________________________________________________
_ Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in
corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown
holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock
ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around
the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come
circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let
the gardener sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the
leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-
deep. Howls the shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain
beats, the windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in
the avenues, veil the points of view, and move in funeral-wise
across the rising grounds. On all the house there is a cold, blank
smell like the smell of a little church, though something dryer,
suggesting that the dead and buried Dedlocks walk there in the long
nights and leave the flavour of their graves behind them.
But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney
Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or
mourning when it mourns, expecting when a Dedlock dies--the house
in town shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state
may be, as delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no
trace of winter as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so
that the ticking of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires
alone disturb the stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those
chilled bones of Sir Leicester's in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir
Leicester is glad to repose in dignified contentment before the
great fire in the library, condescendingly perusing the backs of
his books or honouring the fine arts with a glance of approbation.
For he has his pictures, ancient and modern. Some of the Fancy
Ball School in which art occasionally condescends to become a
master, which would be best catalogued like the miscellaneous
articles in a sale. As '"Three high-backed chairs, a table and
cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one Spanish
female's costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg the
model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote." Or "One stone
terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian senator's
dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with profile
portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly mounted in
gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very rare), and
Othello."
Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate
business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady
pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as
indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet
it may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows
it. It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no
touch of compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty
and all the state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the
greater zest for what he is set upon and makes him the more
inflexible in it. Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable
in what he has made his duty, whether absorbed in love of power,
whether determined to have nothing hidden from him in ground where
he has burrowed among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart
despises the splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is
always treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his
gorgeous clients--whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may
be that my Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionahle
eyes upon her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this
rusty lawyer with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches
tied with ribbons at the knees.
Sir Leicester sits in my Lady's room--that room in which Mr.
Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce--
particularly complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the
fire with her screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly
complacent because he has found in his newspaper some congenial
remarks bearing directly on the floodgates and the framework of
society. They apply so happily to the late case that Sir Leicester
has come from the library to my Lady's room expressly to read them
aloud. "The man who wrote this article," he observes by way of
preface, nodding at the fire as if he were nodding down at the man
from a mount, "has a well-balanced mind."
The man's mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady,
who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid
resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught
and falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire
at Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite
unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally
stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as "Very true
indeed," "Very properly put," "I have frequently made the same
remark myself," invariably losing his place after each observation,
and going up and down the column to find it again.
Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the
door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange
announcement, "The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy."
Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, "The
young man of the name of Guppy?"
Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much
discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of
introduction in his manner and appearance.
"Pray," says Sir Leicester to Mercury, "what do you mean by
announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?"
"I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see
the young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were
here, Sir Leicester."
With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at
the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, "What do you
come calling here for and getting ME into a row?"
"It's quite right. I gave him those directions," says my Lady.
"Let the young man wait."
"By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will
not interrupt you." Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather
declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and
majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive
appearance.
Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has
left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She
suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.
"That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a
little conversation," returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.
"You are, of course, the person who has written me so many
letters?"
"Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended
to favour me with an answer."
"And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation
unnecessary? Can you not still?"
Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent "No!" and shakes his head.
"You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after
all, that what you have to say does not concern me--and I don't
know how it can, and don't expect that it will--you will allow me
to cut you short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to
say, if you please."
My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards
the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of
the name of Guppy.
"With your ladyship's permission, then," says the young man, "I
will now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship
in my first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt
the habit of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did
not mention to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am
connected and in which my standing--and I may add income--is
tolerably good. I may now state to your ladyship, in confidence,
that the name of that firm is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln's Inn,
which may not be altogether unknown to your ladyship in connexion
with the case in Chancery of Jarndyce and Jarndyce."
My Lady's figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She
has ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were
listening.
"Now, I may say to your ladyship at once," says Mr. Guppy, a little
emboldened, "it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce
that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I
have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive--in fact,
almost blackguardly."
After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the
contrary, and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, "If it had
been Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your
ladyship's solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the
pleasure of being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn--at least we move
when we meet one another--and if it had been any business of that
sort, I should have gone to him."
My Lady turns a little round and says, "You had better sit down."
"Thank your ladyship." Mr. Guppy does so. "Now, your ladyship"--
Mr. Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made
small notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him
in the densest obscurity whenever he looks at it--"I--Oh, yes!--I
place myself entirely in your ladyship's hands. If your ladyship
was to make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn
of the present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable
situation. That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your
ladyship's honour."
My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the
screen, assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.
"Thank your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy; "quite satisfactory. Now--
I--dash it!--The fact is that I put down a head or two here of the
order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they're written
short, and I can't quite make out what they mean. If your ladyship
will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I--"
Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds,
to whom he says in his confusion, "I beg your pardon, I am sure."
This does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He
murmurs, growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now
close to his eyes, now a long way off, "C.S. What's C.S. for? Oh!
C.S.! Oh, I know! Yes, to be sure!" And comes back enlightened.
"I am not aware," says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady
and his chair, "whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or
to see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson."
My Lady's eyes look at him full. "I saw a young lady of that name
not long ago. This past autumn."
"Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?" asks
Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and
scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.
My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.
"No."
"Not like your ladyship's family?"
"No."
"I think your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "can hardly remember Miss
Summerson's face?"
"I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with
me?"
"Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson's image
imprinted on my 'eart--which I mention in confidence--I found, when
I had the honour of going over your ladyship's mansion of Chesney
Wold while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a
friend, such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your
ladyship's own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much
so that I didn't at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked
me over. And now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near
(I have often, since that, taken the liberty of looking at your
ladyship in your carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not
aware of me, but I never saw your ladyship so near), it's really
more surprising than I thought it."
Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies
lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,
when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute's
purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at
this moment.
My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him
again what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with
her.
"Your ladyship," replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper,
"I am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! 'Mrs. Chadband.'
Yes." Mr. Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself
again. My Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a
trifle less of graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters
in her steady gaze. "A--stop a minute, though!" Mr. Guppy refers
again. "E.S. twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on."
Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech
with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
"Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's
birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because--which I
mention in confidence--I know it in the way of my profession at
Kenge and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your
ladyship, Miss Summerson's image is imprinted on my 'eart. If I
could clear this mystery for her, or prove her to be well related,
or find that having the honour to be a remote branch of your
ladyship's family she had a right to be made a party in Jarndyce
and Jarndyce, why, I might make a sort of a claim upon Miss
Summerson to look with an eye of more dedicated favour on my
proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In fact, as yet she
hasn't favoured them at all."
A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady's face.
"Now, it's a very singular circumstance, your ladyship," says Mr.
Guppy, "though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way
of us professional men--which I may call myself, for though not
admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by
Kenge and Carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of
her little income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy--that
I have encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady
who brought Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of
her. That lady was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship."
Is the dead colour on my Lady's face reflected from the screen
which has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised
hand as if she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that
has fallen on her?
"Did your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "ever happen to hear of Miss
Barbary?"
"I don't know. I think so. Yes."
"Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship's family?"
My Lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.
"NOT connected?" says Mr. Guppy. "Oh! Not to your ladyship's
knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes." After each of these
interrogatories, she has inclined her head. "Very good! Now, this
Miss Barbary was extremely close--seems to have been
extraordinarily close for a female, females being generally (in
common life at least) rather given to conversation--and my witness
never had an idea whether she possessed a single relative. On one
occasion, and only one, she seems to have been confidential to my
witness on a single point, and she then told her that the little
girl's real name was not Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon."
"My God!"
Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him
through, with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same
attitude even to the holding of the screen, with her lips a little
apart, her brow a little contracted, but for the moment dead. He
sees her consciousness return, sees a tremor pass across her frame
like a ripple over water, sees her lips shake, sees her compose
them by a great effort, sees her force herself back to the
knowledge of his presence and of what he has said. All this, so
quickly, that her exclamation and her dead condition seem to have
passed away like the features of those long-preserved dead bodies
sometimes opened up in tombs, which, struck by the air like
lightning, vanish in a breath.
"Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?"
"I have heard it before."
"Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship's
family?"
"No."
"Now, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "I come to the last point of
the case, so far as I have got it up. It's going on, and I shall
gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must
know--if your ladyship don't happen, by any chance, to know
already--that there was found dead at the house of a person named
Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great
distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which
law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown.
But, your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-
writer's name was Hawdon."
"And what is THAT to me?"
"Aye, your ladyship, that's the question! Now, your ladyship, a
queer thing happened after that man's death. A lady started up, a
disguised lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of
action and went to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-
sweeping boy to show it her. If your ladyship would wish to have
the boy produced in corroboration of this statement, I can lay my
hand upon him at any time."
The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to
have him produced.
"Oh, I assure your ladyship it's a very queer start indeed," says
Mr. Guppy. "If you was to hear him tell about the rings that
sparkled on her fingers when she took her glove off, you'd think it
quite romantic."
There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen.
My Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again
with that expression which in other times might have been so
dangerous to the young man of the name of Guppy.
"It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap
behind him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did.
He left a bundle of old letters."
The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never
once release him.
"They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship,
they will come into my possession."
"Still I ask you, what is this to me?"
"Your ladyship, I conclude with that." Mr. Guppy rises. "If you
think there's enough in this chain of circumstances put together--
in the undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your
ladyship, which is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been
brought up by Miss Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss
Summerson's real name to be Hawdon; in your ladyship's knowing both
these names VERY WELL; and in Hawdon's dying as he did--to give
your ladyship a family interest in going further into the case, I
will bring these papers here. I don't know what they are, except
that they are old letters: I have never had them in my posession
yet. I will bring those papers here as soon as I get them and go
over them for the first time with your ladyship. I have told your
ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I should be
placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint was made,
and all is in strict confidence."
Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or
has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth,
depth, of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what
do they hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at
him, but he can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of
his from telling anything.
"You may bring the letters," says my Lady, "if you choose."
"Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,"
says Mr. Guppy, a little injured.
"You may bring the letters," she repeats in the same tone, "if you
--please."
"It shall he done. I wish your ladyship good day."
On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and
clasped like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes
it to her and unlocks it.
"Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of
that sort," says Mr. Guppy, "and I couldn't accept anything of the
kind. I wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you
all the same."
So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the
supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave
his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.
As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper,
is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to
make the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms,
the very portraits frown, the very armour stir?
No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and
shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered
trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint
vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the
house, going upward from a wild figure on its knees.
"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as
my cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had
renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!" _
Read next: CHAPTER XXX - Esther's Narrative
Read previous: CHAPTER XXVIII - The Ironmaster
Table of content of Bleak House
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
