There were more than two full hours yet to elapse, before she could come; and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so well that I was more concerned for their effects on her than on any one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined—I am quite certain I did not, that day—but, I thought, would she be wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she expected? Might she not look for her old Esther, and not find her? Might she not have to grow used to me, and to begin all over again?
I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl’s face so well, and it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure, beforehand, she could not hide that first look from me. And I considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings, which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?
Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such bad preparation, that I resolved to go along the road again, and meet her.
So I said to Charley, “Charley, I will go by myself and walk along the road until she comes.” Charley highly approving of anything that pleased me, I went, and left her at home.
But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was not, and could not, be the coach yet), that I resolved to turn back and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would, nor could, do any such thing), that I ran the greater part of the way, to avoid being overtaken.
Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice thing to have done! Now I was hot, and had made the worst of it instead of the best.
At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the garden, “Here she comes, miss! Here she is!”
I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room, and hid myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my darling calling as she came upstairs, “Esther, my dear, my love, where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!”
She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel girl! the old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection. Nothing else in it—no, nothing, nothing!
O how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and pressing me to her faithful heart.
CHAPTER 37
JARNDYCE AND JARNDYCE
If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine; and I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my present duty appeared to be plain, and, blest in the attachment of my dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though often when she was asleep, and all was quiet, the remembrance of my mother kept me waking, and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be—except, of course, in that particular of which I have said enough, and which I have no intention of mentioning any more, just now, if I can help it.
The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening, when Ada asked me over our work, if the family were at the house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great. Greater still, when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied that she had been kind and interested; and when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner, and her imperious chilling air. But Charley helped me through unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the House two nights, on her way from London to visit at some other great house in the next county; and that she had left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am sure; for she heard of more sayings and doings, in a day, than would have come to my ears in a month.
We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn’s. My pet had scarcely been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very important air behind Ada’s chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the room.
“Oh! If you please, miss,” said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes at their roundest and largest. “You’re wanted at the Dedlock Arms.”
“Why, Charley,” said I, “who can possibly want me at the public-house?”
“I don’t know, miss,” returned Charley, putting her head forward, and folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron; which she always did, in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential, “but it’s a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please to come without saying anything about it.”
“Whose compliments, Charley?”
“His’n, miss,” returned Charley: whose grammatical education was advancing, but not very rapidly.
“And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?”
“I am not the messenger, if you please, miss,” returned my little maid. “It was W. Grubble, miss.”
“And who is W. Grubble, Charley?”
“Mister Grubble, miss,” returned Charley. “Don’t you know, miss? The Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble,” which Charley delivered as if she were slowly spelling out the sign.
“Aye? The landlord, Charley?”
“Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother’s the sawyer, that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he’ll drink himself to death entirely on beer,” said Charley.
Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Charley be quick with my bonnet and veil, and my shawl; and having put them on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at home as in Mr. Boythorn’s garden.
Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very clean little tavern, waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded passage to his best parlour: a neat carpeted room, with more plants in it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline, several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I don’t know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man, who never seemed to consider himself cosily dressed for his own fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat except at church.
He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it looked, backed out of the room—unexpectedly to me, for I was going to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears, I thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room in which I was, and who should stand before me, but Richard!
“My dear Esther!” he said, “my best friend!” and he really was so warm-hearted and earnest, that in the first surprise and pleasure of his brotherly greeting, I could scarcely find breath to tell him that Ada was well.
“Answering my very thoughts—always the same dear girl!” said Richard, leading me to a chair, and seating himself beside me.
I put my veil up, but not quite.
“Always the same dear girl!”
said Richard, just as heartily as before.
I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard’s sleeve, and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind welcome, and how greatly I rejoiced to see him; the more so because of the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to him.
“My love,” said Richard, “there is no one with whom I have a greater wish to talk, than you, for I want you to understand me.”
“And I want you, Richard,” said I, shaking my head, “to understand some one else.”
“Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce,” said Richard, “I suppose you mean him?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then, I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind—you, my dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce, or Mr. Anybody.”
I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.
“Well, well, my dear,” said Richard, “we won’t go into that now. I want to appear quietly in your country house here, with you under my arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty to John Jarndyce will allow that?”
“My dear Richard,” I returned, “you know you would be heartily welcome at his house—your home, if you will but consider it so; and you are as heartily welcome here!”
