Bleak House

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"I can't help it, Charley."

"No, miss, nor I can't help it," says Charley. "And if you please,
miss, Mr. Jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me
now and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see
each other once a month. And I'm so happy and so thankful, miss,"
cried Charley with a heaving heart, "and I'll try to be such a good
maid!"

"Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!"

"No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. Nor yet Emma. It was all
you, miss."

"I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley."

"Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you
might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present
with his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom
was to be sure to remember it."

Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her
matronly little way about and about the room and folding up
everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came
creeping back to my side and said, "Oh, don't cry, if you please,
miss."

And I said again, "I can't help it, Charley."

And Charley said again, "No, miss, nor I can't help it." And so,
after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.

CHAPTER XXIV

An Appeal Case

As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have
given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.
Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise
when he received the representation, though it caused him much
uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted
together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole
days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge,
and laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While
they were thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent
considerable inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed
his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested
in its right place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other
time, but maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our
utmost endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping
assurances that everything was going on capitally and that it
really was all right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by
him.

We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was
made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an infant and a
ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of
talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court
as a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was
adjourned and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and
petitioned about until Richard began to doubt (as he told us)
whether, if he entered the army at all, it would not be as a
veteran of seventy or eighty years of age. At last an appointment
was made for him to see the Lord Chancellor again in his private
room, and there the Lord Chancellor very seriously reproved him for
trifling with time and not knowing his mind--"a pretty good joke, I
think," said Richard, "from that quarter!"--and at last it was
settled that his application should be granted. His name was
entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for an ensign's
commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an agent's; and
Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a violent
course of military study and got up at five o'clock every morning
to practise the broadsword exercise.

Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We
sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or
out of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be
spoken to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now
in a professor's house in London, was able to be with us less
frequently than before; my guardian still maintained the same
reserve; and so time passed until the commission was obtained and
Richard received directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.

He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a
long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed
before my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were
sitting and said, "Come in, my dears!" We went in and found
Richard, whom we had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the
chimney-piece looking mortified and angry.

"Rick and I, Ada," said Mr. Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind.
Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"

"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder
because you have been so considerate to me in all other respects
and have done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never
could have been set right without you, sir."

"Well, well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "I want to set you more right
yet. I want to set you more right with yourself."

"I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a
fiery way, but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge
about myself."

"I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr.
Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that's
it's quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think so. I
must do my duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool
blood; and I hope you will always care for me, cool and hot."

Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-
chair and sat beside her.

"It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have
only had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you
are the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming."

"I am not indeed, cousin John," replied Ada with a smile, "if it is
to come from you."

"Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention,
without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My
dear girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the
easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little
woman told me of a little love affair?"

"It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your
kindness that day, cousin John."

"I can never forget it," said Richard.

"And I can never forget it," said Ada.

"So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for
us to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the
gentleness and honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know
that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All
that he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully
equipped. He has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward
to the tree he has planted."

"Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am
quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said
Richard, "is not all I have."

"Rick, Rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,
and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would
have stopped his ears. "For the love of God, don't found a hope or
expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom
that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to
beg, better to die!"

We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit
his lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and
knew that I felt too, how much he needed it.

"Ada, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,
"these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and
have seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start
him in the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you,
for his sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the
understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I
must go further. 1 will be plain with you both. You were to
confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you
wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your
relationship."

"Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce
all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same."

"Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."

"You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I HAVE, I
know."

"How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we
spoke of these things last," said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and
encouraging manner. "You have not made that beginning yet, but
there is a time for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather,
it is just now fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You
two (very young, my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing
more. What more may come must come of being worked out, Rick, and
no sooner."

"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I
could have supposed you would be."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I
do anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own
hands. Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that
there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is
better for her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you
will do what is best for the other, if not what is best for
yourselves."

"Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard hastily. "It was not when
we opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then."

"I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick, but I have
had experience since."

"You mean of me, sir."

"Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. "The time
is not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not
right, and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins,
begin afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for
you to write your lives in."

Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.

"I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther,"
said Mr. Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as
the day, and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I
now most earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here.
Leave all else to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do
otherwise, you will do wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in
ever bringing you together."

A long silence succeeded.

"Cousin Richard," said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to
his face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice
is left us. Your mind may he quite at ease about me, for you will
leave me here under his care and will be sure that I can have
nothing to wish for--quite sure if I guide myself by his advice.
I--I don't doubt, cousin Richard," said Ada, a little confused,
"that you are very fond of me, and I--I don't think you will fall
in love with anybody else. But I should like you to consider well
about it too, as I should like you to be in all things very happy.
You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable;
but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even
cousins may be sorry to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry,
Richard, though I know it's for your welfare. I shall always think
of you affectionately, and often talk of you with Esther, and--and
perhaps you will sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard.
So now," said Ada, going up to him and giving him her trembling
hand, "we are only cousins again, Richard--for the time perhaps--
and I pray for a blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!"

It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my
guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he
himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But
it was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from
this hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had
been before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was
not; and solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between
them.

In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,
and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in
Hertfordshire while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a
week. He remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of
tears, and at such times would confide to me the heaviest self-
reproaches. But in a few minutes he would recklessly conjure up
some undefinable means by which they were both to be made rich and
happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible.

It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long,
buying a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the
things he would have bought if he had been left to his own ways I
say nothing. He was perfectly confidential with me, and often
talked so sensibly and feelingly about his faults and his vigorous
resolutions, and dwelt so much upon the encouragement he derived
from these conversations that I could never have been tired if I
had tried.

