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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Precisely the same,” said Mr. Badger. “Finely expressed! The Professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness; when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer under the pillow, and chipping at the countenances of the attendants. The ruling passion!”

  Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to us, and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard; and, as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious talk with him.

  So, after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly right in whatever he said.

  “And how do you get on, Richard?” said I. I always sat down on the other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.

  “O! well enough!” said Richard.

  “He can’t say better than that, Esther, can he?” cried my pet, triumphantly.

  I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I couldn’t.

  “Well enough?” I repeated.

  “Yes,” said Richard, “well enough. It’s rather jog-trotty and humdrum. But it’ll do as well as anything else!”

  “O! My dear Richard!” I remonstrated.

  “What’s the matter?” said Richard.

  “Do as well as anything else!”

  “I don’t think there’s any harm in that, Dame Durden,” said Ada, looking so confidently at me across him; “because if it will do as well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.”

  “O yes, I hope so,” returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair from his forehead. “After all, it may be only a kind of probation till our suit is—I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit. Forbidden ground! O yes, it’s all right enough. Let us talk about something else.”

  Ada would have done so, willingly, and with a full persuasion that we had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.

  “No, but Richard,” said I, “and my dear Ada! Consider how important it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It will be too late, very soon.”

  “O yes! We must talk about it!” said Ada. “But I think Richard is right.”

  What was the use of my trying to look wise, when she was so pretty, and so engaging, and so fond of him!

  “Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard,” said I, “and they seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the profession.”

  “Did they though?” said Richard. “O! Well, that rather alters the case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don’t care much about it. But O, it don’t matter! It’ll do as well as anything else!”

  “You hear him, Ada!” said I.

  “The fact is,” Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half jocosely, “it is not quite in my way. I don’t take to it. And I get too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger’s first and second.”

  “I am sure that’s very natural!” cried Ada, quite delighted. “The very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!”

  “Then,” pursued Richard, “it’s monotonous, and today is too like yesterday, and tomorrow is too like today.”

  “But I am afraid,” said I, “this is an objection to all kinds of application—to life itself, except under some very uncommon circumstances.”

  “Do you think so?” returned Richard, still considering. “Perhaps! Ha! Why, then, you know,” he added, suddenly becoming gay again, “we travel outside a circle, to what I said just now. It’ll do as well as anything else. O, it’s all right enough! Let us talk about something else.”

  But, even Ada, with her loving face—and if it had seemed innocent and trusting, when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much more did it seem now, when I knew her innocent and trusting heart—even Ada shook her head at this, and looked serious. So I thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard, that if he were sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never meant to be careless of Ada; and that it was a part of his affectionate consideration for her, not to slight the importance of a step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost grave.

  “My dear Mother Hubbard,” he said, “that’s the very thing! I have thought of that, several times; and have been quite angry with myself for meaning to be so much in earnest, and—somehow—not exactly being so. I don’t know how it is; I seem to want something or other to stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don’t settle down to constancy in other things. It’s such uphill work, and it takes such a time!” said Richard, with an air of vexation.

  “That may be,” I suggested, “because you don’t like what you have chosen.”

  “Poor fellow!” said Ada. “I am sure I don’t wonder at it!”

  No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried again; but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder, and while he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!

  “You see, my precious girl,” said Richard, passing her golden curls through and through his hand, “I was a little hasty, perhaps; or I misunderstood my own inclinations, perhaps. They don’t seem to lie in that direction. I couldn’t tell, till I tried. Now the question is, whether it’s worthwhile to undo all that has been done. It seems like making a great disturbance about nothing particular.”

  “My dear Richard,” said I, “how can you say about nothing particular?”

  “I don’t mean absolutely that,” he returned. “I mean that it may be nothing particular, because I may never want it.”

  Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly worthwhile to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial pursuit?

  “There, my dear Mrs. Shipton,” said Richard, “you touch me home. Yes, I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me.”

  “The law!” repeated Ada, as if she were afraid of the name.

  “If I went into Kenge’s office,” said Richard, “and if I were placed under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the—hum!—the forbidden ground—and should be able to study it, and master it, and to satisfy myself that it was not neglected, and was being properly conducted. I should be able to look after Ada’s interests, and my own interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour.”

  I was not by any means so sure of that; and I saw how his hankering after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes, cast a shade on Ada’s face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure that his mind was made up now.

  “My dear Minerva,” said Richard, “I am as steady as you are. I made a mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won’t do so any more, and I’ll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,” said Richard, relapsing into doubt, “if it really is worthwhile, after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!”