“Spoken like the best of little women!” cried Richard, gaily.
I asked him how he liked his profession.
“Oh, I like it well enough!” said Richard. “It’s all right. It does as well as anything else, for a time. I don’t know that I shall care about it when I come to be settled; but I can sell out then, and—however, never mind all that botheration at present.”
So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that passed over him, so dreadfully like her!
“I am in town on leave, just now,” said Richard.
“Indeed?”
“Yes. I have run over to look after my—my Chancery interests, before the long vacation,” said Richard, forcing a careless laugh. “We are beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you.”
No wonder that I shook my head!
“As you say, it’s not a pleasant subject.” Richard spoke with the same shade crossing his face as before. “Let it go to the four winds for tonight.—Puff! Gone!—Who do you suppose is with me?”
“Was it Mr. Skimpole’s voice I heard?”
“That’s the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a fascinating child it is!”
I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He answered, No, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old infant—so he called Mr. Skimpole—and the dear old infant had told him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come too; and so he had brought him. “And he is worth—not to say his sordid expenses—but thrice his weight in gold,” said Richard. “He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and green-hearted!”
I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole’s unworldliness in his having his expenses paid by Richard; but I made no remark about that. Indeed, he came in, and turned our conversation. He was charmed to see me; said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and sympathy, at intervals for six weeks, on my account; had never been so happy as in hearing of my progress; began to understand the mixture of good and evil in the world now; felt that he appreciated health the more, when somebody else was ill; didn’t know but what it might be in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B happier in looking straight; or that C should carry a wooden leg, to make D better satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking.
“My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard,” said Mr. Skimpole, “full of the brightest visions of the future, which he evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that’s delightful, that’s inspiriting, that’s full of poetry! In old times, the woods and solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment from the bench. That’s very pleasant you know! Some ill-conditioned growling fellow may say to me, ‘What’s the use of these legal and equitable abuses? How do you defend them?’ I reply, ‘My growling friend, I don’t defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There is a shepherd-youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don’t say it is for this that they exist—for I am a child among you worldly grumblers, and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything—but it may be so.’ ”
I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time, when he most required some right principle and purpose, he should have this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how such a nature as my guardian’s, experienced in the world, and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr. Skimpole’s avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed; or that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole’s idle turn quite as well as any other part, and with less trouble.
They both walked back with me; and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the gate, I walked softly in with Richard, and said, “Ada, my love, I have brought a gentleman to visit you.” It was not difficult to read the blushing startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins only.
I almost mistrusted myself, as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her very much—any one must have done that—and I dare say, would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour, but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still, I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even here: that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness, in this as in all things, until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind. Ah me! what Richard would have been without that blight, I never shall know now!
He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce; that he had come openly to see her, and to see me, and to justify himself for the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right, through the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o’clock, and this was arranged. Mr. Skimpole soon afterwards appeared, and made us merry for an hour. He particularly requested to see Little Coavinses (meaning Charley), and told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father all the business in his power; and that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.
“For I am constantly being taken in these nets,” said Mr. Skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, “and am constantly being bailed out—like a boat. Or paid off—like a ship’s company. Somebody always does it for me. I can’t do it, you know, for I never have any money. But Somebody does it. I get out by Somebody’s means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who Somebody is, upon my word I couldn’t tell you. Let us drink to Somebody. God bless him!”
Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy, and the sky witho
ut a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory of that day.
“This is a lovely place,” said Richard, looking round. “None of the jar and discord of law-suits here!”
But there was other trouble.
“I tell you what, my dear girl,” said Richard, “when I get affairs in general settled, I shall come down here, I think; and rest.”
“Would it not be better to rest now?” I asked.
“Oh, as to resting now,” said Richard, “or as to doing anything very definite now, that’s not easy. In short, it can’t be done; I can’t do it at least.”
“Why not?” said I.
“You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off—to be from top to bottom pulled down or built up—tomorrow, next day, next week, next month, next year—you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now? There’s no now for us suitors.”
I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor little wandering friend had expatiated, when I saw again the darkened look of last night. Terrible to think, it had in it also, a shade of that unfortunate man who had died.
“My dear Richard,” said I, “this is a bad beginning of our conversation.”
“I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden.”
The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White) Page 96