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

by Lynn Shepherd

  I neither worked nor thought, any more, that night. I opened my grateful heart to Heaven in thankfulness for its Providence to me and its care of me, and fell asleep.

  We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to China, and to India, as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a long, long time.

  I believe—at least I know—that he was not rich. All his widowed mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very little influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at the service of numbers of poor people, and did wonders of gentleness and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. He was seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything.

  I think—I mean, he told us—that he had been in practice three or four years, and that if he could have hoped to contend through three or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was bound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going away. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought it a pity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his art among those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it had a high opinion of him.

  When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes, but she seemed proud. She came from Wales; and had had, a long time ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan ap-Kerrig—of some place that sounded like Gimlet—who was the most illustrious person that ever was known, and all of whose relations were a sort of Royal Family. He appeared to have passed his life in always getting up into mountains, and fighting somebody; and a Bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his praises, in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it, Mewlinnwillinwodd.

  Mrs. Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great kinsman, said that, no doubt, wherever her son Allan went, he would remember his pedigree, and would on no account form an alliance below it. She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in India who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be picked up with property; but, that neither charms nor wealth would suffice for the descendant from such a line, without birth: which must ever be the first consideration. She talked so much about birth, that, for a moment, I half fancied, and with pain—but, what an idle fancy to suppose that she could think or care what mine was!

  Mr. Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was too considerate to let her see it, and contrived delicately to bring the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian for his hospitality, and for the very happy hours—he called them the very happy hours—he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he said, would go with him wherever he went, and would be always treasured. And so we gave him our hands, one after another—at least, they did—and I did; and so he put his lips to Ada’s hand—and to mine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage!

  I was very busy indeed, all day, and wrote directions home to the servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by the window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no expectation of seeing!

  “Why, Caddy, my dear,” said I, “what beautiful flowers!”

  She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.

  “Indeed, I think so, Esther,” replied Caddy. “They are the loveliest I ever saw.”

  “Prince, my dear?” said I, in a whisper.

  “No,” answered Caddy, shaking her head, and holding them to me to smell. “Not Prince.”

  “Well, to be sure, Caddy!” said I. “You must have two lovers!”

  “What? Do they look like that sort of thing?” said Caddy.

  “Do they look like that sort of thing?” I repeated, pinching her cheek.

  Caddy only laughed in return; and telling me that she had come for half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be waiting for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window: every now and then, handing me the flowers again, or trying how they looked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into my room, and put them in my dress.

  “For me?” said I, surprised.

  “For you,” said Caddy, with a kiss. “They were left behind by Somebody.”

  “Left behind?”

  “At poor Miss Flite’s,” said Caddy. “Somebody who has been very good to her, was hurrying away an hour ago, to join a ship, and left these flowers behind. No, no! Don’t take them out. Let the pretty little things lie here!” said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand, “because I was present myself, and I shouldn’t wonder if Somebody left them on purpose!”

  “Do they look like that sort of thing?” said Ada, coming laughingly behind me, and clasping me merrily round the waist. “O, yes, indeed they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing. O, very like it indeed, my dear!”

  CHAPTER 18

  LADY DEDLOCK

  It was not so easy as it had appeared at first, to arrange for Richard’s making a trial of Mr. Kenge’s office. Richard himself was the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr. Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave him at all. He didn’t know, he said, really. It wasn’t a bad profession; he couldn’t assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked it as well as he liked any other—suppose he gave it one more chance! Upon that, he shut himself up, for a few weeks, with some books and some bones, and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began to cool; and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long, that Midsummer arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger, and entered on an experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to be in earnest “this time.” And he was so good-natured throughout, and in such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.

  “As to Mr. Jarndyce,” who I may mention, found the wind much given, during this period, to stick in the east; “As to Mr. Jarndyce,” Richard would say to me, “he is the finest fellow in the world, Esther! I must be particularly careful if it were only for his satisfaction, to take myself well to task, and have a regular wind-up of this business now.”

  The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face and heedless manner, and with a fancy that everything could catch and nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us between-whiles, that he was doing it to such an extent, that he wondered his hair didn’t turn grey. His regular wind-up of the business was (as I have said), that he went to Mr. Kenge’s about Midsummer, to try how he liked it.

  All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in a former illustration: generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about the time of his going to Mr. Kenge’s, that he needed to have Fortunatus’s purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in this way:

  “My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if I had stayed at Badger’s I should have been obliged to spend twelve pounds at a blow, for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four pounds—in a lump—by the transaction!”