  This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that we had said already, and to our coming to much the same conclusion afterwards. But, we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment’s delay; and his disposition was naturally so opposed to concealment; that he sought him out at once (taking us with him), and made a full avowal. “Rick,” said my guardian, after hearing him attentively, “we can retreat with honour, and we will. But
we must be careful—for our cousin’s sake, Rick, for our cousin’s sake—that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it.”

  Richard’s energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind, that he would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge’s office in that hour, and to have entered into articles with him on the spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down among us in his lightest spirits, and talking as if his one unvarying purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held possession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him, but rather grave; enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we were going upstairs to bed, to say: “Cousin John, I hope you don’t think the worse of Richard?”

  “No, my love,” said he.

  “Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such a difficult case. It is not uncommon.”

  “No, no, my love,” said he. “Don’t look unhappy.”

  “O, I am not unhappy, cousin John!” said Ada, smiling cheerfully, with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him good night. “But I should be a little so, if you thought at all the worse of Richard.”

  “My dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “I should think the worse of him only if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be more disposed to quarrel with myself, even then, than with poor Rick, for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!”

  “No, indeed, cousin John,” said Ada, “I am sure I could not—I am sure I would not—think any ill of Richard, if the whole world did. I could, and I would, think better of him then, than at any other time!”

  So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his shoulders—both hands now—and looking up into his face, like the picture of Truth!

  “I think,” said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, “I think it must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall, occasionally, be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant slumbers! Happy dreams!”

  This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes, with something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard, when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once more, was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally been.

  Ada praised Richard more to me, that night, than ever she had praised him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed her cheek after she had slept an hour, and saw how tranquil and happy she looked.

  For I was so little inclined to sleep, myself, that night, that I sat up working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don’t know why. At least I don’t think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t think it matters.

  At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I would leave myself not a moment’s leisure to be low-spirited. For I naturally said, “Esther! You to be low-spirited. You!” And it really was time to say so, for I—yes, I really did see myself in the glass, almost crying. “As if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!” said I.

  If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it directly; but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy with at that time, and sat down to it with great determination. It was necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to go on with it until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then to go to bed.

  I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in a work-table drawer in the temporary Growlery; and coming to a stop for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To my great surprise, on going in, I found my guardian still there, and sitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn. Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still for a moment; and should have retired without speaking, had he not, in again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and started.

  “Esther!”

  I told him what I had come for.

  “At work so late, my dear?”

  “I am working late tonight,” said I, “because I couldn’t sleep, and wished to tire myself. But, dear Guardian, you are late too, and look weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?”

  “None, little woman, that you would readily understand,” said he.

  He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me, that I inwardly repeated, as if that would help me to his meaning, “That I could readily understand!”

  “Remain a moment, Esther,” said he. “You were in my thoughts.”

  “I hope I was not the trouble, Guardian?”

  He slightly waved his hand, and fell into his usual manner. The change was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, “None that I could understand!”

  “Little woman,” said my guardian, “I was thinking—that is, I have been thinking since I have been sitting here—that you ought to know, of your own history, all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing.”

  “Dear Guardian,” I replied, “when you spoke to me before on that subject—”

  “But since then,” he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to say, “I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my having anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know.”

  “If you think so, Guardian, it is right.”

  “I think so,” he returned, very gently, and kindly, and very distinctly. “My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can attach to your position, in the mind of any man or woman worth a thought, it is right that you, at least, of all the world should not magnify it to yourself, by having vague impressions of its nature.”

  I sat down; and said, after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to be, “One of my earliest remembrances, Guardian, is of these words: ‘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 had covered my face with my hands, in repeating the words; but I took them away now with a better kind of shame, I hope, and told him, that to him I owed the blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never, never, never felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well knew that he was never to be thanked, and said no more.

  “Nine years, my dear,” he said after thinking for a little while, “have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as it told me in so many words), perhaps, because it was the writer’s idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me: perhaps, because it was mine to justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be left entir
ely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me, to consider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun.”

  I listened in silence, and looked attentively at him.

  “Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life; and replied to the letter.”

  I took his hand and kissed it.

  “It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one. I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord, and not of his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there were any ties of blood in such a case, the child’s aunt. That more than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution), for any human consideration, disclose. My dear, I have told you all.”

  I held his hand for a little while in mine.

  “I saw my ward oftener than she saw me,” he added, cheerily making light of it, “and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy. She repays me twenty-thousand-fold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!”

  “And oftener still,” said I, “she blesses the Guardian who is a Father to her!”

  At the word Father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been there, and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, “That I could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!” No, it was true I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day.

  “Take a fatherly good night, my dear,” said he, kissing me on the forehead, “and so to rest. These are late hours for working and thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little housekeeper!”