.

  “Yes, my dear!” said he. “Don’t hurry.”

  “Because,” said I, “Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have told each other so.”

  “Already!” cried my guardian, quite astonished.

  “Yes!” said I. “And to tell you the truth, Guardian, I rather expected it.”

  “The deuce you did!” said he.

  He sat considering for a minute or two; with his smile, at once so handsome and so kind, upon his changing face; and then requested me to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he encircled Ada with one arm, in his fatherly way, and addressed himself to Richard wit
h a cheerful gravity.

  “Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I am glad to have won your confidence. I hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us four which have so brightened my life, and so invested it with new interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don’t be shy, Ada, don’t be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together. I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was afar off, Rick, afar off!”

  “We look afar off, sir,” returned Richard.

  “Well!” said Mr. Jarndyce. “That’s rational. Now, hear me, my dears! I might tell you that you don’t know your own minds yet; that a thousand things may happen to divert you from one another; that it is well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken, or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I will assume that, a few years hence, you will be in your hearts to one another, what you are today. All I say before speaking to you according to that assumption is, if you do change—if you do come to find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and woman, than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me, Rick!)—don’t be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and hope to retain your confidence, if I do nothing to forfeit it.”

  “I am very sure, sir,” returned Richard, “that I speak for Ada, too, when I say that you have the strongest power over us both—rooted in respect, gratitude, and affection—strengthening every day.”

  “Dear cousin John,” said Ada, on his shoulder, “my father’s place can never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have rendered to him, is transferred to you.”