  It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what arrangements should be made for his living in London, while he experimented on the law; for, we had long since gone back to Bleak House, and it
was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to settle down at Mr. Kenge’s he would take some apartments or chambers where we, too, could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; “but, little woman,” he added, rubbing his head very significantly, “he hasn’t settled down there yet!” The discussions ended in our hiring for him, by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had, in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging; and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost, and made out that to spend anything less on something else was to save the difference.

  While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn’s was postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with us at that time of the year, very well; but he was in the full novelty of his new position, and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him; and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy.

  We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach, and had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had been all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it on his blue-eyed daughter’s birthday; but, he seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone. Chairs and tables, he said, were wearisome objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took one!

  “The oddity of the thing is,” said Mr. Skimpole, with a quickened sense of the ludicrous, “that my chairs and tables were not paid for, and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible. Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why should my landlord quarrel with him? If I have a pimple on my nose which is disagreeable to my landlord’s peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant’s nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!”

  “Well,” said my guardian, good-humouredly, “it’s pretty clear that whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay for them.”

  “Exactly!” returned Mr. Skimpole. “That’s the crowning point of unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, ‘My good man, you are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner. Have you no consideration for his property?’ He hadn’t the least.”

  “And refused all proposals,” said my guardian.

  “Refused all proposals,” returned Mr. Skimpole. “I made him business proposals. I had him into my room. I said, ‘You are a man of business, I believe?’ He replied, ‘I am.’ ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘now let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly and business-like. What do you want?’ In reply to this, he made use of the figurative expression—which has something Eastern about it—that he had never seen the colour of my money. ‘My amiable friend,’ said I, ‘I never have any money. I never know anything about money.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘what do you offer if I give you time?’ ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘I have no idea of time; but you say you are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper—and wafers—I am ready to do. Don’t pay yourself at another man’s expense (which is foolish), but be business-like!’ However, he wouldn’t be, and there was an end of it.”

  If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole’s childhood, it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including a basket of choice hot-house peaches), but never thought of paying for anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now—a liberal one—and on his replying, half-a-crown for a single passenger, said it was little enough too, all things considered; and left Mr. Jarndyce to give it him.

  It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the beanfields, with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to alight from the coach—a dull little town, with a church-spire, and a market-place, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade. After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as England could produce.

  At the inn, we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was overjoyed to see us, and dismounted with great alacrity.

  “By Heaven!” said he, after giving us a courteous greeting, “this is a most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is twenty-five minutes after its time, this afternoon. The coachman ought to be put to death!”

  “Is he after his time?” said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to address himself. “You know my infirmity.”

  “Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!” replied Mr. Boythorn, referring to his watch. “With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes. Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his father—and his uncle—were the most profligate coachmen that ever sat upon a box.”

  While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness, and was all smiles and pleasure.

  “I am sorry, ladies,” he said, standing bare-headed at the carriage-door, when all was ready, “that I am obliged to conduct you nearly two miles out of the way. But, our direct road lies through Sir Leicester Dedlock’s park; and, in that fellow’s property, I have sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse’s foot of mine, pending the present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!” And here, catching my guardian’s eye, he broke into one of his tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little market-town.

  “Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?” said my guardian as we drove along, and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.

  “Sir Arrogant Numskull is here,” replied Mr. Boythorn. “Ha ha ha! Sir Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels here. My Lady,” in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, “is expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figurehead of a baronet, is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!”

  “I suppose,” said my guardian laughing, “we may set foot in the park while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?”

  “I can lay no prohibition on my guests,” he said, bending his head to Ada and me, with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon him, “except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I cannot
have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold, which is a very fine place! But, by the light of this summer day, Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner, while you stay with me, you are likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an eight-day clock at all times; like one of a race of eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went—Ha ha ha!—but he will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of his friend and neighbour, Boythorn!”

  “I shall not put him to the proof,” said my guardian. “He is as indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds, and perhaps such a view of the house as any other sightseer might get, are quite enough for me.”

  “Well!” said Mr. Boythorn. “I am glad of it on the whole. It’s in better keeping. I am looked upon about here, as a second Ajax defying the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don’t. For he is, by Heaven! the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most cox-combical and utterly brainless ass!”

  Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending, enabled our friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us, and diverted his attention from its master.

  It was a picturesque old house, in a fine park richly wooded. Among the trees, and not far from the residence, he pointed out the spire of the little church of which he had spoken. O, the solemn woods over which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if Heavenly wings were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity, and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To Ada and to me, that, above all, appeared the pervading influence. On everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks, fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the prospect, to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.