There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our
lodging to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a
cavalry soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free
bearing, with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard
so much about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too,
that I was purposely in the room with my work one morning after
breakfast when he came.

"Good morning, Mr. George," said my guardian, who happened to be
alone with me. "Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile,
Miss Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down."

He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and
without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and
across his upper lip.

"You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr. Jarndyce.

"Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit
in me, sir. I am not at all business-like."

"Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr.
Jarndyce.

"Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much
of a one."

"And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make
of Mr. Carstone?" said my guardian.

"Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad
chest and looking very large. "If Mr. Carstone was to give his
full mind to it, he would come out very good."

"But he don't, I suppose?" said my guardian.

"He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind.
Perhaps he has something else upon it--some young lady, perhaps."
His bright dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.

"He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George," said I,
laughing, "though you seem to suspect me."

He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow.
"No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs."

"Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."

If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or
four quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said
to my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the
honour to mention the young lady's name--"

"Miss Summerson."

"Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.

"Do you know the name?" I asked.

"No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen
you somewhere."

"I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at
him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner
that I was glad of the opportunity. "I remember faces very well."

"So do I, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of
his dark eyes and broad forehead. "Humph! What set me off, now,
upon that!"

His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by
his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his
relief.

"Have you many pupils, Mr. George?"

"They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they're but a small lot to
live by."

"And what classes of chance people come to practise at your
gallery?"

"All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to
'prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show
themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of
course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open."

"People don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their
practice with live targets, I hope?" said my guardian, smiling.

"Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come
for skill--or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other.
I beg your pardon," said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and
squaring an elbow on each knee, "but I believe you're a Chancery
suitor, if I have heard correct?"

"I am sorry to say I am."

"I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir."

"A Chancery suitor?" returned my guardian. "How was that?"

"Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being
knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said
Mr. George, "that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any
idea of taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of
resentment and violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots
and fire away till he was red hot. One day I said to him when
there was nobody by and he had been talking to me angrily about his
wrongs, 'If this practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and
good; but I don't altogether like your being so bent upon it in
your present state of mind; I'd rather you took to something else.'
I was on my guard for a blow, he was that passionate; but he
received it in very good part and left off directly. We shook
hands and struck up a sort of friendship."

"What was that man?" asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.

"Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made
a baited bull of him," said Mr. George.

"Was his name Gridley?"

"It was, sir."

Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at
me as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the
coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.
He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what
he called my condescension.

"I don't know," he said as he looked at me, "what it is that sets
me off again--but--bosh! What's my head running against!" He
passed one of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to
sweep the broken thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward,
with one arm akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a
brown study at the ground.

"I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this
Gridley into new troubles and that he is in hiding," said my
guardian.

"So I am told, sir," returned Mr. George, still musing and looking
on the ground. "So I am told."

"You don't know where?"

"No, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out
of his reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn
out soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a
good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last."

Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made
me another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day,
and strode heavily out of the room.

This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure.
We had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his
packing early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until
night, when he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and
Jarndyce being again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed
to me that we should go down to the court and hear what passed. As
it was his last day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been
there, I gave my consent and we walked down to Westminster, where
the court was then sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements
concerning the letters that Richard was to write to me and the
letters that I was to write to him and with a great many hopeful
projects. My guardian knew where we were going and therefore was
not with us.

When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor--the same
whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln's Inn--sitting in
great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a
red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little
garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was
a long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at
their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs
and gowns--some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody
paying much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned
back in his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and
his forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present
dozed; some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in
groups: all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry,
very unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.

To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the
roughness of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full
dress and ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and
beggared misery it represented; to consider that while the sickness
of hope deferred was raging in so many hearts this polite show went
calmly on from day to day, and year to year, in such good order and
composure; to behold the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of
practitioners under him looking at one another and at the
spectators as if nobody had ever heard that all over England the
name in which they were assembled was a bitter jest, was held in
universal horror, contempt, and indignation, was known for
something so flagrant and bad that little short of a miracle could
bring any good out of it to any one--this was so curious and self-
contradictory to me, who had no experience of it, that it was at
first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I sat where
Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me; but there
seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor little Miss
Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at it.

Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a
gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much
gratification and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also
came to speak to us and did the honours of the place in much the
same way, with the bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a
very good day for a visit, he said; he would have preferred the
first day of term; but it was imposing, it was imposing.

When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress--if
I may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion--seemed to die
out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody
expected to come, to any resuIt. The Lord Chancellor then threw
down a bundle of papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him,
and somebody said, "Jarndyce and Jarndyce." Upon this there was a
buzz, and a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and
a bringing in of great heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of
papers.

I think it came on "for further directions"--about some bill of
costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.
But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in
it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.
They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted
and explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this
way, and some of them said it was that way, and some of them
jocosely proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was
more buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state
of idle entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody.
After an hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun
and cut short, it was "referred back for the present," as Mr. Kenge
said, and the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had
finished bringing them in.

I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless
proceedings and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome
young face. "It can't last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck
next time!" was all he said.

I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.
Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered
me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm
and was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone," said he in a whisper, "and Miss
Summerson's also, but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who
knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." As he
spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape
from my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother's house.

"How do you do, Esther?" said she. "Do you recollect me?"

I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little
altered.